Explaining Trends in Occupational Segregation: The Measurement, Causes, and Consequences

of the Sexual Division of Labour

Author(s): Catherine Hakim
Source: European Sociological Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Sep., 1992), pp. 127-152
Published by: Oxford University Press
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European Sociological Review, Vol. 8 No. 2, September 1992 127
?Oxford University Press 1992

Explaining Trends in Occupational Segregation:

The Measurement, Causes, and Consequences
of the Sexual Division of Labour

CATHERINE HAKIM

ABSTRACT Occupational segregation is important and difficult to measure. Summary measures are used
to track change in the sexual division of labour across decades, but no single index can capture all dimensions
of interest, in particular vertical segregation, which explains much of the sex differential in earnings. The
choice of index is not crucial; research results are determined primarily by other methodological choices
in the formatting of the base data- of tseatt. Britain provides a strategic case for assessing the impact of recession
and work-force restructuring in the 1980s, in analyses based on Census and Labour Force Survey data
for 1979-90 for 550 occupational groups. Surprisingly, the 1980s display a larger fall in occupational
segregation than previous decades. Women's labour-force participation is examined more closely; the
explanation is identified as a rise in women's work commitment, and in women's full-time employment,
which occurred for the first time in the 1980s. On this basis, a substantial decline in occupational segregation
is predicted for the 1990s, with a consequential impact on the male-female earnings gap. The growth of
integrated occupations and the changing pattern of vertical segregation will provide a better basis for
monitoring trends in future years than any summary index.

INTRODUCTION to go before they could be said to have achieved

The first report of the British Equal Oppor-
tunities Commission (EOC, 1977) opened by
noting that 'traditional distinctions between
what is men's work and what is women's work
have been steadily abolished in fact, although
many of our industrial and social practices
continue to be based on these assumptions ...
For the first time, women have enjoyed the
freedom to contemplate a career in work on
equal terms with men . . . and women have
begun to reach out into wider areas of social
and industrial life'. A decade later, an OECD
report notes that 'despite the fact that women
can now be found in virtually every occupation,
they are still concentrated in just a few of
them . . . Over the past twenty years women
have made considerable progress in entering the
labour market. Yet there is a considerable way
equality with men, either in terms of the type
of job they do or the remuneration they receive'
(OECD, 1988: 169-70).
Policy issues undoubtedly provide the primary
impetus to multi-disciplinary research on occu-
pational segregation by sex.1 The implemen-
tation of equal opportunities legislation in the
mid-1960s in North America, some ten years
before Britain and other European countries
(Steinberg, 1988; Sloane and Jain, 1990) led to
an early flowering of research on occupational
segregation and related issues. European research
on this topic has developed much more slowly.
Studies have covered trends in occupational
segregation across the 20th century (Gross, 1968;
Oppenheimer, 1970; Williams, 1976, 1979;
Hakim, 1979, 1981; England, 1981; Jacobs,
1989a); the different patterns of occupational
segregation observed at the national, aggregate

