Gender Differences in Occupational Employment

Abstract

The differences in employment distributions of women and men within occupations have been, and continue to be, a prominent feature of the labor market. Past research has indicated a high degree of difference that remained fairly constant from the early 1900s up until about 1970. The 1970s were a watershed period in occupational desegregation, as indicated by significant declines in measures of occupational differences. The advances of the women’s movement, the enactment of laws prohibiting sex discrimination, increases in female enrollment in higher education and professional schools, the steady increase in women’s labor force participation, and reductions in gender stereotyping in both education and employment all contributed to this trend. Women continued to make inroads into male-dominated occupations in the 1980s, although the pace of change slowed. This analysis seeks to update past research on occupational differences between the sexes by evaluating trends over the past two decades, particularly during the period from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. It includes an overview of current patterns of the gender distribution of employment within occupations and the ways in which they have changed over the past two decades. This is followed by an analysis of aggregate levels of occupational differences using a summary measure—the dissimilarity or difference index. Finally, there is a discussion of the change in gender-dominated jobs. Barbara H. Wootton

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