Question

Chapter 5:Marriage and family class

Why does the author state that understanding occupational sex segregation is important for understanding gender inequality?

Answer 1

At the microeconomic level, occupational segregation by gender substantially depresses female wages and contributes to the gender wage gap. Most of the U.S. economy's highest paying occupations are predominantly male while most of the lowest paying occupations are predominantly female.

what is generally known by researchers as occupational and job segregation by sex – which we will call sexual work segregation for short. There is a tendency in perhaps all existing societies for some occupations and jobs to be strongly associated with women and some with men, though there is significant cultural variation in the categories. Examples of occupations associated with women in Europe and North America in recent decades include nursing, primary teaching, hairdressing and other ‘beauty work’, and certain kinds of manufacturing work involving ‘manual dexterity’ (Bradley, 1989). Occupations strongly associated with men include mining, driving, professional catering, plumbing and car sales. With the entry of more women into the workforce over the last forty years in many countries, some occupations and jobs have become ‘feminized’ – Wharton (2012: 194) names public relations, systems analysis, bartending, advertising and insurance adjusting as examples. But ‘feminization’ rarely refers to a predominantly male occupation becoming predominantly female. Instead it tends to denote an increase in the concentration of women within that occupation.