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128 EXPLAINING TRENDS IN OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION
level and in individual workplaces (McIntosh,
1980; Bielby and Baron, 1984, 1986); entry
barriers to professions such as medicine, law,
and engineering (Pearson and Sachs, 1980;
Spencer and Podmore, 1987); the impact of
occupational segregation on career choices
(Rauta and Hunt, 1975; Sutherland, 1978); the
relationship between job segregation and patterns
of women's work over the life-cycle (Dex, 1987;
Blossfeld, 1987); the importance of occupational
segregation as an explanation for the sex
differential in earnings (Mellor, 1984; Tienda
et al., 1987; Hannan et al., 1990; Rosenfeld and
Kalleberg, 1990); the issue of equal value
(comparable worth) and whether women's jobs
are less well rewarded simply because they
are done by women (England et al., 1988);
or a mixture of these issues (Treiman and
Hartmann, 1981; Beller, 1982a, 1982b; Reskin
and Hartmann, 1986; OECD, 1988; 146-56;
Jacobs, 1989b).
While the policy interest in occupational
segregation looms large, and has given a concrete
focus as well as a multi-disciplinary character to
many studies, sociologists and economists also
treat the sexual divison of labour as a funda-
mental element of labour-market segmentation
(Chiplin and Sloane, 1974; Barron and Norris,
1976; Snyder et al., 1978; Wilkinson, 1981;
Blankenship, 1983; Dex, 1987; Blossfeld and
Mayer, 1988; Walby, 1988; Hannan et al.,
1990).2 Many studies with an immediate policy
interest contribute equally to the development
of labour-market theory, and vice versa (Blaxall
and Reagan, 1976; Hakim, 1979; Treiman and
Hartmann, 1981; OECD, 1985). Human capital
theory and structural explanations are the
main explanations offered for occupational
segregation, with most empirical studies finding
some support for both (Becker, 1985; England
and McCreary, 1987; Blossfeld, 1987).
The key consequence of occupational segre-
gation is the segregation of payment structures
(Industrial Relations Services, 1991) and the
enduring sex differential in earnings. Research
on the wage gap between men and women
variously attributes 5 to 40 per cent to job
segregation alone, with around 20 to 25 per cent
regarded as a reasonable estimate (Sorensen,
1987 quoted in Jacobs, 1989a: 160; Pike, 1982;
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Miller, 1987), more than 15 per cent explained
by work interruptions (Bureau of the Census,
1985; see also Joshi, 1984), and the 5 per cent
typical of comparable worth wage upgrading
(Killingsworth, 1985; Steinberg, 1988: 207).
Some would argue, with the Equal Opportunities
Commission, that occupational segregation is
inequitable simply because it places restrictions
on people's freedom to chose the job they do,
whether the constraints are those of tradition,
custom and practice, formal entry barriers and
sex quotas, or statistical discrimination (Phelps,
1972; Walsh, 1977; Pearson and Sachs, 1980).
The sexual division of labour is also of interest
as a key indicator of women's position in
society and whether it is changing-whether
men's patriarchal practices are being success-
fully challenged and eroded (Hartmann, 1976;
Schmid, 1976; Walby, 1986).
In Europe, the OECD rather than the
European Commission has played a major role
in the development of occupational segregation
analysis, and in carrying out cross-national
comparative studies which provide the bench-
mark, sometimes the stimulus, for more detailed
country studies.3 The three reports published in
1980, 1985, and 1988 were prompted by the
OECD's Working Party on the Role of Women
in the Economy, and have placed occupational
segregation centre stage as the principle visible
explanation for the continuing sex differential
in earnings and women's weak position in the
labour-market generally. In all the OECD reports
analyses of aggregate trends in occupational
segregation, country differences, and the sources
of occupational segregation are followed by
consideration of the policy levers that might be
used to achieve greater equality of opportunity
within the work-force. A major strength of the
OECD studies is that they are set in the context
of broader analyses of trends in women's
labour-force participation, so that all sources
of change and development within the labour-
market can be considered together.
Explanations for the existence of the universal
phenomenon of occupational segregation will
differ from explanations for a time-specific
trend. The 1985 and 1988 OECD reports
addressed the impact of recession and work-
force restructuring on occupational segregation
 EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
in the 1970s and 1980s. Two hypotheses were
considered. One was that recession adversely
affected women more than men, as indicated
by female unemployment rates being consistently
higher than those for men, with consequential
effects on women's position in the labour-
market. The second was that structural changes
in employment, particularly increases in service-
sector employment and in part-time work,
would produce rising levels of occupational
segregation at the national level. Both hypotheses
were unsupported (OECD, 1985: 44, 1988:
147). Occupational segregation indices showed
little movement, with a declining trend, and
decomposition analysis of the changes failed to
confirm that recession and the work-force
restructuring of the 1970s and 1980s were, as
expected, the source of increases.
This paper analyses changes in occupational
segregation over the 1980s to consider these
questions further. The immediate focus is the
impact of recession and work-force restructuring
which characterized the decade, but the ulti-
mate concern is the development of theory
on the causes and correlates of occupational
segregation, and methodological issues in the
measurement of occupational segregation. The
analysis centres on the British case, building on
existing studies on trends since 1900. However,
Britain is taken as broadly representative of
Western European societies more generally, and
the results for this country are taken as applying
to a greater or lesser extent to others. In some
respects Britain provides the ideal strategic case-
study, as the relatively unregulated labour
market meant a rapid pace of change, with
work-force restructuring going further than in
other European countries (Hakim, 1990a).
LABOUR-MARKET DEVELOPMENTS IN
THE 1980s
The term 'Thatcherism' was coined to describe
the policies pursued by the British government
in the period 1979-90. Government intervention
in the labour-market gave way to policies of
privatizing public-sector services. Monetarist
economic policies led to a labour shake-out
unprecedented in the post-war period, with
manufacturing suffering the largest loss of jobs.
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129
Unemployment rose from an already high level
of over 1 million in 1979 to over 3 million within
the space of a few years, and remained at over
2 million into the 1990s. Deregulation was the
dominant theme of industrial and labour policy.
The work-force restructuring achieved in the
relatively unregulated British labour market went
well beyond anything seen in other European
countries (Boyer, 1989; Erbes-Seguin, 1989;
Hakim, 1987, 1990a, 1990b; Hinrichs, 1989;
Lane, 1989; Muckenberger, 1989). One million
permanent full-time jobs were lost in the
period 1979-83, in a decline that continued to
1987. These 'standard' jobs were replaced by
a 1.7 million increase in non-standard jobs:
part-time work, self-employment, labour-only
subcontracting, homework, temporary workers
hired through an agency, temporary employees,
and other seasonal, short-term, and casual jobs,
which grew from 30 per cent to 36 per cent of
total employment over the decade (Hakim, 1987,
1990a). The model of the flexible firm developed
by Atkinson at the Institute for Manpower
Studies was very much a reflection of develop-
ments in Britain in the late 1970s and early
1980s (Atkinson, 1984; Institute of Manpower
Studies, 1984, 1985, 1986), even though it was
picked up by the European Commission as
reflecting developments in Europe more broadly
(Dahrendorf et al., 1986; European Commission,
1987).
The only equal opportunities legislation passed
in this period was forced on the government by
the European Court's decision that the Equal
Pay Act 1970 did not go far enough in enforcing
equal pay for work of equal value, and outlawing
discrimination in pay and other remuneration as
required by the 1975 Commission Directive on
Equal Pay. The 1983 Equal Pay (Amendment)
Regulations were ungenerous in their drafting
and left much to courts' decisions when they
became effective in 1984. Many agreed with the
EOC's view that the legislation had become too
complex to be workable, and that the two equal
pay laws and the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act
should all be replaced with a single, clearer,
and more enforceable Act (Redmond, 1986;
Willborn, 1989).
Despite the lack of government support for
equal opportunities legislation, labour-market
130 EXPLAINING TRENDS IN OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION
changes were arguably advantageous for working
women, even if they were disastrous for working
men. As in most Western European countries in
the 1980s, employment growth was consistently
higher for women, consisting mainly of part-
time jobs (European Commission, 1989: 19, 86,
1990: 26-8). Industrial restructuring away from
manufacturing industries towards the service-
sector industries which have always provided
most opportunities for women's employment
was beneficial for women, rather than disadvan-
tageous. Rising unemployment affected the
manufacturing sector, and men's jobs, far more
than the service sector, and women's jobs. In
recession, occupational segregation was found
to protect women's jobs from incursions by
unemployed men. Unlike most other European
and OECD countries, unemployment rates in
Britain remained consistently lower among
women than among men (OECD, 1985: 22,
1988: 143) and unemployment was found to have
a smaller effect on work-force participation than
was observed for men (OECD, 1976; Jain and
Sloane, 1981; OECD, 1988: 130-3). Women's
part-time jobs are less responsive to cyclical
fluctuations than are full-time jobs (OECD,
1983: 45). Women's economic activity rates
continued to grow throughout the 1980s to reach
71 per cent by 1989 (Department of Employment,
1990). However reluctantly they were adopted
by the government, the 1984 equal pay for work
of equal value regulations laid the foundations
for equal value (comparable worth) pay claims
by women, with some notable successes in the
late 1980s, particularly in retailing. By the late
1980s there was some narrowing of the gap
between the earnings of men and women, which
had remained unchanged for a decade following
the one-off increase produced by the Equal Pay
Act in the early 1970s.
Sociologists seeking to assess the labour-
market effects of Thatcherism have focused on
the implications for manufacturing industry,
trade-union membership, work-force flexibility,
and industrial relations (MacInnes, 1987; Hakim,
1990b; Nichols, 1990; Stevens and Wareing,
1990). The implications for women's position
in the labour market, in particular occupational
segregation, have received little attention (but
see Rubery, 1988). Arguably, the 1970s and 1980s
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were relatively favourable to women's labour-
force participation and we should expect a
decline in occupational segregation, concentrated
particularly in the late 1970s and early 1980s,
when change was most pronounced and rapid.
However the OECD study records an increase in
occupational segregation between 1971 and 1981,
along with most other European countries in this
period (OECD, 1988: 209). We reassess this
conclusion, using somewhat different methods
to measure trends in occupational segregation.
MEASURING OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION
Essentially, two summary measures of trends
in occupational segregation are currently in use
in national studies.4 The Duncan and Duncan
Index of Dissimilarity is the indicator most
often used in North American research (Gross,
1968; Williams, 1976; Blau and Hendricks,
1979; England, 1981; Jacobs, 1989a), although
other measures are sometimes employed
(Oppenheimer, 1970; Treiman and Terrell,
1975). It has also been used in some European
studies (Jonung, 1983; Blossfeld, 1987). British
researchers have generally employed the Hakim
Sex-Ratio Index of occupational segregation
(Hakim, 1979, 1981; Mallier and Rosser, 1985;
Siltanen, 1990), although other measures have
been adopted (Walby and Bagguley, 1990). The
OECD has used both of these indicators, or
variations of them, in cross-national comparative
studies on member countries. The first two
OECD reports (1980, 1985) used a weighted
variant of the Sex-Ratio Index,5 which was then
replaced by the Index of Dissimilarity (OECD,
1985, 1988). Both measures have strengths and
weaknesses, which are well documented by
their originators, occasionally overlooked by
researchers, and then periodically rediscovered
and elaborated further (Duncan and Duncan,
1955; Taeuber and Taeuber, 1965, 1976; Cortese
etal., 1976; Hakim, 1979, 1981; OECD, 1980:
44-6, 1985: 40-5, 62-5, 1988: 147, 208-11;
England, 1981; James and Taeuber, 1985;
Massey and Denton, 1987: 805-6; Siltanen,
1990; Tzannatos, 1990).6
The Hakim Index, and the OECD's variant
of it are based on comparing the sex-ratio within
each occupation with the sex-ratio of the whole
 EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
work-force; the Duncan index is based on
comparing the distributions of men and women
across all occupations. Although they perform
differently, the OECD's 1985 report demon-
strates that the two indices are in fact facets of
the same entity and related to each other.7 In
consequence, they display the same trends when
applied to the same database. Using highly
aggregated occupational data for eight countries,
the two indices showed the same trend for the
period 1970-82 in six out of eight cases.
The only major discrepancy between the two
indices was for trends in the USA, where the
Dissimilarity Index showed an apparent increase
in a period generally agreed to be one of
declining occupational segregation (OECD, 1985:
42, 64-5; England, 1981; Jacobs, 1989a). As
Jacobs points out, the glacial pace of change
from 1900-70 in the USA gave way to a modest
but sustained decline in job segregation from
1970 to 1986 (Jacobs, 1989a: 171).
In practice, the results of analyses are
determined as much, or more, by other meth-
odological features of a study than by the choice
of index. The three key methodological issues
are weighting, the occupational classification
employed, and the choice of base population.
These are substantive as well as technical issues,
as most researchers in this field recognize
(Gross, 1968; Williams, 1976; Hakim, 1979;
England 1981; Jacobs, 1989a). For example
Gross (1968), Williams (1976), and Jacobs
(1989a) have all shown that markedly different
results are obtained on the degree and pattern
of change in occupational segregation over the
century in the USA, even when the Index of
Dissimilarity is consistently used, depending on
whether or not the occupational classification
is modified to back-aggregate to a consistent
set of occupations, and whether or not the
occupations are weighted. The choices made on
these methodological issues determine whether
the study will show no change at all in occu-
pational segregation since the beginning of the
century, or a great deal of change. This in
turn means explanations must be sought either
for complete stability, or for major change in the
degree of occupational segregation. At this point
the search for accurate measurement of trends
seems to have become counter-productive.8
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131
As England (1981) points out, the unweighted
index, usually called the size-standardized index,
controls for changes in the relative sizes of
occupations by ignoring them: all occupations
have an equal weight of one, irrespective of how
large or small they are, and contribute equally
to the overall index. The size-standardized index
does not let changes in occupation size over time
(or differences between countries in the relative
sizes of occupational groups) affect the value
of the summary index, and therefore is not
contaminated by compositional effects. If it is
considered inequitable for there to be few or no
women Members of Parliament, few or no
women doctors, the truth of such statements is
not increased or diminished by the absolute and
relative numbers in each professional group.
Analyses which use weighted indices usually
proceed to decompose the change to reveal the
part due to changes in the occupational structure
(OECD, 1985: 43-5, 1988: 147). It seems
simpler to use size-standardized indices. Another
argument in favour of the unweighted index is
that it reflects perceptions of the work-force
among people making job choices and those
who advise them. Young people's career and job
choices are affected by their perceptions of
occupations as male-dominated or female-
dominated, as relatively 'open' or 'closed' to
them, but they are very unlikely to know, or be
influenced by the relative sizes of occupations
that come within their view.
The choice of base population tends to be
overlooked as a methodological issue, but can
affect the results of analyses at the national
level. Studies may analyse data for the econ-
omically active (including the unemployed) or
the employed (Hakim, 1979, 1981), the civilian
employed work-force (Treiman and Terrell,
1975), the non-farm labour-force (Jacobs,
1989a), the employed work-force with part-
time workers converted to full-time equivalents
(Hakim, 1979: 29-31), employees in private
and semi-public establishments with over ten
employees (Huet, 1983), people working a
minimum of 20 hours a week (Jonung, 1983), or
full-time year-round workers (Rytina, 1981). The
occupational composition and sex ratio of each
of these base populations will vary, sometimes
with substantial effects on the resulting analyses.
132 EXPLAINING TRENDS IN OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION
Studies of particular age cohorts (as in the USA
National Longitudinal Study data-sets) or of
workplaces will have even more skewed patterns
of occupational segregation. The choice of base
population shades into the choice of unit of
analysis when surveys of working people are
used to obtain information on the sex-ratio of
work-groups and workplace-based data.
The importance of the occupational classifi-
cation chosen, and its level of detail is illustrated
by the OECD's cross-national comparative
analyses. These have to be based on highly
aggregated data for nine broad occupational
groups, occasionally for 20 groups, for it to be
feasible to carry out analyses for all two dozen
OECD countries for periods of decades (OECD,
188: 209). The first report, setting out trends
in the 1970s, showed Japan as having the lowest
level of occupational segregation among all
OECD countries, far lower than any European
or North American country (OECD, 1980:
44-6). The adoption of the Dissimilarity Index
for the 1985 report made no difference: Japan
still had the lowest score on both indices, while
Australia and Norway had the highest levels of
occupational segregation on both indices. The
1988 report was more systematic in covering all
OECD countries using the Dissimilarity Index
only. It confirmed Japan as having by far the
lowest level of occupational segregation, followed
by Greece, Italy, and Portugal. Overall the
OECD studies show that countries with the
highest levels of work-force participation also
have the highest levels of occupational segre-
gation (OECD, 1985: 44, 1988: 147). The
finding of low segregation in Japan, and of high
segregation in 'progressive' countries such as
Sweden, has inevitably been greeted with shock
and disbelief (Ruggie, 1988: 181). By its own
account Japan is a male-dominated society
with entrenched sex-role differentiation, acute
horizontal and vertical occupational segregation,
an extreme male-female earnings gap, and overt
discrimination against women, including the
continued use of an unlawful marriage bar in
many organizations (Matsuura, 1980; Nakanishi,
1983). Such a wholly implausible finding of low
occupational segregation by sex in Japan must be
due to the occupational classification employed,
since it is obtained with both indices of
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occupational segregation. It suggests that analysis
at this level of aggregation may be worthless,
unless the societies to be studied have some
degree of homogeneity and comparability. Even
the switch from a fairly detailed occupational
classification with 162 groups to one with 550
groups can affect the degree of occupational
segregation revealed by a study. An analysis of
British 1981 Population Census data using a
classification with 162 jobs reveals a lower level
of segregation than is reported here using the
Census classification with 550 occupational
groups: Mallier and Rosser (1985) obtained a
value of 1.57 for the Hakim Sex-Ratio Index
in 1981, compared to 1.62 reported in Table 5.
A focus on the mathematical properties and
performance of indices has led to issues of
validity being overlooked compared to issues of
reliability. There is virtually no discussion of the
substantive meaning of measures. Given the
multi-faceted nature of occupational segregation,
arguably a variety of measures is needed to
capture its structure, trends, and cross-national
differences of interest. Hakim (1979) demon-
strates that there are two separate dimensions, of
vertical and horizontal occupational segregation,
which no summary index can capture. Horizontal
segregation exists when men and women choose
different types of occupation: tailoring or
dressmaking, for example. Vertical segregation
exists when men typically work in higher grade
occupations or posts and women typically work
in lower grade occupations or posts: when
doctors are invariably male and nurses invariably
female, for example, or when men are promoted
higher up career ladders within occupations.
Hakim showed vertical segregation to be by far
the most pronounced across all countries of the
world, including egalitarian societies with high
female work-force participation rates such as
the USSR and Scandinavian societies. Vertical
segregation is the key issue from a policy
perspective, as vertical occupational segregation
is by far the most important explanation of the
sex differential in earnings (Spaeth, 1979;
Treiman and Hartmann, 1981; OECD, 1985:
86; Gregory and Thomson, 1990). A British
study of the teaching profession carried out in
1973, some 12 years after equal pay had been
introduced, found that about one-third of the
 EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
gross male-female earnings gap was explained
by women being concentrated in the lower-paying
primary sector, and the remaining two-thirds by
women being concentrated in lower-grade posts
(Department of Employment, 1976: 965). More
recently, a US study of highly paid occupations
such as accountant, lawyer, and chemist found
that the ratio of female to male pay within any
one level was rarely below 90 per cent and often
close to 100 per cent. The large sex differential
in average earnings for each occupation was due
to the high degree of vertical segregation
between jobs within occupations: the proportion
of women declined sharply at each step up the
career ladder (Sieling, 1984). Vertical segregation
is also important because the absence of women
in the higher, decision-making echelons of a
society means that their interests are not looked
after. Changing patterns of vertical occupational
segregation warrant far more attention than they
have so far received.
APPROACH TO THIS STUDY
The approach adopted here is to employ a
variety of measures to capture the many facets
of occupational segregation, and identify where
change is occurring. Trends in vertical segre-
gation are assessed by women's share of top
jobs, the agenda-setting and policy-making
occupations. Detailed examination of top jobs
is more informative than another quantitative
measure.9 At the same time trend analysis
requires some summary measure, even if sup-
plemented by others. Consistency in the indicator
used becomes crucial for measuring change, and
any alteration in the pace of change. The index
used here is the Hakim Sex-Ratio Index of
occupational segregation for which a long time-
series from 1901 to 1981 for Britain already
exists (Hakim, 1978, 1979, 1981; Mallier and
Rosser, 1985), and which has proved effective
in assessing the impact of legislation in the 1970s
(Hakim, 1981). As the index is size-standardized,
change in the index is never due simply to change
in the size of occupations. Given the magnitude
of industrial restructuring in the 1980s, in
particular the shift from jobs in manufacturing
to service-sector jobs, this is a key advantage
of the index for this study. In addition to
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133
the varied measures already used in previous
studies, a new approach is proposed, focusing on
integrated occupations and their characteristics,
to achieve better linkage between macro-level
studies and qualitative research.
The data used is the European Community
Labour Force Survey (LFS) for Britain,
supplemented by 1981 Population Census 10
per cent sample data for the economically
active population.10 Unlike the Statistical Office
of the European Communities version of the
LFS which employs a classification with only
eight broad occupational groups, the British
version of the EC LFS employs a detailed
occupational classification with 550 separate
occupational units (plus an extra code for
unclassifiable responses), which is used also
in the 1981 Census results (Hakim, 1991a).
The classification is sufficiently detailed that
only a data-set the size of the Population Census
10 per cent sample, with over 2 million workers,
is big enough to identify people in all occupa-
tions (Table 1). The LFS covers a sample of
about 0.5 per cent of the population in private
households, providing data for some 60000
households and almost 150000 economically
active persons; the data is necessarily less reliable,
TABLE 1 Structure of the occupational classification
1979-90
Proportion of occupations with:
70% or above above no
more average average workers
women proportion proportion in LFS
workers of women of men sample
workers workers
1979 11 23 71 6
1981 10 23 73 4
1981 Census 10 22 78
1983 12 23 71 6
1985 11 23 75 2
1987 10 24 73 3
1990 12 23 76 4
Sources: 1981 Population Census and Labour Force
Survey, Great Britain. Data for the economically active
population 1979-87, and for the employed work-force in
1990. In all years there were a total of 551 occupations
identified. Only the Population Census 10% sample is large
enough to identify workers in all occupations.
134 EXPLAINING TRENDS IN OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION

even if more up-to-date, than the Census results
(Department of Employment, 1990). Throughout
the analyses the Census provides a reliability
check on the LFS data which, in the event,
proved to be remarkably robust.
One strength of the analysis is that the occu-
pational classification employed is both detailed
and unvarying throughout the period analysed.
It is well documented that the more aggregated
the occupational classification the smaller the
degree of occupational segregation identified.
Occupations which remain 100 per cent male or
female in a detailed classification are merged
into larger, more integrated units in broader
classifications. The consistency of the occu-
pational classification throughout the 1980s thus
eliminates another factor that can affect the
reliability of any summary measure (Williams,
1976; England, 1981; Hakim, 1981: 526; Jacobs,
1989a). The most detailed occupational classifi-
cation is of course the job structure within
workplaces. Studies at workplace level will
always reveal levels of occupational segregation
that are not just higher but of totally different
magnitudes to the levels identified in national
statistical data in Britain (Hunt, 1975: 179-85;
McIntosh, 1980; Hakim, 1981: 527-8; Martin
and Roberts, 1984: 25-31; Witherspoon, 1988:
176-80) or the USA (Bielby and Baron, 1984,
1986). But these results are arguably misleading.
For example countries with single-sex schools
typically employ either male or female teachers,
rather than equal numbers of both together in the
same establishment. This may be worth knowing
for explaining responses to equal opportunities
policies, work orientations, attitudes to pay or
job satisfaction for example. But analyses of
occupational segregation are concerned with
whether men and women have achieved broadly
equal access to occupations such as teaching,
rather than whether they bump into each other
at the workplace.11 Single-sex educational (and
other) establishments are not incompatible with
equal access to education and to teaching
occupations; in fact they are usually to women's
advantage. 2 The study of vertical segregation in
particular requires analysis of occupations at the
national level: managing directors, parliamentary
representatives, and judges are thinly distributed
at workplace level. This is a study of the
national occupational structure. The unit of
analysis is occupations rather than persons, as
we are interested in women's share of each
occupation and their place within the national
occupational structure. It is recognized that this
type of analysis cannot address questions about
women's experiences at workplace level, and the
structure of jobs and grades within individual
establishments.
TRENDS IN THE 1980s
There was no change in the occupational
structure throughout the 1980s (Table 1). Both
at the start and the end of the decade, three-
quarters of the 551 occupations identified in

TABLE 2 Occupational concentration 1979-90

Proportion (%) of women working in Proportion (%0) of men working in

occupations with: occupations with:

90% + 80% + 70% + 60% + 500o + 50% + 6007 + 7070 + 800% + 90% +
women workers men workers

1979 26 46 53 79 82 85 82 76 72 57
1981 26 46 51 71 82 84 81 75 68 54
1981 Census 27 46 67 74 78 86 81 75 68 51
1983 28 46 68 76 79 87 81 74 68 50
1985 28 46 64 76 79 86 79 72 64 54
1987 27 44 64 76 79 86 83 72 64 47
1990 26 35 64 76 79 84 81 69 61 46
Sources: as for Table 1.

