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GENDERED JOB TRAITS AND WOMEN'S OCCUPATIONS
Abstract
Economic theories of occupational sex segregation are incomplete. They explain why women do not work in men's jobs, by referring to productivity traits which give men an advantage over women in the labor market. These explanations, however, preclude the possibility of persistent male unemployment coexisting with segregated women's occupations, because they imply that unemployed men, possessing superior labor market traits, could obtain women's positions. To allow for this coexistence of male unemployment and women working in segregated jobs and to correct several other lacunae in theories of women's work, this dissertation integrates a model of gendered job traits with models of labor markets. Four gender hypotheses accomplish this integration, centering on the hypothesis that many jobs themselves have gender identity in requiring job skills which are feminine, masculine or neutral. Job traits, moreover, change gender due to a variety of economic and cultural disturbances. Evidence supporting these hypotheses comes from statistical tests based on data from original surveys of teachers and restaurant waitpeople and from the history of clerical work. The hypotheses have significant implications for labor policies such as affirmative action and comparable worth. Legislated policy that promotes occupational integration, for example, may require a number of auxiliary policies to be effective. And implementing comparable worth policy faces a number of potential biases which we may diminish if we attend to gendered job traits in choosing compensable factors for job evaluation.
Subject Area
Labor economics
Recommended Citation
ALEXANDER, JOSEPH DAVIDSON, "GENDERED JOB TRAITS AND WOMEN'S OCCUPATIONS" (1987). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI8710420.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8710420