Soc 2208 / DSoc 2090 Study Questions, Lectures 19 &amp; 20 1. Following your graduation from Cornell, you get a job as a staff researcher in a large law firm. Just after you start the job, the firm is hired to represent a group of women who have been denied jobs as engineers in the last several years. The women's lawsuit claims that they were denied these jobs because of their sex. Unfortunately, your firm has no prior experience in representing such cases. Given your background in Sociology, you're asked to write a research brief on occupational segregation by sex. The lawyers explicitly state they want to understand possible sources, types, and historical as well as current patterns of sex segregation. They also need a review of the most relevant literature, because they might need to contact scholars in the field to act as expert witnesses. Good luck! Patterns in Segregation: still dramatic sex segregation in the labor force, not much has changed between the year 1910 and 2000, esp. in nurses and secretaries Charles &amp; Brusky o If one sought to undue all sex segregation, 52% of women would have to change occupations o Contemporary gender regimes continue to have a traditional 1950s feel, there s a battle between biological essentialism and egalitarianism Asymmetric integration o Men s occupations more likely to integrate than women s Ghettoization: once an occupation reaches a certain level of women infiltration, there tends to be a flood of women in and men are less and less likely to join, etc. vet medicine o Tipping points Types of Segregation Horizontal o Men disproportionately in manual sector, women in nonmanual sector Physical vs. nurturing Biological essentialism: men tend to be better at physical jobs etc. o Compatible with egalitarianism (no necessary judgment that one should be paid more) Separate but equal They are good at different things but difference does not necessarily imply inequality, no sense of heirarchy Vertical o Within sectors, men in more desirable occupations Nonmanual sector: high-status professions, managers Manual sector: craft (for men), women tend to be more in unskilled labor o Incompatible with egalitarianism Were in a situation of separate and unequal There s something that s going on that s enticing men into the well-paying jobs and leaving the poor paying jobs for women Possible Sources NB: can be divided into both supply-side and demand-side arguments 1) Socialization: SSA a. Early sex-role socialization i. Effects on motivation: 1. Occupational preferences: pure tastes, unsullied by realism (it could be the case that girls don t develop a taste for being train engineers, for etc.) 2. Occupational expectations: realistic judgments about what is possible or likely ii. Effects on skills, knowledge, personality 2) Status beliefs and expectations: SSA Emphasized interaction, not internalization Stereotypic beliefs ( status beliefs ) about different competencies of men and women o Widely held o Shape expectations of a person s contribution Expectations affect interactions o Perceived competency (conditional on ability) o Lessons from experiments o Expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies Relevance to segregation o Math and science ability &amp; choices o Managerial settings: because of widespread beliefs about men having greater confidence, you develop the idea that they have greater authority, it might be tied to fundamental beliefs about competencies which drives interactions, etc. - Not talking about internalizing widespread beliefs it s just about the beliefs that are out there and effect interaction 3) Human Capital Theory: SSA a. Individualistic variant i. Goal: maximize individual lifetime earnings (by choosing jobs of a certain sort) ii. Women maximize by choosing female-typed jobs 1. Less skill depreciation when out of labor force 2. Compatibility with unpaid labor b. Empirical problems: i. Flatter wage curves (less skill depreciation) AND low starting wages (not the case that women can maximize by choosing medium paid job that is stable) ii. Men s jobs more likely to have flexible hours, etc. (not the case that womens jobs are compatible with unpaid labor) iii. Little evidence that women s jobs require less effort c. Family variant i. Goal: maximize household income ii. Strategic specialization 1. Women in unpaid labor, men in paid labor 4) Legal Barriers: DSA a. Laws that limit the occupational choices i. Heavy lifting (women are too delicate); Night work (bad for families) ii. Mostly invalidated in 1964 b. Can account for horizontal segregation, not vertical i. Vertical segregation even within the manual and nonmanual sector, women tend to be found in the less well-paying jobs, and men tend to be found in the better jobs 5) Organizational practices: DSA a. Gender neutral in intent, not in consequences b. Examples i. Greedy occupations : require 24 hour devotion to the job ii. Maternity/ paternity leave polices: limiting which types of occupations women who intend to have kids iii. Tenure-based promotion: women tend to have some time off work because of child-bearing/raising 6) Statistical Discrimination: DSA a. Basic argument i. Employers want to minimize training costs ii. Statistically, women more likely to leave iii. Employers prefer to hire men because of average differences b. Economically rational but fair? i. Inconsistent with American egalitarianism ii. Just because something might be rational, doesn t mean it is fair iii. Applies group averages to individuals iv. Self-fulfilling prophecy: anticipation of a behavior actually calls for that behavior 7) Pure Discrimination: DSA a. A.k.a. taste for discrimination i. Some employers just have a taste for one gender over another, or think that customers are unlikely to buy cosmetics from a man (e.g.) ii. Becker, again Reskin, Labor Markets as Queues Queing Theory Queuing perspective views labor markets as composed of labor queus and job queues that reflect, respectively, employers ranking of possible workers and workers ranking of jobs Workers accept the best jobs available to them, so the most desirable jobs go to the most preferred workers, less attractive jobs go to workers lower in the labor queue, and the most lowly workers end up jobless or in jobs others have rejected Tastes for male workers in all occupations: Employers will first go to their top employee preference (men), and then go down the queue so when they get to the bad jobs they have no choice but to hire women Male workers affect women s access to jobs through their ability to preempt jobs, their power to enforce their monopoly over desirable jobs, and their ability, in abandoning jobs, to bestow them on workers lower in the labor queu Found in study: o Employers hired disproportionate amount of women after they had become less attractive to men o Women tended to be relegated to femal enclaves, while men retained the most desirable jobs Goldin &amp; Rouse, Orchestrating Inequality -Evidence can support an impact of discrimination on hiring -Women are about 5 percentage points more likely to be hired than are men in a completely blind audition -The adoption of the screen and blind auditions served to help female musicians in their quest for orchestral positions 2. Consider the following graph. First, briefly describe in plain English what it tells us about the gender gap in pay by race/ethnicity. Then, identify one supply-side and one demand-side argument that you think can best account for the observed racial/ethnic differences in the gender gap in pay. NOTE: Unlike most other study questions, this question asks you to apply concepts and ideas that were covered in more than one lecture or set of readings. Compares earnings of women from different ethnicities to those of white men If there were perfect equality, women s earnings would be at 100% Shows that race also has an impact on the gender gap in earnings Asian women are closest to parity with white men White women earn about 75 cents for every dollar of white men Most group of women had decline in the 1990s but have been making up for it since Shows that there is inequality no matter how you slice it: not all women are paid equally, all women are paid less than men are Unseen category: white men that women are being compared to Both demand side and supply side arguments can contribute to these patterns/trends in racial/ethnic differences in gender gap in pay Demand-Side: Pure Discrimination Appeals to both race and gender argument Pure Discrimination Taste for discrimination : some employers prefer some races over others, this is not economically rational (Becker) Correll, Benard &amp; Paik o glass ceiling : a metaphor for the barriers that restrict women s movement up the career ladder to the highest positions in organizations and firms o To the extent that employers view mothers as less committed to their jobs and less promotable, the glass ceiling women face could be in par a mother-hood ceiling o Men get promoted for having children while women get punished increasing inequality Reskin s Queuing theory: African and Latino women are at the bottom of the queue o Labor market as composed of labor queues and jobs queues that reflect respectively, employer s ranking of possible workers and workers ranking of jobs o Employers will go to their first employee preference (men), and then go down the queue so when they get to the bad jobs they have no choice but to hire women o First they pick men, then they pick white men o Pick white women next, then minority women o Because you have a taste for a certain group of people, you pay the people that you don t want less Residential Segregation: Indirect effect of discrimination (people who live in poor areas have access to poor jobs) o Massey &amp; Denton: <a href="/keyword/racial-discrimination/" >racial discrimination</a> residential discrimination o Reference group = whites o 33% of American Indians would need to move, 41% of Asian Americans, 51% of Hispanic/Latino, 64% of African Americans Waters: Continuing racial inequality the institutional failure in our inner cities to provide jobs, education, and public safety in sustaining a cultural response of deinvestment in the face of discrimination rather than increased striving Supply Side: Structure of household division of labor (Under the assumption that black women and Hispanic women are more likely to have bigger families, etc.) Inequality at work starts at home Measuring housework (often don t measure child care, recreational chores) Economic dependency: person earning lowest share does maximum amount of housework Shares elements with socialization and human capital explanations o Socialization: early sex-role socialization effects motivation, skills, personality o Human capital: individualistic variant; women maximize by choosing female-typed jobs; strategic specialization (women in unpaid labor, men in paid labor) Doing gender : consistent with socialization story (doing housework is a way of expressing femininity) Women don t invest in human capital as much because have so many responsibilities at home More efficient for men to work and women to stay home, division of labor Socialization All women have more responsibilities at home than male counterparts Black women and Latino women are more likely to be in situations where they are the only parent Hochshild: women face the time blind more than men, more responsibilities at home women take lower paying jobs that aren t as demanding Belkin: maybe all women don t choose to opt out, but rather choose to take lesser jobs so that they have less stress