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 EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW 135

the classification were dominated by men and
only one-quarter were dominated by women.
The fact that only 10 per cent of jobs identified
in the occupational classification have 70 per cent
or more women workers has led social scientists
to the conclusion that women's occupations
are less finely delineated and classified than
are men's.
Even if the job structure remained unchanged,
Table 2 shows there was a declining trend in
occupational concentration, affecting men more
than women. In 1979 over four-fifths of men
were in occupations where they outnumbered
women, and half of all men worked in occu-
pations where they outnumbered women nine
to one. By 1990 the picture was much the same,
but there was a notable shrinking of the almost
exclusively male occupations, down from 57
per cent to 46 per cent of male workers. The
majority of male workers rarely encounter
women who do the same work as them (not
necessarily in the same establishment), and this
did not change in the 1980s. Only one-quarter
of women were in occupations where they
outnumbered men nine to one, with no change
over the decade. Women's work experience
involves men as colleagues far more commonly
than the reverse.
This is inevitable, as women are still a
statistical minority group in the work-force: 39
per cent in 1979. The long-term equalization of
men's and women's labour-force participation
continued over the decade, with economic
activity rates for men of working age declining
from 91 per cent to 88 per cent, while economic
activity rates for women of working age rose
sharply from 63 per cent in 1979 to 71 per cent
in 1989. By 1990 women's share of the work-
force reached 43 per cent.
Table 3 shows the occupations in which women
were over-represented and under-represented,
and trends over the decade. Coefficients of
female representation are calculated for each of
the major occupational groups by dividing the
female share of employment in the occupations
by the female share of total employment.
Coefficients greater than unity indicate female
over-representation in an occupation; coefficients
below unity indicate female under-representation
in the occupation. The measure facilitates

TABLE 3 Women's representation in the major occupational groups 1979-90

Coefficient of female representation in major

occupational groups

1979 1981 81 Cen 1983 1985 1987 1990

1 Professional and related supporting management and administration 0.52 0.53 0.54 0.51 0.57 0.58 0.66
2 Professional and related in education, welfare, and health 1.62 1.64 1.67 1.64 1.59 1.60 1.56
3 Literary, artistic, and sport 0.84 0.93 0.92 0.91 0.90 0.96 0.94
4 Professional and related in science, engineering, and technology 0.23 0.21 0.23 0.22 0.16 0.23 0.29
5 Managerial: large and small establishments 0.53 0.56 0.59 0.60 0.61 0.63 0.65
6 Clerical and related 1.85 1.86 1.90 1.88 1.88 1.84 1.79
7 Selling 1.53 1.51 1.51 1.48 1.47 1.45 1.38
8 Security and protective service 0.25 0.24 0.26 0.26 0.23 0.23 0.27
9 Catering, cleaning, hairdressing, and other personal service 2.07 2.03 2.00 2.01 1.91 1.91 1.84
10 Farming, fishing, and related 0.34 0.40 0.38 0.44 0.40 0.45 0.51
11 Processing, making, repairing, and related (not metal and electrical) 0.87 0.83 0.82 0.75 0.73 0.72 0.68
12 Processing, making, repairing, and related (metal and electrical) 0.13 0.14 0.13 0.12 0.09 0.11 0.12
13 Painting, repetitive assembly, product inspection, packaging, etc. 1.17 1.10 1.08 1.03 1.03 1.02 0.93
14 Construction, mining, and related 0.01 0.01 0.03 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.02
15 Transport operating, materials moving, storing, and related 0.14 0.13 0.15 0.14 0.09 0.13 0.15
16 Miscellaneous 0.19 0.17 0.23 0.21 0.20 0.20 0.18
17 Not stated or occupation unclear 1.42 1.19 1.10 1.04 0.96 0:91 0.28

Sources: as for Table 1.

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136 EXPLAINING TRENDS IN OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION

comparisons across occupational groups which
vary substantially in size, and across years.
Over the decade, women's dominance in
lower-grade and less well-paid occupations was
reduced, and their representation in professional
and managerial occupations increased. Catering,
cleaning, hairdressing, and other personal service
occupations was the group most heavily domi-
nated by women in 1979, with a coefficient of
2.07. By 1990 this had fallen to 1.84, with
changes both early and late in the decade.
Women's over-representation in selling and
clerical occupations also fell, to a lesser extent,
with change concentrated towards the end of
the decade. Women's over-representation in
professional and related work in education,
welfare, and health testifies to the importance
of teaching, nursing, and related welfare work
among women. Vertical segregaton was most
in evidence in women's under-representation in
the two other professional groups and in
managerial jobs; but in all three cases they
improved their share of these senior occupations
in the 1980s, with the coefficients moving up
to 0.66, 0.29, and 0.65 respectively, with most
change in the second half of the decade. Some
types of work remained almost exclusively male
throughout the decade: construction, mining,
materials moving, transport operating, and
production work involving metal and electrical
goods remained virtually unaltered, with negli-
gible or tiny female representation even by 1990.
Table 4 presents trends in vertical segre-
gation over two decades 1971-90, by examining
women's share of the most senior occupations
which play the major part in running the country.
The association between the proportion of men
in an occupation and earnings levels is well
established, but there is also an association with
the degree of authority exercised by occupations
(Spaeth, 1979).13 The occupational classification
does not allow us to identify parliamentary

TABLE 4 Women in top jobs 1971, 1981, 1990

o female in each occupation

1971 1981 1990

Judges, barristers, advocates, solicitors 4 14 27

General administrators: national government 12 19 29
Local government officers: administrative and executive functions 20 31 51
Statutory and other inspectors 2 10 18
Senior officers: police, prison, fire services 2 2 *
Officers: UK armed forces 5 4 3
Accountants, valuers, finance specialists, underwriters, brokers 4 10 19
Personnel and industrial relations managers, O&M, work study officers 12 29 46
Economists, statisticians, systems analysts, computer programmers 15 19 19
Managers: marketing, sales, advertising, public relations, purchasing 11 16 24
Other professional and related supporting management 34 43 52
Teachers in higher education: university, further, and higher education 25 27 37
Medical and dental practitioners 18 23 30
Biologists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, other scientists 7 20 26
Engineers: civil, municipal, structural, mining, quarrying * * 2
Engineers: mechanical, aeronautical 11 2
Engineers: electrical, electronic 1 2 7
Architects, town planners; quantity, building, and land surveyors 1 4 6
Managers: large and small establishments 21 23 28
Average whole work-force 36 39 43

*less than 0.5%.

Sources: 1981 Census Economic Activity, Table A, 10% sample data for England & Wales 1981 and 1%o sample data
for 1971 recoded to 1980 classification; Spring 1990 Labour Force Survey results for Great Britain, data for all persons
in employment.

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 EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW 137

representatives separately in Table 4, but
women's representation is known to be extremely
low in this group. Equally invisible are the
managing directors and chief executives of
large companies in the private sector, the
'captains of industry' who are men almost with-
out exception.14 Managers of large and small
establishments in the various sectors of industry
are grouped together in the occupational classifi-
cation, and they are shown as a single group in
Table 4. At this aggregate level, women's share
was relatively high at one-fifth in 1971 rising to
28 per cent in 1990, though this still left them
under-represented as shown in Table 3.
Other professional and managerial occu-
pations are identified relatively clearly in Table 4,
which shows sharp increases in women's share
of all top jobs, with some notable exceptions.
Women remained barely visible with less than
5 per cent of senior posts in engineering
professions, the armed forces, the police, and
the prison and fire services. Despite the fact
that the 'new' computing professions have no
entry barriers steeped in tradition and sex
stereotypes, there was virtually no change over
the last 20 years in women's representation
among economists, statisticians, systems analysts,
and computer programmers. Otherwise the
gains were significant, as illustrated by the
sharply rising proportion of women in the legal
professions, from a bare 4 per cent in 1971 to
27 per cent in 1990, and in national government
management, from 12 per cent in 1971 to 29 per
cent in 1990. The gains were large enough for
women to have achieved proportional representa-
tion in some senior occupations by 1990: local
government administration and management,
personnel and industrial relations managers,
organization and management and work study
professionals, and the miscellaneous category of
other professionals supporting management, a
group which includes company secretaries,
management consultants, librarians, informa-
tion officers, trade-union officials, property
and estate managers, officers of trade and
professional associations, and charities. In other

TABLE 5 Summary Index of occupational segregation 1901-90

Female share of Index of women's Index of women's Summary index

work-force ?To representation in representation in of occupational
occupations dominated occupations dominated segregation
by women by men

1901 29 2.67 0.18 2.49

1911 30 2.42 0.20 2.22
1921 30 2.32 0.19 2.13
1931 30 2.35 0.21 2.14
1941 - -
1951 31 2.21 0.23 1.98
1961 32 2.10 0.27 1.83
1971 36 2.00 0.27 1.73
1973 37 2.00 0.28 1.72
1975 38 1.93 0.27 1.66
1977 39 1.86 0.29 1.57
1979 39 1.93 0.25 1.67
1981 40 1.89 0.27 1.62
1981 Census 39 1.89 0.27 1.62
1983 40 1.87 0.27 1.59
1985 41 1.81 0.26 1.54
1987 42 1.85 0.37 1.48
1990 43 1.80 0.34 1.46

Sources: as for Table 1 for 1979-90. Figures for 1901-77 extracted from Hakim 1981: Table 4; based on Population
Census data for 1901-71 and Labour Force Survey data for 1973-7.

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138 EXPLAINING TRENDS IN OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION

cases, they were getting closer, with over 20 per
cent of jobs. Perhaps most notable is the fact
that the 1980s saw larger increases in women's
share of top jobs than the 1970s. The pace of
change was faster in the nine years 1981-90 than
in the ten years 1971-81.
The Sex-Ratio Index applied in Table 5
measures occupational segregation relative to
women's share of the work-force in each
year. Occupations are first classified as male-
dominated, with above-average proportions of
men, or female-dominated with disproportion-
ate numbers of women. The Sex-Ratio Index
perceived as the decade most favourable to
women improving their position in the labour-
market, and the 1980s are generally viewed
as wholly unbeneficial to workers generally,
including women. This prompts us to look
more closely at the nature of women's labour-
force participation, rather than at the economic
and legislative environment. But first we look
at the potential of a new focus on integrated
occupations.
INTEGRATED OCCUPATIONS

of occupational segregation is the difference
between the two. For ease of comparison, index
figures for the period 1901-77 are shown along
with the new results for 1979-90. It is notable
that the 1981 LFS data give the same results as
the much larger 1981 Population Census,
confirming that the reliability of the British LFS
results improved in the 1980s as compared with
the 1970s.15
Over the period 1901 to 1971, just before the
new equal opportunities legislation in Britain, the
index declined by 0.011 per year on average. Over
the six years 1971-7, when equal opportunities
legislation began to bite, the index fell by 0.027
per year, more than double the average annual
decline prior to legislation. The index also
fell sharply from 1979 to 1983, when total
employment fell to a historical low in Britain.
The average fall of 0.02 per year over the four
years 1979-83 was similar to the period of rapid
change in the 1970s. From 1983 to 1990 the
index continued to decline at a slightly slower
The decline in job segregation in the 1980s
implies an increase in the number of non-
segregated, 'mixed' or 'integrated' occupations
which have a sex ratio broadly typical of that
prevailing in the work-force as a whole. The
definition of integrated jobs adopted here was
all jobs falling within a 20 per cent band around
the average 40 per cent female share of the work-
force, that is, jobs with 30 per cent to 50 per cent
female workers (Table 6). This definition is
rather more generous than the 10 per cent band
around the average adopted by earlier studies
(Jusenius, 1975: 23), but narrower than the
TABLE 6 The growth of integrated occupations 1979-90
Type of %7 of female %o of male
occupation* work-force work-force
1979 Women's 82 15
Integrated 9 9
Men's 9 76

