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Examines strategies related to pay and employment equity in four countries representing the liberal welfare state regime: Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA. After outlining the strategies pursued since the 1960s, the discussion shifts to their outcomes in terms of gender inequalities regarding occupational segregation and wage differentials. The concluding section discusses political and institutional explanations of the cross‐national differences between the countries, especially the importance of parties and industrial relations frameworks.

This chapter is concerned with the relationship of differences in the distribution of men and women office workers among firms to the male-female pay differential within narrowly defined occupational categories. Evidence is presented for sex segregation by firm within occupational categories, which is found to be an important factor in the sex differential in earnings. Earnings differentials by sex within occupations are primarily the result of differences in pay rates among firms rather than differences in pay rates within firms. When occupations are examined jointly to form a picture of establishment wage and employment patterns, it is found that there exists a wage hierarchy of firms within each labour market that is consistent across occupational categories and sex groups, and that the wage standing of the firm is inversely related to the representation of women in the establishment.

The chapter describes one of the real structural inequalities in the labour market: occupational segregation. It provides evidence on the types of jobs and occupations women and men are most likely to do and decomposes overall occupational segregation, following the methodology proposed, by the same authors, into vertical and horizontal dimensions, to show how much of the overall segregation is actually explained by inequality and disadvantage. The methodology is then applied to study segregation in terms of both social class and pay. The chapter shows that there are considerable inequalities in the occupational structure, measured using CAMSIS, and that there is a fundamental range of inequality in pay. These inequalities are related, but have quite different relations to gender: while pay inequalities favour men, stratification inequalities advantage women.

Across various organizations, professional women often experience the feeling of being underutilized or devalued. The survey that the author conducted revealed how underutilization was an issue that has yet to receive as much attention as it should, since this term refers to the occurrence of untapped human resources. The underutilization of women, as defined by the author, refers to how women are not able to make the most of their existing and potential talents and skills for the reason that they are women. Taking on the issue of measuring the degree of underutilization is difficult because such cannot easily be quantified. In this chapter, certain measures are introduced as means of measuring the underutilization of women: underemployment and unemployment rates, underrepresentation proportions, occupational segregation, and comparing the pay received by male employees to that received by female employees.

Occupations are segregated by sex today, but were far more segregated in the early to mid-twentieth century. It is difficult to rationalize sex segregation and “wage discrimination” on the basis of men’s taste for distance from women in the same way differences between other groups in work and housing have been explained. Rather, this paper constructs a “pollution” theory model of discrimination in which occupations are defined by the level of a single-dimensional productivity characteristic. Because there is asymmetric information regarding the value of the characteristic of an individual woman, a new female hire may reduce the prestige of a previously all-male occupation. The predictions of the model include that occupations requiring a level of the characteristic above the female median will be segregated by sex and those below the median will be integrated. The historical record reveals numerous cases of the model’s predictions. For example in 1940 the greater is the productivity characteristic of an office and clerical occupation, the higher the occupational segregation by sex. “Credentialization” that spreads information about individual women’s productivities and shatters old stereotypes can help expunge “pollution.”

This chapter links the impact of skills and social policies on occupational segregation by gender. In explaining gender inequality, it draws together two separate literatures: one, the literature on gendering the welfare state (GWS) and the literature on varieties of capitalism (VOC). The GWS literature has identified gender bias in welfare programs, recategorized welfare states in a more gender-sensitive perspective, and identified the impact of the welfare state on employment patterns of women. The VOC literature has identified how key institutions of the economy work in conjunction with one another to form a web of institutional complementarities. The chapter argues that different types of skills—that is, firm-specific and general skills—possess different gender implications independently of social policies for working mothers. In some cases the otherwise women-friendly policies such as generous leaves can exacerbate gender inequality when introduced to jobs that rely heavily on firm-specific skills.

This chapter examines trends in the gender wage gap. The first section uses data from the Current Population Surveys to analyze trends from the 1970s. The gender wage ratio significantly decreased during the 1970s, with declining gender role specialization and discrimination (as conventionally measured) contributing to the decrease. The second section uses Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics data to study the substantial narrowing of the gap in the 1980s, and the slowing convergence in the 1990s. Convergence in human capital and occupations of women and men contributed to the narrowing in both decades. The largest factor accounting for the slowdown in the 1990s was a much faster reduction of the ‘unexplained’ gender wage gap in that decade. The evidence suggests that changes in labour force selectivity, changes in gender differences in unmeasured characteristics and labour market discrimination, and changes in the favourableness of demand shifts each contributed to the slowing convergence of the unexplained gender pay gap.

