Barbara F. Reskin

Job Queues, Gender Queues: Explaining Women's Inroads into Male Occupations

Preface Part I: Explaining the Changing Sex Composition of Occupations 1. Occupational Sex Segregation: Persistence and Change 2. Queuing and Changing Occupational Composition 3. Consequences of Desegregation: Occupational Integration and Economic Equity? Part II: Case Studies of Occupation Change 4. Culture, Commerce and Gender: The Feminization of Book Editing -- Barbara F. Reskin 5. Industrial and Occupational Change in Pharmacy: Prescription for Feminization -- Polly A. Phipps 6. Keepers of the Corporate Image: Women in Public Relations -- Katharine M. Donato 7. High Finance, Small Change: Womens Increased Representation in Bank Management -- Chloe E. Bud 8. Programming for Change? The Growing Demand for Women Systems Analysts -- Katharine M. Donato 9. Womens Gains in Insurance Sales: Increased Supply, Uncertain Demand -- Barbara J. Thomas 10. A Womans Place is Selling Homes: Occupational Change and the Feminization of Real Estate Sales -- Barbara J. Thomas and Barbara F. Reskin 11. Occupational Resegregation among Insurance Adjusters and Examiners -- Polly A. Phipps 12. Women Behind Bars: The Feminization of Bartending -- Linda A. Detman 13. Baking and Baking Off: Deskilling and the Changing Sex Makeup of Bakers -- Thomas Steiger and Barbara F. Reskin 14. Hot-Metal to Electronic Composition: Gender, Technology, and Social Change -- Patricia A. Roos Part III: Conclusion Summary, Implications, and Prospects Appendix: Guidelines Used for Occupation Case Studies References Name Index Subject Index About the Authors

BRINGING THE MEN BACK IN: Sex Differentiation and the Devaluation of Women's Work

To reduce sex differences in employment outcomes, we must examine them in the context of the sex-gender hierarchy. The conventional explanation for wage gap—job segregation—is incorrect because it ignores mens incentive to preserve their advantages and their ability to do so by establishing the rules that distribute rewards. The primary method through which all dominant groups maintain their hegemony is by differentiating the subordinate group and defining it as inferior and hence meriting inferior treatment. My argument implies that neither sex-integrating jobs nor implementing comparable worth will markedly improve womens employment status because men can subvert these mechanisms or even change the rules by which rewards are allocated. As evidence, I show that occupational integration has failed to advance women appreciably, and I argue that comparable worth is not likely to be much more effective. Instead, we must seek political analyses and political solutions.

Why not ascription? Organizations' employment of male and female managers

A reactor apparatus for contacting a gas with a liquid including geometrically patterned cells connected in series to generate narrow and large areas with connecting neck portions wherein the flow of gas is reversed to create turbulent gas flow which produces suspension of liquid droplets and liquid/gas emulsions and which creates internal recycling of the liquid as the liquid flows through the cells.

Including Mechanisms in our Models of Ascriptive Inequality

Sociologists’ principal contribution to our understanding of ascriptive inequality has been to document race and sex disparities. We have made little headway, however, in explaining these disparities because most research has sought to explain variation across ascriptive groups in more or less desirable outcomes in terms of allocators’ motives. This approach has been inconclusive because motive-based theories cannot be empirically tested. Our reliance on individual-level data and the balkanization of research on ascriptive inequality into separate specialties for groups defined by different ascriptive characteristics have contributed to our explanatory stalemate. Explanation requires including mechanisms in our models–the specific processes that link groups’ ascribed characteristics to variable outcomes such as earnings. I discuss mechanisms that contribute to variation in ascriptive inequality at four levels of analysis—intrapsychic, interpersonal, societal, and organizational. Redirecting our attention from motives to mechanisms is essential for understanding inequality and—equally important—for contributing meaningfully to social policies that will promote social equality.

Women's Work, Men's Work. Sex Segregation on the Job.

Even though women have made substantial progress in a number of formerly male occupations, sex segregation in the workplace remains a fact of life. This volume probes pertinent questions: Why has the overall degree of sex segregation remained stable in this century? What informal barriers keep it in place? How do socialization and educational practices affect career choices and hiring patterns? How do family responsibilities affect womens work attitudes? And how effective is legislation in lessening the gap between the sexes? Amply supplemented with tables, figures, and insightful examination of trends and research, this volume is a definitive source for what is known today about sex segregation on the job.

Employment Discrimination and Its Remedies

The concentration of people of color and white women in less desirable and less remunerative jobs than those white men hold is a fundamental expression of race and sex stratification. Among the factors that produce these patterns is discrimination. This chapter addresses employment discrimination based on race, sex, and national origin, and the role of government in its extent.

Sex Differences in Status Attainment in Science: The Case of the Post Doctoral Fellowship.

This article compares the status-attainment process for women and-men, using career data for a sample of 450 doctoral chemists. The study focuses on the role of the postdoctoral fellowship, a career event that is thought to validate predoctoral performance and foster later professional success. Analyses of covariance show sex interactions for both the predoctoral determinants and the occupational consequences of the postdoctoral experience (award receipt and prestige), which persist when marital status is taken into account. Such sex-fellowship interactions fail to occur only for the impact of the fellowship on productivity, indicating a prestigious award-enhanced scientific output for both sexes. These results seriously question whether achievement norms govern status attainment for female scientists and whether science is, in fact, unique in its normative structure.

Occupational Desegregation in the 1970s: Integration and Economic Equity?

During the 1970s, women made dramatic inroads into a select number of traditionally male occupations. Although media pundits touted womens gains as dramatic, there is reason to suspect whether these inroads actually represent progress for women. Using a queuing perspective, we examine whether womens gains represent genuine integration, ghettoization, or resegregation, and whether women gained economically from occupational feminization. Case studies of fourteen occupations that became feminized during the 1970s reveal that womens occupational and economic progress relative to men was disappointing. While women did make inroads into traditionally male occupations, they gained access to them because the occupations had lost much of their attractiveness to men and were becoming less advantageous for women as well. The desegregation of census occupational titles masked substantial internal segregation. In those occupations in which the wage gap did decline, it did so more because of declines in mens real earnings than because of increases in womens.

Physician Distribution Across Metropolitan Areas

This paper examines the effects of demographic and ecological variables on the distribution of physicians in greater American metropolises. The physicians considered are those in full-time, nonfederal private practice in 1966. By disaggregating the total body of physicians into general practitioners and six medical specially groups it was possible to better specify the factors that should influence their distribution. The communities considered are those 22 SMSAs with a population of over 1 million. Number of physicians is regressed on population size, and the resulting residuals are examined in terms of indicators of four factors thought to influence physician supply. Indicators of three of these factors medical need, access to medical care, and the presence of alternative sources of medical care are shown to be associated with the distribution of physician categories considered. The policy implications of these findings and their relevance to ecological theory are discussed.

What Trends? Whose Choices? Comment on England

In commenting on Paula England’s (2010) essay, we address three issues: whether the gender revolution has stalled, ambiguities in England’s estimate of recent trends in occupational sex segregation, and England’s choice-based explanation for occupational segregation. The gender revolution is both a social movement and a global transformation promoting gender equality in all spheres of life. We agree that this revolution has progressed unevenly; we disagree that it has stalled. The gender system comprises many interrelated spheres. Because advancement in some spheres must await headway in others, progress in any particular domain will be uneven. As long as women continue to challenge gender as an organizing principle in male-dominated spheres, the revolution is advancing.