pace. Overall, the pace of change in the 1980s 1981 Census Women's 78 14

was greater than in the 1970s, with the index Integrated 12 12

Men's 10 74
falling by 0.16 over the nine years 1981-90 1984 Women's 78 13
compared with a fall of 0.11 over the ten years
Integrated 13 14
1971-81. As expected, change was concentrated Men's 10 73
in the early 1980s rather than the second half 1987 Women's 78 14
of the decade. Integrated 12 14
Although Tables 4 and 5 are based on entirely Men's 11 72
1990 Women's 79 15
different approaches to measuring change, the
Integrated 12 16
analysis of vertical segregation and the overview Men's 9 69
provided by a summary index both point to the
1980s being a decade of significant change in *Women's occupations are those with 50% or more women
occupational segregation, with greater integration workers. Integrated occupations are those with 30%0-50%
of women into all levels of the occupational women workers. Men's occupations are those with less than
structure than in the 1970s. The 1970s are widely 30% women workers. Sources: as for Table 1.

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 EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
40 per cent band used in recent USA studies
(Jacobs, 1989b). Even so, the category of
integrated jobs turns out to be very small indeed.
In 1979 only 9 per cent of the work-force was
employed in integrated occupations.16 Another
9 per cent of women and 15 per cent of men were
in jobs dominated by the opposite sex-the
pioneers of social change. Four-fifths of women
and three-quarters of men were in same-sex job
ghettoes. Integrated occupations rose to 12
per cent of the work-force at the 1981 Census,
and then more slowly for the rest of the decade.
By 1990 12 per cent of the female work-force
and 16 per cent of the male work-force were in
integrated occupations. The pattern of change
revealed by the analysis of integrated occupations
is consistent with trends identified above.
There was greater erosion of male monopolies
than of occupations monopolized by women.
And despite the visible growth of integrated
occupations, the work-force remains heavily
segregated.
The integrated occupations identified by this
analysis vary in size and status. They include:
pharmacists, biologists, dentists, laboratory
technicians, publicans, restaurateurs, authors
and journalists, commercial artists, compositors,
personnel and industrial relations officers,
officials of trade associations and trade unions,
general management and administration, certain
jobs in textiles production and in food- and
drink-processing, pottery workers, farm-workers,
bakers, fishmongers, and weighers, among
others.
The results of Table 6 suggest that exploring
the growth of integrated occupations relative to
male-dominated and female-dominated occu-
pations offers an alternative approach for future
analyses of occupational segregation. Changing
the focus of research to integrated jobs would
facilitate better linkage between macro-level
analyses of national data-sets, analyses at
workplace level, and case-study research on
particular occupations of interest. It would
refocus attention in a more constructive way on
the integrated occupations that have avoided sex-
stereotyping. It would also avoid the zero-sum
game perspective that underlies existing summary
measures of occupational segregation.17 There
are already enough studies (Jusenius, 1975;
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139
Izraeli, 1979; Rytina, 1981; Blankenship, 1983:
77; Huet, 1983; Jacobs, 1989b) to show that the
approach merits further development.
TRENDS IN WOMEN'S
EMPLOYMENT RE-EXAMINED
The sharp decline in occupational segregation
in Britain, especially in vertical segregation,
during the 1980s is puzzling, especially in the
context of unstable change in the 1970s and the
glacial pace of change in previous decades. An
alternative explanation for these trends is that
the recent rise in women's employment has been
more illusory than real, so in fact there is no
basis for expecting substantial change in job
segregation, or any narrowing of the earnings
gap. Clark (1982) was the first to suggest
that work-force restructuring has clouded the
meaning of the employment figures: declining
full-time employment was being concealed, and
cancelled, by the rise in part-time jobs, as was
subsequently confirmed by Hakim (1987: 555-6)
and Robinson (1988: 116).18 The significance of
part-timers in the work-force is of course
maximized by the headcount method which treats
each part-time worker, and their job, as units
of equal weight to full-time workers and their
jobs. There are signs of increasing dissatisfaction
with this approach.19
Table 7 relies on the usual headcount method,
but separates trends in full-time and part-time
employment since World War II. Official
statistics on the work-force give the appearance
of rising numbers of workers and jobs since
World War II, particularly in the 1980s, with
numbers dipping only briefly in 1983. However
the number of full-time jobs declined steadily
in Britain from World War II up to 1983. Only
in the second half of the 1980s was that decline
halted and reversed, although even by 1990 full-
time jobs remained at a level well below that
of 1951. The decline was largest among men,
with over 2 million jobs lost since 1951.
However full-time employment also declined
among women from World War II up to the
late 1980s. Only in 1989 did the number of full-
time women workers return to the level recorded
in the 1951 Census. The much trumpeted rise
in women's employment in Britain consisted
140 EXPLAINING TRENDS IN OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION

TABLE 7 Trends in full-time and part-time work in entirely of the substitution of part-time for full-
Britain since World War II time jobs.20 It is well established that part-time
jobs constitute an almost exclusively female
Total in Full-time Part-time %
ghetto of lower-grade and low-paid jobs offering
employment employment employment part- far more limited opportunities for training and
OOOs OOOs OOOs time
promotion, although the majority of part-time
All workers
workers do not seek any of these and are even
1951 22 135 21 304 831 4 more satisfied with their jobs than full-timers
1961 23 339 21 272 2066 9 (Martin and Roberts, 1984: 25-8, 43-54, 74).
1971 23 733 19 828 3904 16 Part-time jobs clearly do not involve the same
1981a 22 881 18 977 3905 17 level of work commitment as full-time jobs.
1981b 23 754 18 871 4883 21
While the headcount method shows part-time
1983 22 999 18 154 4845 21
1987 24 214 18 408 5806 24
jobs to account for around one-quarter of the
1989 25 977 19 636 6341 24
work-force, a count of total weekly hours
1990 26 213 19 726 6487 25 worked reveals part-time work to achieve barely
Women
10 per cent of total hours worked (Department of
1951 6826 6041 784 11 Employment, 1988: 614). In sum, the expansion
1961 7590 5698 1892 25 of part-time jobs has masked a continuous
1971 8701 5413 3288 38 decline in the female work-force since 1951,
1981a 9146 5602 3543 39 which was only reversed in the late 1980s.21
1981b 9521 5481 4040 42
Replacing the conventional economic activity
1983 9335 5358 3977 43
rate with full-time work-rates confirms the
1987 10 334 5733 4601 45
1989 11 310 6332 4978 44 picture of no change in women's work-force
1990 11 432 6350 5082 44 participation until the second half of the 1980s
Men
(Table 8). For almost forty years, a consistent
1951 15 309 15 262 47 * 30-33 per cent of women worked full-time.22
1961 15 748 15 574 174 1 Only after 1986 does the rate creep above
1971 15 032 14 430 602 4 34 per cent to reach 38 per cent by 1990,
1981a 13 736 13 374 362 3
1981b 14 232 13 389 843 6
TABLE 8 Full-time work rates among women of working
1983 13 664 12 796 868 6
age since World War II
1987 13 880 12 675 1205 9
1989 14 667 13 304 1363 9
1990 14 781 13 376 1405 10
% working full time

1951 30.3
*less than 0.51%.
1961 29.8
Sources: Population Census data is used for 1951-81a
1971 29.0
statistics. Figures for 1951-71 refer to people aged 15 and
1981 31.6
over; figures for 1981a refer to people aged 16 and over.
Estimates of part-time workers for 1951, 1961, and 1981a 1984 33.1
refer to people who described themselves as such. The 1971 1985 33.6
figures refer to people who stated they usually worked 30 1986 33.9
hours or less per week, excluding overtime and meal breaks; 1987 34.5
people who did not state hours worked in 1971 are 1988 35.9
redistributed pro rata between full-time and part-time 1989 37.4
workers. Department of Employment spring seasonally 1990 38.2
adjusted estimates of the employed work-force, based on
Labour Force Survey and other data, are used for 1981b-90, Note: Figures for 1951-81 cover women aged 20-64; figures
and refer to people aged 16 and over. Part-time workers for 1984-90 cover women aged 16-59.
are those usually working 30 hours or less per week Sources: Population Census data for Great Britain 1951-81
excluding overtime and meal-breaks, but the figures include reported in Joshi et al. 1985: S154, and Labour Force
people on government work and training schemes for the Survey data for Great Britain 1984-89 reported in
unemployed. Department of Employment 1990: 622.

