Occupational Segregation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Occupational Segregation - Essay Example As the paper outlines occupational segregation exists, then, when women and men are distributed across occupations so as to be out of proportion with their overall participation in the labour force. In the United Kingdom, most occupations are comprised of predominantly male or predominantly female workers and many are identified as men’s or women’s work. This essay covers different theories explaining facts and figures of occupational segregation as described by researchers, its measurement and existence, gender, occupations, its consequences and explanations have been covered. This study declares that levels of aggregation affect the index of segregation in two ways. First, occupational segregation increases with the decrease in the level of aggregation of the data. For instance, women hold 74.5 of all teaching positions in 1995 but 89.5 of all elementary school positions. Gender segregation increases still more when one considers job-level segregation within firms. Second, the variability of occupational categories between years or between organizations can cause misleading comparisons. Some English scholars cite more fundamental problems with the index of dissimilarity. Watts claims that it is faulty because it fails to replace those workers who move to other occupations, resulting in a distribution that does not resemble the previous occupational structure. To overcome this problem, Watts proposes the use of the Karmel-MacLachlan index, which factors in the replacement workers. Blackburn, Jarman, and Siltanen conclude that the index of dissimilarity is seriously flawed by the fluctuation in sex and occupational composition.