Chapter 2 provides a detailed analysis of the occupational structure and social division of labor in the power laundry industry. The chapter follows the laundry as it moves through the plant, from the markers, who sorted and tagged the incoming soiled laundry, to the sorters, who packaged the freshly laundered garments for return to the customers. The chapter highlights the occupational and social divisions between the inside workers, who were mostly women and people of color, and the drivers, who were all white men. An examination of how and why this division of labor emerged in the early 1900s (and which to a large extent has remained intact in the twenty-first century) demonstrates that deeply entrenched assumptions about the relationship between skill, ability, and a worker’s racial and gender identity influences hiring and employment practices. Drawing on the work of labor sociologists and historians such as Ruth Milkman and Alice Kessler-Harris, this chapter demonstrates that once a job is labeled female or male, the demand to fill that job becomes sex (and race) specific and, over time, extremely resistant to change. Finally, chapter 2 argues that although the occupational structure was imposed from above, white male workers, determined to protect their monopoly over the highest-paying and highest-status positions, eagerly embraced and defended the racist and sexist job assignments. The occupational divisions that emerged during the industry’s formative years would complicate the workers’ organizing, at times hopelessly impeding the development of workplace solidarities, while simultaneously providing opportunities for women and people of color to mobilize in independent and oftentimes empowering spaces where they forged race- and gender-based coalitions with allies in the labor movement.

Since 1997 the UK conditional gender pay gap has fallen by around 7 per cent. This is largely due to a closing of the within-occupational gender pay gap, but is also partly due to occupational desegregation. In contrast, gender differentials for non-pay job quality have remained relatively stable. Drawing data from the Skills and Employment Survey and from the Labour Force surveys, the chapter finds evidence of lower pay and poorer job quality (in terms of working at high speed) for women vis-à-vis men employed within the same occupations; these differences are not significant upon labour market entry but emerge subsequently over the life cycle. This chapter also finds that more women than men still work in the lowest-paid service sector occupations and fewer work in the highest-paid occupations. However, during the 2000s there has been occupational upgrading for women and job polarization for men.

Since China launched its historic process of economic reform and opening up in the late 1970s, women have become vulnerable to the impact of economic restructuring on employment. This chapter focuses on the impact of economic transition and social transformation on women’s choices of cosmetic surgery. It explores why cosmetic surgery is widely considered as an “investment” to gain “beauty capital” among Chinese girls and women. In particular, it explores the phenomenon of Chinese high school and college students rushing to have cosmetic surgery over summer/winter holidays to get an edge in a tight job market.The obsession with female beauty in workplaces and in the marriage market is rooted in traditional Chinese gender norms, where women’s appearances are more emphasized than their ability and talents.

In the final chapter, the focus returns to the UK and the gender impact of the current recession. All the preceding chapters have drawn attention to gender divisions in both unemployment and employment disadvantage, and, in this chapter, using a range of national data sets, Susan Harkness examines the differential gender impact of the recession in the UK in detail. In the context of three decades of change in women's employment patterns, the chapter highlights characteristics of the current recession that have significant policy implications. In general, women's employment has not been affected to the same extent at that of men – the so called ‘silver lining’ of gendered occupational segregation. However, the interpretation of greater numbers of women in low-paid, part-time, low-quality jobs as a good welfare outcome is dubious, especially given the changing importance of women's incomes within couple households.

This chapter begins where Chapter 1 ends. I portray myself teaching my first course on women and work, and the course’s contribution to my growing understanding that women’s economic disadvantages can be contested only by understanding their roles in the larger society, that studying women at work requires studying family life as well as the ways in which societal norms are created and transformed. I also discuss my education on the differences between liberal and radical feminism, and Carol Jacklin’s lecture on her work on sex differences in children. Jacklin argues that such sex differences are nota cause of occupational segregation. The scene then shifts to my life as wife and mother, including my struggle to run my daughter Liz’s playgroup for two-year-olds because I want to be a “good mom.” I’m invited to be one of the nine original members of the first Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP), and accept the invitation despite my husband’s opposition. Sisterhood plays an interesting and unexpected role in my becoming one of the first two women faculty members at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (the GSB), but the power of the law is also a potent factor: Stanford is fearful that, like Berkeley, it will face a Labor Department investigation if it doesn’t begin hiring women into its many all male departments.

The chapter begins with Sam telling me he wants to leave our marriage and my trying to understand the reasons for our divorce and cope with its overwhelming pain. I begin dating and meet someone new, Ted. I take my first backpack trip and experience the peace of the mountains. I become a Resident Fellow in one of the Stanford dorms. I become involved in Stanford Hillel and strengthen my commitment to Judaism. I continue to study occupational segregation, this time in bank telling and the Mexican maquiladoras. I take on two new challenges--first chair of the National Council for Research on Women and an associate editor of the journal, Signs, which I help to bring to Stanford. I attempt, unsuccessfully, to get my salary in line with that of my male colleagues. In the chapter’s conclusion, I end my relationship with Ted.

This chapter focuses on female labor market participation and its implications in the division of household work. It begins with an overview of women's employment in 33 countries: their participation rates, wage differences, and occupational segregation. It then explains the influence of women's employment on housework and examines whether the effect of women's employment on housework is different for countries that vary in welfare regime, child care polices, and gender culture. Multilevel analysis of data from the International Social Survey Program confirms that women spend less time on domestic work when they do more hours of paid work.

This chapter analyses the relationship between employment rates and the level of production of an economy, its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and whether this relationship differs depending on whether we are analysing the employment rates of women or those of men. How is the gender employment rate gap linked to the overall economy? Does this relationship change during periods of economic recession? The chapter sheds light on whether business cycles, namely periods of economic boom or recession, have a differential impact on the employment rates of men and women: i.e. are business cycles gender neutral? The analysis shows they are not and goes on to assess whether segregation in the industries where men and women tend to work can explain this result.