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 EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
falling back to 37 per cent in 1991. Throughout
the 1970s, an unvarying one-quarter of married
women worked full-time, with the proportion
rising very gradually to one-third by 1989.23
When reference is made to rising female employ-
ment as the catalyst for social and economic
change, we are in practice expecting an increase
in part-time jobs to carry the full burden of
being an agent of change. By their nature, part-
time jobs, and part-time workers are unlikely
to be major catalysts for change.24
A sharper focus on the relative importance of
full-time and part-time work sheds new light on
trends in occupational segregation. Changes in
full-time female employment and in occupational
segregation were either small, or unstable, until
the end of the 1970s. Only in the 1980s have we
seen a real rise in full-time working among
women, including married women, that could
drive substantive changes in the level and pattern
of occupational segregation and, in turn, a
decline in the earnings gap between men and
women. The lack of any change in the sex
differential in earnings in Britain for a complete
century from 1886 to 1987, apart from the one-
off hike in the male-female earnings ratio from
64 per cent to 74 per cent arising from the Equal
Pay Act in the 1970s (Tzannatos and Zabalza,
1984; Zabalza and Tzannatos, 1985a, 1985b,
1988) is no longer so surprising. Recent increases
in the male-female earnings ratio-to 76 per cent
in 1989, 77 per cent in 1990, and 78 per cent in
1991 (Department of Employment, 1991)-are
in line with the rise in full-time work-rates
among women in the 1980s and with the marked
decline in vertical occupational segregation as
indicated by women's share of top jobs.
It is strange that sociologists have devoted
so much effort to perfecting measures of
occupational segregation, and none at all to
measuring the rising employment that was
assumed to fuel these other changes in the work-
force. In effect they have been content to leave
measures of work-force participation to labour
statisticians. Sociologists have explored at length
the theoretical problems of defining and situating
work and employment, but have yet to come
up with any alternative to the definitions and
classifications used in official statistics (Pahl,
1988). Innovations have come rather from labour
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141
statisticians seeking to ensure that definitions
of economic activity encompass work in the
informal sector, and unpaid productive work
of the sort typically done by women and unpaid
family workers in developing countries (ILO,
1987; Dupre et al., 1987).25 Economic activity
is conventionally defined in industrial societies
as any work for pay or profit within the
reference period, down to one hour's work a
week,26 with a view to consistency with statistics
of output and Gross National Product. Such a
definition is not very useful for sociological
analysis, where the more appropriate focus
would be someone's main activity, which is more
likely to reflect and shape their own outlook and
values, and other people's perceptions of them
and their social status. Someone working only
a few hours a week for money will not perceive
that as their main activity, and will often fail
to report themselves as 'having a job', no matter
what the official definition is. There are millions
of women on the margins of the British labour-
force who work for very few hours a week for
trivial earnings (Hakim, 1989b), and no useful
purpose would be served by including them in
sociological analyses of the work-force. The
reason for difficulty in defining unemployment
among women is that for a large proportion of
women a job is not their main activity, so that
the absence of a job is equally not a dominant
feature of their lives (Cragg and Dawson,
1984; Martin and Roberts, 1984; Owen and
Joshi, 1987). For the purposes of sociological
analysis of the work-force, people working under
16 hours a week could be classified as having
a main activity other than paid employment
and excluded from analyses.27 Some studies
effectively do this already.28
The presence of millions of part-time work-
ing mothers in the labour-force is admittedly
still important, all the more so that they form
a ghetto of low-grade, low-paid, dead-end
jobs. They must exert a powerful influence on
employers' perceptions of women workers as not
career conscious and unwilling to take responsi-
bility (McIntosh, 1980: 1148), and increase the
chances of statistical discrimination (Phelps,
1972). All the more reason, then, for us to
distinguish clearly between working women who
are committed to work and the status-attainment
142 EXPLAINING TRENDS IN OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION

process, and those (often part-timers) who are
not. As argued elsewhere, if sociologists fail to
differentiate between qualitatively different types
of working women, we can hardly criticize
employers for undifferentiating policies (Hakim,
1991b: 114).
TABLE 9 The rise in women's work commitment, 1984-9
If without having to work you had what you would regard
as a reasonable living income, would you still prefer to have
a paid job, or wouldn't you bother? Proportion (%o) saying
they would still prefer a paid job.
1984-5 1989

RISING WORK COMMITMENT

All employees 70 74
Data on women's work commitment reinforces Women
the conclusion that the rise in full-time work all 66 76
rates which occurred for the first time in the late full-time 71 77

1980s reflected a qualitative change in women's part-time 56 74

work-force participation that could be expected
to fuel substantial change in the pattern of
occupational segregation. Research findings from
the National Longitudinal Studies (NLS) in the
USA have shown the importance of motivations,
values and attitudes as key determinants of
labour-market behaviour, occupational status,
and earnings, an influence that is independent of
conventional human capital factors. Longitudi-
nal analyses of the NLS data have demonstrated
the validity of Becker's (1985) explanation for
enduring job segregation and the continued sex
differential in earnings, namely that 'most' mar-
ried women economize on the effort expended
on market work by seeking less demanding jobs.
The key questions now are, how many is 'most'?
And is that percentage changing? (Hakim,
1991b: 113). New evidence on work commitment
points to a significant change occurring among
women in the 1980s.
The late 1980s saw a notable increase in
women's work commitment, as measured by a
question in the British Social Attitudes Survey on
preferences for not working (Table 9), whereas
there was no change in work commitment in the
work-force as a whole and, if anything, signs
of a decline among men. The 1984-9 increase
in work commitment among working women
was based on small samples, but is statistically
significant, while the small drop in men's work
commitment is not. Even so, the change would
need to be maintained over a period of years
before it could be read as a serious and
permanent sea change in women's work orien-
tations. It is notable that the increase in work
commitment was proportionally greater among
part-time workers than full-time workers, thus
Men
all 74 72
full-time 75 72
part-time 45 80
People still preferring a paid job as a
per cent of population of working age
(16-59/64 years)
All persons 54 59
Women 44 54
Men 65 63
Note: part-time work is 10-29 hours a week; full-time is
30 hours or more; employees working less than 10 hours
are excluded.
Sources: British Social Attitudes Survey published results
for 1984 and 1985 (Jowell et al., 1985: 85, 1986: 34) and
unpublished tables for 1985 and 1989 supplied by SCPR;
Labour Force Survey estimates of the population of
working age for 1984, 1985, and 1989 reported in
Department of Employment 1990: 622.
eliminating the differential between part-timers
and full-timers that was so pronounced in
the mid-1980s. In the space of four or five
years the long-standing sex differential in work
commitment appears to have been eliminated
within the working population.
However working women continue to be a
self-selected group to a much greater extent than
are men, who rarely have any choice about
whether they enter paid employment. In the
wider population of working age, the sex
differential in work commitment still remained,
although it was sharply reduced from 1984 levels
(bottom half of Table 9). By 1989 about half
of all women of working age were committed
to work as a worthwhile activity in its own right,
compared to two-thirds of men of working

