Sex Segregation in the Blue-collar Occupations

Women's Choices or Unremedied Discrimination

Bibliographic Data

ID2367367
AuthorsBarbara R Bergmann (0000-0001-5035-709X, American University, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume25
Issue1
Pages88-93
Publication date2011-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGender & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0891-2432 • E-ISSN: 1552-3977
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0891243210389813
OpenAlexW2126868842
LanguageEN
Citations received25
References cited13

In discussing why women have failed to gain much of a foothold in certain male-dominated occupations, some commentators attribute the outcome to the characteristics of the women themselves—their lack of desire to enter or lack of ability to perform in those jobs. They do not put much emphasis on what those who might have been resisting women’s entry—employers, male coworkers, unions—have been up to, and they feel no need to talk about remedies that might be brought to bear by government. Indeed, the implicit message is that no remedy is necessary because no harm has been done. The women got what they wanted, or rather, did not bother to get what they did not want. Paula England, judging by her recent diagnosis of the cause of continuing sex segregation in occupations that do not require college, seems to have signed up with that camp. Her explanation of the failure of women to enter blue-collar male-dominated occupations depends almost entirely on lack of motivation on the part of those women who might have entered. Her attention to any who might have opposed and prevented that entry is limited to a single sentence in a footnote (England 2010, 163). England’s explana-tion of the difference in outcomes in the professions and the blue-collar jobs is that women have wanted two things: (1) They wanted to do better than their mothers, and (2) they wanted to work in occupations that are historically female dominated because such occupations are thought to be particularly suited to women’s essential nature and women feel they can express their femininity by working in them. The women who became physicians, lawyers, and business executives could not do both because, England tells us, their mothers already had the highest-class feminine-typed

Blue collar · Collar · Demographic economics · Economics · Labour economics · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Psychology · Work-Family Balance Challenges

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