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Title: Gender Segregation in Occupations: The Role of Tipping and Social Interactions

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2009

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Abstract: A large literature documents two important facts concerning women and the labor marketin the last century: the movement of women into the formal labor market and the persistentsegregation of men and women into di erent occupations. This paper explores how the labormarket responded to the entry of women into occupations and documents that the dynamics ofoccupational segregation are highly non-linear and exhibit \tipping"-like patterns. Using Censusdata from 1910 to 2000, I show that the evolution of male share over time for occupations thatexperience a relatively large inow of females shows striking evidence of an inverse-S pattern.Focusing on the 1940s through the 1980s, I nd relatively strong evidence of discontinuities inmale employment growth at candidate tipping points ranging from 30 to 60 percent female inwhite-collar occupations and 12 to 25 percent female in blue-collar occupations. Depending onthe decade, occupations experience an 18 to 50 percentage point decline in net male employmentgrowth at the candidate tipping points. The observed tipping behavior appears consistent witha simple framework based on Schelling's (1971) social interaction model where occupationaltipping results from male preferences toward the fraction female in their occupation. Supportingthe model's predictions, evidence from the General Social Survey indicates that tipping pointsare lower in regions where males hold more sexist attitudes toward the appropriate role of women.Alternative explanations such as omitted variables, changes in the production technology andlearning fall short in explaining the full set of empirical observations.

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Authors: Pan, Jessica Y.

Publisher: University of Chicago

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Gender, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other

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