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 EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
age. The key point is that work commitment
among women seems to have jumped from
being a minority 'taste' in the early 1980s to a
majority preference by the end of the decade.
If maintained, this would indeed constitute a
fundamental change in women's work orien-
tations reflecting and reinforcing the effects of
rising full-time work rates.
The significance of work commitment for
women's entry into and promotion within higher
grade and better paid occupations, and thus for
the erosion of vertical occupational segregation
is illuminated better by case-studies than by
national statistical studies. We know of only two
that address the issue of work commitment.
Fiorentine's research (1987) concerned entry
barriers to the medical profession, long estab-
lished as male-dominated in the USA and
Western Europe, though not in all countries.
Fiorentine studied men and women on an
undergraduate pre-medical course in the USA,
to examine the reasons why fewer women than
men move on to the next stage of applying to
medical college. He found the drop-out rate to
be higher for women unless they were in the
highest ability and academic performance group,
confirming that women who achieve entry to
professional occupations are of higher ability
than male entrants. The main reason for the
higher female than male drop-out rate among
undergraduates of average or below average
ability and performance was low commitment
to paid employment and a career as a major part
of their adult lives: the alternative of marriage,
economic dependence, and the housewife role
was seen to be an option for women but not for
men. Second, a study of pharmacists in Britain
showed that women regarded the profession as
offering the advantages of flexible hours, part-
time work, and temporary work as a locum
(substituting for staff away on holiday etc.),
which allowed them to fit work around their
family responsibilities. While the occupation
had avoided sex stereotyping, and had a pro-
portional share of women working in it, vertical
segregation remained high because of women's
low work commitment and part-time working
(Crompton and Sanderson, 1990: 65-88).
Further case-study research would help to
assess the relative importance of rising work
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143
commitment versus institutional constraints for
trends in occupational segregation in future
decades in the European Community.
CONCLUSIONS
Occupational segregation is important and diffi-
cult to measure. However the search for a
single summary index has now become counter-
productive. No single index is sufficient, and the
results of an analysis depend less on the choice
of index than on other methodological choices.
Our conclusion is that a change of perspective
is needed, and that a refocusing of research on
the growth of integrated jobs and on trends
in vertical segregation would yield greater
returns, as well as facilitating linkages between
macro-level statistical analysis and micro-level
case-study work.
The more aggregated an ocupational classifi-
cation the lower the level of occupational
segregation it reveals, and the smaller the degree
of temporal change. It would appear that highly
aggregated classifications, such as that used in
OECD analyses, are also unreliable for indicating
the direction and extent of change. It was to
be expected that our own analysis, based on
a detailed classification of 550 occupational
groups, which remained unchanged throughout
the period covered by the study, would reveal
much higher levels of occupational segregation
than the OECD reports. But the detailed
analysis also shows occupational segregation to
be declining steadily in Britain, not rising as
suggested by OECD studies.
The hypothesis about change being concen-
trated in the early 1980s proved too simplistic.
Change is spread across the entire decade, and
while some measures show a concentration in the
early 1980s, changes in vertical segregation are
concentrated in the late 1980s. However our
overall conclusion is in agreement with the
OECD: there is no evidence that the recession
and work-force restructuring of the 1970s and
1980s in themselves have had any impact on the
level of occupational segregation. Explanations
for change seem to lie rather in substantive
changes in women's work-force participation
and work commitment that occurred for the first
time in the century in the 1980s.
144 EXPLAINING TRENDS IN OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION
The increase in women's employment since
World War II is revealed to be largely illusory.
Even by 1989, when the number of part-time
workers in Britain had reached over 5.5 million
and one-quarter of the workforce, part-time
jobs accounted for barely 10 per cent of total
hours worked, far too small an element to be
a significant catalyst for change. Contrary to the
impression given by conventional employment
statistics, the full-time work-force has in fact
been declining in Britain since World War II.
The loss of over 2 million full-time male jobs
overshadows the fall among women, but for
our purposes the key fact is that full-time
female employment declined from 1951 until
the mid-1980s. Only in the late 1980s was the
trend reversed, with new growth pushing full-
time female employment back to levels last seen
in 1951.
From World War II until the second half of
the 1980s there was no substantial change in
women's labour-force participation that might
act as a catalyst for change in occupational
segregation and, in consequence, the earnings
gap between men and women. Instead of
regarding the pace of change in recent decades
as disappointingly low, it should be treated as
astonishingly high. Explanations for the change
that did occur before the mid-1980s must lie in
changes in social attitudes, the effects of
legislation, and shortages of labour in service-
sector jobs normally done by women, rather
than in any changes in women's employment or
work commitment.
A key conclusion from this analysis is that
studies of trends in occupational segregation
should in future be based on data for the
full-time work-force only. In countries where
part-time work is less important, such as the
USA, the appropriate universe would be the full-
time year-round work-force. This would bring
occupational segregation research into line with
studies of the sex differential in earnings
based on data for full-time workers (Mellor,
1984; Zabalza and Tzannatos, 1985a, 1985b).
Assessing the relative importance of occupational
segregation as the explanation for the earnings
gap should thereby be clarified. Occupational
segregation still plays a role in explaining
earnings differentials when studies are restricted
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to full-time, year-round workers in the USA,
but the overall sex-earnings ratio is sharply
improved from 55 per cent to 65 per cent, simply
by restricting the study in this way (Rytina, 1981;
see also Tienda et al., 1987: 196). Similarly
Lorence (1987) has shown that full-time year-
round employment has by far the largest
role in explaining (and reducing) male and
female earnings dispersions within occupations.
Arguably analyses of work-force participation
should in future routinely distinguish the full-
time year-round work-rate as well as the catch-all
undiscriminating headcount that the economic
activity rate has now become.
This analysis of trends in one Western
European country confirms that human capital
factors and institutional constraints both con-
tribute to explaining trends in occupational
segregation. Women's work commitment is
the key unmeasured determinant of women's
investment in education, training, and the status-
attainment process. Institutional constraints are
becoming more visible through the contrasts
between those professional and managerial
occupations, such as law, where the barriers to
women's access are falling away, and those,
such as police management, where they still
hold strong.
Unlike economics, sociology has so far placed
little emphasis on the predictive power of theory
(Blaug, 1980: 262). This is a pity, as it helps
to clarify the contribution of empirical research.
The prediction drawn from this analysis and
explanations of trends is that a substantial
reduction in occupational segregation, a sub-
stantial increase in women's share of top jobs,
and some narrowing of the earnings gap can be
expected in the 1990s. The prediction rests on
sustained change in three contributing factors.
First and foremost is what appears to be a
sustained rise in full-time work-rates among
women of working age in the late 1980s. As male
economic activity rates decline, this means in
effect a more equitable and balanced distribution
of paid employment between men and women
of working age. It means that for the first time
since World War II women are investing more
effort in paid employment, and will thus demand
a more equitable return (S0rensen, 1990).
Second, there is some evidence that women's
 EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
commitment to paid employment intensified at
the end of the 1980s, at much the same time as
the rise in the full-time work-rate, and to such an
extent that sex differentials in work commitment
were eliminated within the work-force. Third,
it is assumed that the predicted labour shortages
resulting from demographic change will materi-
alize, rather than another recession (European
Commission, 1989: 93-8). This reasoning gives
little prominence to equal opportunities policies
per se, largely because the key legislation is
already in place.
Equal opportunities policies are a necessary
condition for substantive change in the pattern
of occupational segregation, if only to place a
tombstone on patriarchal practices such as the
marriage bar and overtly discriminatory pay-
rates (Robinson and Wallace, 1975). But in
isolation they have limited impact. Societies
which have an ideological commitment to social
equality and are believed to have offered a new
deal for women and pursued equal opportunities
policies, such as Sweden, the USSR, and
Israel, have been found in reality to have high
levels of occupational segregation, especially
vertical segregation, making them little different
from countries pursuing less innovative policies
(Padan-Eisenstark, 1973; Bartol and Bartol,
1975; Lapidus, 1976; Izraeli, 1979; Jonung,
1983; Rosenfeld et al., 1990: 84-8).29 In practice
labour shortages seem to have at least as great
an impact on the work-force, as Lane (1983) and
4. Quite different measures of discrimination are applied
Feinberg (1985) indicate. This requires that in
future women exploit labour shortages as
vigorously as do male workers, to demand
improved access to higher grade jobs, through
promotion and training, and more equitable
5. The index used by the OECD in its 1980 and 1985 reports
compensation for undervalued female-dominated
jobs, rather than demanding only convenience
factors such as flexible hours and workplace
creches, as has happened in the past. Policies
to raise women's wages are more effective than
subsidized childcare (Nakamura et al., 1979).
Monitoring the impact of these change factors
will require indicators more subtle and qualitative
than the summary measures of occupational
segregation used so far to capture long-term
trends across decennial censuses. Our suggestion
is for a new focus on trends in vertical segre-
gation and the expansion of integrated jobs:
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145
their numbers, characteristics, entry barriers,
remuneration, promotion systems, and the
related professional ideologies and work cul-
tures which have escaped sex-stereotyping.
This approach would facilitate linkage between
national statistical studies, establishment-level
studies, and case-studies of jobs and occupations
that are most open or closed to women, making
for a more rounded perspective on this significant
social and economic change.
NOTES
1. Occupational segregation is also determined by other
factors, such as race or nationality, which are important
socially divisive forces in some countries. However sex
is by far the most important and universal factor in job
segregation, typically dwarfing all others, and is
therefore the subject of most research and debate as to
its causes and consequences.
2. However some researchers have been content to exclude
women entirely from studies of labour-market segmen-
tation (Osterman, 1975; Mayhew and Rosewell, 1979).
3. Although the European Commission is playing a major
role in legislating for equal opportunities in the labour-
market (Landau, 1984), it has devoted little attention
and no resources to occupational segregation. For
example the 'sex segregation of the employment market'
warrants a bare mention in a recent EC report on
women's access to jobs (European Commission, 1990:
92). Another report notes the 'persistence of sex
segregation' despite the greater success of girls at school,
but is inclined to explain it by employers' use of flexible
labour practices (European Commission, 1989: 87).
to the analysis of company personnel records to produce
evidence of indirect discrimination for legal cases (Ragin
et al., 1984) using modelling techniques similar to
those employed in explanatory analyses (Treiman and
Terrell, 1975).
was the weighted sum of the absolute deviations from
unity of the coefficients of female representation in each
occupation. Apart from the use of weighting, this is much
the same as the Hakim Index. The Hakim Index also
uses occupational sex-ratios, or coefficients of female
representation, but first groups occupations according
to whether women are under- or over-represented in
them, then calculates the sum of the absolute deviations
from unity of measures of over-representation and
under-representation in occupations. It appears that the
two versions of the Sex-Ratio Index were developed
independently by Hakim (1981) and the OECD (1980,
1985) following Hakim's original study (Hakim, 1978,
1979). Garnsey and Tarling (1982) provide a detailed
exposition of the two versions of the Sex-Ratio Index.
146 EXPLAINING TRENDS IN OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION
6. The Index of Dissimilarity was originally developed for
ecological research, especially studies of the residential
segregation of racial or ethnic minorities. This continues
to be the dominant area of application, and here too
an extensive critical literature has developed, with
proposals for revisions and alternative statistics, some
of them unstandardized or asymmetrical (Cortese et al.,
1976; Lieberson and Carter, 1982; Morgan, 1983;
White, 1983; Massey and Denton, 1987).
7. The most useful comparison of the Sex-Ratio Index
with the Index of Dissimilarity is given in OECD
(1985). Both measures have a lower limit of zero.
