Gender in the Labor Market

Among the most robust findings in the sociology of gender is that women and men do very different jobs. Occupational segregation — the unequal distribution of women and men across occupations — is pervasive across industrial societies and remarkably persistent even as women's labor-force participation, education, and career aspirations have risen dramatically. Paula England, whose 2010 American Sociological Association presidential address was titled 'The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled,' has documented both the enormous progress since 1970 and the stubborn features of the labor market that resist change.

Sociologists distinguish horizontal segregation (women and men concentrated in different occupations) from vertical segregation (men concentrated in higher-status positions within the same occupation). Horizontal segregation means that nursing, elementary teaching, secretarial work, and home health aide are overwhelmingly female, while construction trades, truck driving, mechanical engineering, and police work are overwhelmingly male. Vertical segregation means that even within fields where women have reached parity or majority (law, medicine, university faculty), the most senior and prestigious positions remain disproportionately male.

The index most often used to measure horizontal segregation is the Duncan dissimilarity index, which reports the percentage of women (or men) who would have to change occupations for the distribution to be equal. In the United States the index fell sharply from roughly 64 in 1970 to around 51 in 2010, but it has barely moved since. England calls this the stall: the revolution in women's educational and labor-market participation has not been matched by a corresponding revolution in the sex composition of occupations.

Three broad families of explanation compete. Human capital theories (following Gary Becker) argue that segregation reflects differences in skills, preferences, and the anticipated costs of career interruption. Discrimination theories emphasize employer bias, gatekeeping, and stereotype-based evaluation. Socialization and cultural theories focus on how gendered expectations channel young people toward different fields long before they enter the labor market. Contemporary research, including England's own, finds that each contributes something: preferences are real but socially shaped; discrimination is documented by audit studies; and early socialization sorts students into male- and female-typed majors that then feed segregated occupations.