Occupational segregation

Occupational segregation is the distribution of workers across and within occupations, based upon demographic characteristics, most often gender. Occupational segregation levels differ on a basis of perfect segregation and integration. Perfect segregation occurs where any given occupation employs only one group. Perfect integration, on the other hand, occurs where each group holds the same proportion of positions in an occupation as it holds in the labor force. Occupational segregation is the distribution of workers across and within occupations, based upon demographic characteristics, most often gender. Occupational segregation levels differ on a basis of perfect segregation and integration. Perfect segregation occurs where any given occupation employs only one group. Perfect integration, on the other hand, occurs where each group holds the same proportion of positions in an occupation as it holds in the labor force. Many scholars, such as Biblarz et al., argue that occupational segregation is most likely caused by gender-based discrimination that often occurs in patterns, either horizontally (across occupations) or vertically (within the hierarchy of occupations). Both of these contribute to the gender pay gap. Horizontal segregation refers to differences in the number of people of each gender present across occupations. Horizontal segregation is likely to be increased by post-industrial restructuring of the economy (post-industrial society), in which the expansion of service industries has called for many women to enter the workforce. The millions of housewives who entered the economy during post-industrial restructuring primarily entered into service sector jobs where they could work part-time and having flexible hours. While these options are often appealing to mothers, who are often responsible for the care work of their children and their homes, they are also unfortunately most available in lower-paying and lower status occupations. The idea that nurses and teachers are often pictured as women whereas doctors and lawyers are often assumed to be men are examples of how highly engrained horizontal segregation is in our society. The term vertical segregation describes men's domination of the highest status jobs in both traditionally male and traditionally female occupations. Colloquially, the existence of vertical segregation is referred to as allowing men to ride in a 'glass escalator' through which women must watch as men surpass them on the way to the top positions. Generally, the more occupational segregation present in a country, the less vertical segregation there is because women have a better chance of obtaining the highest positions in a given occupation as their share of employment in that particular occupation increases. Vertical segregation can be somewhat difficult to measure across occupations because it refers to hierarchies within individual occupations. For example, the category of Education Professionals, (a category in the Australian Standard Classification of Occupations, Second Edition), is broken down into 'School Teachers,' 'University and Vocational Education Teachers,' and 'Miscellaneous Education Professionals.' These categories are then further broken down into subcategories. While these categories aptly describe the divisions within education, they are not comparable to the hierarchical categories within other occupations, and thus make comparisons of levels of vertical segregation quite difficult. Some women self-select out of higher status positions, choosing instead to have more time to spend at home and with their families. According to Sarah Damaske, this choice is often made because high status positions do not allow time for the heavy domestic workload that many women expect to take on due to the gendered division of labor in the home. Working class women, in particular, also sometimes self-select out of more time-intensive or higher -status positions in order to maintain the traditional gender hierarchy and household accord. Human capital explanations are those that argue that an individual's and a group's occupational and economic success can be at least partially attributed to accumulated abilities developed through formal and informal education and experiences. Human capital explanations for occupational segregation, then, posit that a difference in educational levels of men and women is responsible for persistent occupational segregation. Contrary to this theory, however, over past 40 years, women's educational attainment has outpaced men's. One area of education that might play a substantial role in occupational segregation, however, is the dearth of women in science and mathematics. STEM fields tend to be pipelines to higher paying jobs. Therefore, the lack of women in higher paying jobs might be partially because they do not pursue science and mathematics in school. This can be seen in areas such as finance, which is very mathematics heavy and is also a very popular field for those who eventually rise to high status positions in the private sector. This choice, like others, is often a personal preference or made because of the cultural idea that women are not as good as men at mathematics. Human capital explanations also posit that men tend to rise to higher positions than women because of a disparity in work experience between the genders. Indeed, the gap between men and women's tenure rises with age, and female college graduates are more likely than males to interrupt their careers to raise children. Such choices may also be attributed to the gendered division of labor which holds women primarily responsible for domestic duties. Human capital explanations posit additionally that men are more likely than women to preference their work life over their family life. However, the General Social Survey found that men were only slightly less likely than women to value short hours, and that preferences for particular job characteristics depended mostly on age, education, race, and other characteristics rather than on gender. In addition, other research has shown that men and women likely hold endogenous job preferences, meaning that their preferences are due to the jobs they hold and those they have held in the past rather than related inherently to gender. After taking into consideration men and women's jobs, there is no difference in their job preferences. Men and women engaged in similar types of work have similar levels of commitment to work and display other similar preferences.