The Duncan Index is half the weighted sum of the
absolute differences between the male and female
coefficients of representation in each occupation, as
illustrated most clearly in Williams (1976). It has the
advantage of being symmetrical for men and women,
with a maximum upper value of 1 or 100 per cent. It
is usually described as showing the proportion of
women (or men) who would have to change jobs in
order to equalize the sex-ratio across occupations, and
this clear interpretation is often held up as one of its
advantages. But this interpretation is wrong (Tzannatos,
1990: 107) and unrealistic (OECD, 1985: 64; see also
Brown et al., 1980). Besides, Garnsey and Tarling (1982:
21-2) point out that the same interpretation can be
placed on the Sex-Ratio Index once it has been divided
by 2 to avoid double-counting movers. The Hakim
Index is the difference between the level of over-
representation in typically female occupations and
the level of under-representation in typically male
occupations, that is, the sum of the absolute deviations
from unity of measures of over-representation and
under-representation in occupations. A disadvantage of
the index is that it has no predetermined upper limit.
Unlike the Index of Dissimilarity it is normally used
unweighted, although the OECD version is weighted
and can be normalized, and Siltanen (1990) suggests
standardizing it.
8. Similarly, one has to be cautious of measures displaying
trends for which no explanation can be found. Siltanen
argues that the Hakim Sex-Ratio Index is improved
by standardizing it. However the trend depicted by
the standardized index is identical to that shown by
the unstandardized index for 1901-79 except for the
1960s, when the standardized index shows a marked
increase in occupational segregation (Siltanen, 1990:
12-15). Siltanen is unable to offer any explanation for
job segregation rising sharply in the 1960s alone, in
contrast to the gradual decline in all other decades of
the century. On the face of it, Britain in the 1960s
must be the least likely candidate for an increase in
occupational segregation: a buoyant labour-market
with rising demand and low unemployment, and a
decade marked by innovation, and social and cultural
liberalization.
9. The British classification of 550 occupations incorporates
a loose grouping by status or earnings, but it is far too
loose to provide the basis for a quantitative index of
vertical ranking.
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10. Given our interest in the impact of recession and work-
force restructuring, we used data on the economically
active population, excluding students in full-time
education and unemployed people on government
training and employment schemes. Throughout the
1980s there were millions of unemployed who are
retained in the analysis by using their last, or usual
occupation. Unfortunately the data for 1990 is slightly
inconsistent with data for 1979-87, covering the
employed work-force rather than the economically
active population. The employed work-force includes
students in full-time education who had a job (usually
part-time or temporary) at the time of the spring LFS,
and unemployed people on government training and
employment schemes. The inconsistency is probably
unimportant, as women constitute 43 per cent of both
the economically active and the employed workforce
in 1990.
11. The degree of contact between men and women at
work seems to be important for some social processes,
such as divorce and job satisfaction. Murphy (1985)
notes that occupations with above average proportions
of women also have the highest male divorce rates,
whereas almost exclusively male occupations have low
divorce rates. Wharton and Baron (1987) found that
after controlling for job characteristics and rewards,
men in 'integrated' occupations (20-70 per cent female)
had significantly lower job satisfaction and self-esteem
and more job-related depression than other men. These
findings come from the US 1973 Quality of Employment
Survey, so may now be dated, but the authors note
that the results are in line with the argument that men
seek to maintain patriarchal control over women, and
suffer from its loss, rather than from lower earnings
in integrated occupations. Job satisfaction was at its
lowest among men in integrated work settings whose
own wives worked. Similarly it has often been argued
that employers who discriminate against women do so
on behalf of a sexist male work-force (Bergmann and
Darity, 1981).
12. The evidence is that girls' educational attainment is
higher in single-sex schools than in mixed (coedu-
cational) schools, whereas the opposite is true of boys'
attainment. This important source of inequality of
opportunity was brushed aside in the policy decision
to move towards coeducational schools as the norm
in Britain. But it may have lessons for equality of
opportunity in the work-force as well.
13. Spaeth (1979) reports that indicators of authority in
occupations have been found to completely explain the
earnings gap between men and women, pointing to
levels of responsibility as the key explanation for sex
differentials in earnings.
14. Women's exclusion from top jobs was underlined in
a 1990 Hansard Society report showing women to be
only 6.3 per cent of parliamentary representatives (the
lowest figure in Western Europe), 1 per cent of High
Court Judges, 3 per cent of Professors, and 0.5 per cent
of directors of the Confederation of British Industry's
top 140 firms. Women's exclusion from top jobs
 EUROPEAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
became the focus of the President's Glass Ceiling
Initiative in the USA (US Department of Labor, 1991)
and, subsequently, of the Prime Minister's proposal
for a Women's Charter in Britain-both seeking to
remove barriers to women's access to top jobs.
15. The index figure from the 1979 LFS is 1.67 in this
study, replacing the estimated figure of 1.71 from the
1979 LFS presented in an earlier report (Hakim, 1981:
524). The 1979 LFS data used here is the revised version
prepared in the mid-1980s after the results of the 1981
Population Census became available to check LFS
grossing-up factors, and well after the previous study
was published. The new result confirms that the
declining trend in occupational segregation from 1900
to 1977 was suddenly reversed in 1977-79, but reveals
the reversal to be smaller than previously thought, with
the index rising from 1.57 in 1977 to 1.67 (rather than
1.71) in 1979. The fact that LFS grossing up factors
cease to be reliable towards the end of the decade
following the Census on which they are based suggests
that the 1990 LFS results in this article should also be
treated as estimates, which may again be subject to
small revision in the mid-1990s.
16. The figure seems to be below 10 per cent in most
countries, and is thus commonly ignored by researchers.
Jusenius (1975: 23) found only 3-4 per cent of the US
NLS mature women cohort in integrated occupations.
Izraeli (1979: 410) found only one in ten of the 1972
Israeli Census work-force to be in non-segregated
occupations. Jonung (1983) found that in 1975 only
6 per cent of Swedish women working 20 hours or more
a week were in occupations which were 40-60 per cent
female at the aggregate level.
17. One of the key weaknesses of the indices of occupational
segregation is that they only take a value of zero when
all occupations have exactly the same sex ratio as the
work-force as a whole. This is clearly unrealistic, and
does not allow for any random variation in the
allocation of people to occupations.
18. Government statisticians' decision to include people
on government training and employment schemes for
the unemployed in the employment count, grouped
together with part-timers from the 1980s onwards, also
helps to confuse employment trends.
19. The European Commission finds the headcount so
misleading that it has introduced the concept of the
'volume of employment', which is simply full-time
equivalent figures of employment. On this basis
apparently rising female employment in the Community
is sharply reduced, from an apparent 43 per cent to
36 per cent of total employment in 1987. However the
UK is the only country for which figures showing an
increase in employment are transformed into a decrease
in full-time equivalent employment over the period
1979-88 (European Commission, 1989: 19).
20. The substitution of part-time for full-time jobs extends
to most Western European countries, and seems to
consist predominantly of permanent part-time jobs
which are taken voluntarily, in preference to full-time
jobs (Neubourg, 1985; Hakim, 1990a; OECD, 1990:
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147
179-93). In an analysis restricted to the decade
1973-83, de Neubourg shows that the Netherlands,
West Germany, and, to a lesser extent Sweden, also
replaced full-time by part-time jobs. The USA and
Canada diverged strongly from trends in Europe by
having large increases in both full-time and part-time
employment in this period. However even in those
countries with a large proportion of part-timers in the
work-force, their contribution measured in work hours
rarely exceeded 10 per cent of the total.
21. An alternative measure is the proportion of all full-
time jobs filled by women, which shows no change
from 1900 until the late 1980s. It is fairly safe to assume
that virtually all jobs were full-time before World War
II, and Table 5 shows women remain a constant 30
per cent of the (full-time) work-force from 1901 to
World War II. Table 7 shows that from 1951 to 1981,
women working full time remained a constant 27-28
per cent of the full-time work-force. Only in the 1980s
did the proportion start to move upwards, to reach
32 per cent by 1990. Not a big increase, but the first
in the entire century.
22. The absence of any real change in women's labour-
force participation rates seems to have lasted even
longer, possibly more than 150 years. Hakim (1980:
559) and Joshi et al. (1985: 150; see also OECD, 1988:
130) show that female economic activity rates for
women of working age remained at a constant level
of around one-third from 1850, and possibly even
before that, until well into the 1950s. In this period,
employment would almost invariably have meant full-
time work, with much longer hours than are now
defined as full-time work.
23. The annual General Household Survey reports show
almost no change in full-time work-rates from 1971
until the late 1980s. Among all women of working age
(16-59 years) the full-time work-rate remained at
around 33 per cent from 1971 to 1985 when it started
rising very gradually to 37 per cent by 1989. Among
married women of working age, full-time work-rates
remained unchanged at 25 per cent from 1971 until
1985, when they started rising slowly to reach 32 per cent
by 1989. Among non-married women of working age
(the single, divorced, and widowed) full-time work-
rates declined quickly from 62 per cent in 1971 to 50
per cent in 1981 with slower declines in the 1980s to
reach 48 per cent.
24. Hakim showed part-time work to have no substantial
effect on levels of occupational segregation in Britain
(Hakim, 1979: 29-31). Her analysis was based on 1971
Census data, with part-timers converted into full-time
equivalents, reducing the female share of the work-
force from 36 to 33 per cent and reducing the impact
of part-timers. However the part-time work-force grew
from 3 to 5 million and 25 per cent of all jobs in the
following two decades, and in Britain at least has
become an almost completely segregated 90 per cent
female ghetto of low-grade low-paid jobs (Witherspoon,
1988: 178; Department of Employment, 1990: 640).
It is evident that excluding this female job ghetto from
148 EXPLAINING TRENDS IN OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION
analyses would now reduce the overall level of
occupational segregation. The exclusion of part-timers,
or part-time part-year workers, may have less impact
in other countries. For example Dex and Shaw (1986:
24-5) show huge differences between the USA and
Britain in the characteristics of female part-time
work. The catch-all concept of part-time work masks
great variation in hours worked in each country,
and in the characteristics of part-time workers (Tilly,
1991).
25. The gulf separating labour statisticians and labour
sociologists is reflected in the muddled thinking
and classifications of work discussed by Harding
and Jenkins (1989) in a book on the informal
economy that contains not a single reference to the
International Labour Office's extensive work on the
conceptualization and measurement of the informal
economy and of non-market domestic and other
work.
26. However in the USA emphasis is slowly shifting to a
measure of participation that has been available
for some decades as a supplementary indicator:
people in year-round full-time employment as a
percentage of the population of working age or of
the labour-force (Mellor and Parks, 1988). The
emphasis on work for pay or profit is taken for granted
in industrial societies, although the UN and ILO
definitions include other productive work of the type
common in societies with a substantial subsistence
sector.
27. Dale and Glover (1990) have shown that in Britain,
France, and the USA, part-timers typically work 20
hours a week, many of them on a regular basis, so it
makes sense for the lower limit for sociological
analysis to be below the norm for half-time work.
This is a quite separate question from the threshold
for employment rights and benefits in law, where
lower eligibility thresholds of 8, 12, and 16 hours are
in operation or are proposed (Hakim, 1989a). In
the same way, the definition of a small firm for
legal purposes is commonly quite different from the
definition adopted for statistical analysis (Hakim,
1989a: 83).
28. Jonung's (1983) study of job segregation in Sweden
was based on data for people working 20 hours or
more a week, thus excluding people working less
than half-time hours. The annual British Social
Attitudes Survey defines economic activity to exclude
people working less than 10 hours a week, on the
reasonable grounds that such minimal work hours
will not have a major effect on social and political
attitudes. Similarly the British General Household
Survey collected job satisfaction data in the 1970s
only from people working at least 10 hours a
week.
29. Jonung offers the most careful comparisons with other
countries, and finds a high level of occupational
segregation among Swedish full-time workers, higher
than is found in Germany, Britain, and the USA from
much broader samples of the work-force (Jonung,
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1983). Similar points are made by contributors to
Jenson et al. (1988).
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AUTHOR'S ADDRESS
c/o Dr Niamh Hardiman, Dept. of Politics, UCD, Belfield,
Dublin 4, Ireland.
Manuscript received: June 1991.