Occupational Segregation and Earnings Differences By

Research Summaries Occupational segregation factors such as workers' ages, education, and occupational skill or status .' and earnings differences by sex Data and method NANCY F. RYTINA The data for this research are cross-tabulations from the 1976 Survey of Income and Education, which is be- The persistence of a wide male-female earnings dif- ing used as part of a continuing study on occupational ferential is well-documented . Through 1978, women sex segregation . The median 1975 annual earnings of listed who worked full time continued to earn about 60 per- men and women in all detailed occupations were cent as much as men .' Among the various explanations for workers grouped by age, race, and level of education offered to account for these differences, one suggested as approximate indicators of worker characteristics . The by a growing body of literature is that occupational sex percentage of women in each of the occupations was segregation plays a critical role.' The majority of work- calculated as a measure of occupational sex segregation . ing women are employed in a small number of occupa- In addition, the job characteristic of occupational status earnings tions which are predominantly female ; in both 1969 and is included to take into account variations in 1979, about one-half of all working women were between male and female occupations which arise from employed in fewer than 30 of the detailed Census occu- the concentration of female occupations in the middle are more dis- pations (in which 80 percent or more of the employees of the status hierarchy . Male occupations oc- were women) .3 Among the occupations heavily dominat- persed ; they include the highest paying professional ed by women are nurses, secretaries, and elementary cupations, as well as some of the very low paid service Socio-Economic school teachers . While women have made some progress and laborer occupations . The Duncan status of in entering fields dominated by men, there is little pros- Index, a widely used measure, indicates the are computed pect for major changes in the degree of occupational sex each occupation .' These status scores of men segregation through the mid-1980's .4 from the median level of education and income Because earnings are lower, among both men and in detailed occupations and range from a low of 2 to a with other women, in female than in male-dominated occupations, high of 96 . The scores are highly correlated there has been concern about how the process of occu- measures of status which are based either on women or pational sex segregation operates and what bearing it all workers . might have on female earnings.' The operation of the Occupations served as the units of analysis ; and cor- process is outside the scope of this report which deals relational techniques were used to examine the associa- with the outcome of the process: the relation of occupation of occupational sex segregation with the sex- tional sex segregation to the sex-earnings differential, earnings differential . Each occupation was weighted by race, or educa- exclusive of a limited number of worker and job charac- its share of total employment in an age, teristics that also affect earnings. Empirical research on tion category to give less weight to those occupations occupational sex segregation has not typically taken with few employees.' The results, for the most part, re- into account the influence of both worker and job char- fer to full-time, year-round workers, owing to the avail- acteristics, thus making it difficult to disentangle the ef- ability of only annual earnings in the Survey of Income been fects on earnings of occupational sex segregation from and Education and the problems that would have posed because of the higher incidence of part-time employment among women . The survey is particularly use- Nancy F. Rytina is a demographer in the Office of Current Employ- ful for occupational research, because its large sample ment Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics . Muriel K. Nelson, of the of about 150,000 households permits the analysis of the preparation of tables . An earlier version of same office, assisted in some occupations for which no viable data could be this study was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sta- tistical Association held in Houston in August 1980 . obtained through smaller samples. 49 MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW January 1981 . Research Summaries Findings discussed show the average sex-earnings ratio for occupations classified as female-dominated (60 percent or more of Detailed occupations. The data in tables 1 and 2 provide the employees were women), male-dominated occupa- descriptive information on the employment and the ra- tions (20 percent or less of the employees were women), tios of women's earnings to men's (sex-earnings ratios) and neutral or mixed occupations (21 to 59 percent of in occupations ranked by the percentage of employed the employees were women).9 In comparing the sex- women. Table 1 highlights the extent to which women earnings ratios across female, neutral, and male occupa- are employed in a small number of predominantly fe- tions for any race, age, or educational grouping, a male occupations. Of the 419 identified occupations of higher ratio in female, followed in turn by neutral and full-time, year-round workers in 1975, there were 41 in male occupations, may be interpreted as a positive asso- which 90 percent or more of the workers were female. ciation between the percent of women in the occupa- These occupations accounted for 40 percent of all fe- tions and the sex-earnings ratio.10 male workers. In contrast, there were 179 occupations In the data on the right-hand side of table 3, each in which 90 percent or more of the workers were male. correlation coefficient shows the degree of association Nearly 50 percent of all men were employed in these between sex-earnings ratios and the percent of women occupations. in occupations for those in a particular age, race, or ed- For each group of occupations in table 1, table 2 lists ucation group. The partial correlation coefficients con- the 4 to 6 largest occupations within the group and the trol for variations in occupational status that might numbers of men and women employed, the status scores, affect the relation of occupational sex segregation to the and the sex-earnings ratios expressed by women's earn- sex-earnings ratios. ings as a percentage of men's earnings. The data indi- Table 3 illustrates several aspects of the relationship cate that the sex-earnings ratios are generally highest in of occupational sex segregation to the sex-earnings ra- the occupations which are predominantly female . For tio. First, among whites and all age and education example, women's earnings as a percent of men's were groups the sex-earnings ratios are generally highest in 74 percent among waiters and waitresses, a group that female occupations and lowest in male occupations. The was 93 percent female, 70 percent among accountants strength of this pattern is attested to by the positive (32 percent female), 58 percent among bank officers and zero-order correlation coefficients between the percent financial managers (27 percent female), and 41 percent of women in occupations and the sex-earnings ratios among medical and osteopathic physicians (13 percent and the positive partial correlation coefficients, which female). However, women fared comparatively well in control for occupational status . This can be interpreted largely public sector occupations regardless of their pro- to mean that irrespective of age, education, and occupa- portion in these occupations. For example, among post- tional status, women fare more poorly relative to men al clerks, men outnumbered women by about 2 to 1 and in those occupations with the highest rewards-male women earned 98 percent as much as men; the earnings occupations. To the extent that these factors reflect the of women were 86 percent as much as those of men in influence of worker and job characteristics on earnings, elementary education (84 percent female). the findings tentatively suggest that occupational sex segregation contributes independently to the gap be- Sex-earnings ratios and correlations. These relationships tween women's earnings and men's. between occupational sex segregation and earnings are Second, the ratio of black women's earnings to black summarized in table 3. The data on the left-hand side men's follows an opposite pattern from whites (among full-time, year-round workers), as the earnings for black Table 1. Employment among full-time, year-round women were closest to those of black men in male-dom- workers in occupations ranked by the percent of inated occupations. Several women employed, 1975 factors can be identified to help explain this pattern . The black sex-earnings All occupations ratio is lower in Percent of women female-than in male-dominated occupations, Number Percent of employed of possibly as a result of racial difierences in employment occupations Women Men concentration and earnings within female segregated occupations. Compared Total . 419 100 100 to white women, black women in 91-100 . 41 40 1 female-dominated occupations are disproportionately 81-90 . 15 11 1 71-80 . . 19 10 3 employed in lower-paying occupations such as nursing 61-70 . 13 5 2 aides, orderlies, 51-60 . 18 8 4 and sewers and stitchers. However, in 41-50 . 31 6 5 these occupations the earnings of black men 31-40 . 36 7 8 were great- 21-30 . 29 3 5 er than those of black women, as well as those of white 11-20 . 38 7 22 0-10 . 179 2 49 men and women . That black men earned substantially less than white men in nearly all other occupations, 50 highlights what may be viewed as a racial dimension of age and education categories may be used to speculate occupational sex segregation .

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