SOC456:

Lesson 02

Introduction to Gender, Occupations, and Professions

 

Learning Objectives

After successfully completing this lesson, you will be able to accomplish the following objectives:

• Define and distinguish between the basic concepts of gender and sex.
• Explain the concepts of sexual division of labor, occupational segregation, vertical segregation, and horizontal segregation.
• Define and distinguish between work, occupation, and profession.
• Describe some of the ways in which gender roles and the expectations related to them affect the lives of women and men differently in the United States and throughout the world.
• Define gender analysis and be able to list key indicators used to assess gender differences in occupations and professions.
• List key indicators that can be used to assess gender differences in occupations and professions.
• List at least three ways in which gender roles and expectations have affected your life.
• Be able to able to find statistical information about occupations and professions, including gender differences in them, in the United States and internationally.

 

Key Terms

gender	professions
gender analysis	reproductive roles
horizontal/vertical segregation	sex
nonmarket work	sex-disaggregated data
occupational segregation	sexual division of labor
occupations	work
productive roles

Commentary

Overview

This lesson introduces the basic concepts that undergird this course. Specifically, we will define key terms essential to a discussion of gender, occupations, and profession; and we will consider the “So what?” question about gender and how these ideas work in our own lives. In so doing, this lesson will lay the groundwork for future lessons, which will explore issues raised here in more detail. The basic premise of this course is, not surprisingly, that women and men have profoundly different experiences in their occupations and professions—no matter what culture one lives in.

We will begin by looking at statistics describing some key differences in the lives of males and females in the United States that will help frame our discussion. The following facts are drawn from a March 2000 U.S. Census Bureau brief.

Fact: Women outnumber men.

Of the approximately 272 million people counted, 139 million were female and 133 million were male.

• Under 20 years of age, there were 105 males for every 100 females.
• Ages 20–24, there were 98 males to 100 females.
• At age 85, there were 49 men for every 100 women.

Fact: Slightly more males than females have completed college.

27.5 percent of men and 23.1 percent of women had a bachelor’s degree or more.
• The proportion of women with higher education has increased considerably from 1970 when almost twice as many men as women had obtained a bachelor’s degree.
Overview (3 of 9)

Fact: Males continue to earn more money than females.

Women work fewer years than men. However, even among women 25 years of age and over who worked full time, median wages were 27 percent less than those of men.

	Men	Women
Median earnings for high school diploma	$30,868	$21,963
Median earnings with bachelor’s degree	49,982	35,408
Median earnings with a professional degree	90,653	55,460

Fact: Female-headed households are more likely to be poor, particularly African American families.

	Poverty rate
Families maintained by woman with no man present	29.9%
Families maintained by man with no woman present	12.0%
Married couple families	5.3%

Fact: African American families have the highest likelihood of being female-headed.

White families	14%
Black families	46.7%
All families	17.8%

Fact: Older women are more likely to live alone.

	Men	Women
75 years and older	22.3	52.9
64 to 74 years	13.9	31.2
45-64	12.0	11.6
35-44	12.0	6.7
14-34	8.0	5.2

Table 2a
Percentage of Men and Women Living Alone by Age
Overview (continued) (4 of 9)

Fact: Overall, African American males and females, Hispanic males and females, and white women earn at least 25 percent less than white males.

Sex, Race, and Ethnicity		$$$	$$$	% Earnings Compared to White Men
		1983	1995	1983	1995
Hispanic		250	329	64.6	58.1
	Women	209	305	54.0	53.9
	Men	274	350	70.8	61.8
Black		261	383	67.4	67.7
	Women	231	355	59.7	62.7
	Men	293	411	75.7	72.6
White		319	494	82.4	87.3
	Women	254	415	65.6	73.3
	Men	387	566	100.0	100.0

Table 2b
Median Weekly Earnings of Full-Time Workers by Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin–1983 and 1995

These statistics indicate some important facts: There are more women than men after the age of 20. As a population ages, the percentage of women continues to rise, so that eventually there are twice as many women in their mid 80s as men. Older women are also more likely to live alone with only one income for support, all women are disproportionately represented among the poor (particularly if they are black or Hispanic), and they are more likely to be raising a family alone. Yet women’s earnings are consistently lower than those of men. Clearly gender is an important piece of our social fabric. And its impact on occupations and professions is substantial.

As these facts suggest, women are disproportionately represented among the poor (particularly if they are black or Hispanic) and typically have lower-paying jobs. They live longer; yet their salaries are consistently lower than those of men. What does gender have to do with this? Before beginning to explore that question, let us define some terms and concepts we will use during this course.

Definitions (5 of 9)

Definitions

So far we have reviewed statistics that illustrate some of the differences in men’s and women’s experience of work and life overall. In the boxes following, we see gender differences as they apply to one particularly family. While a few women led Lynn’s lifestyle in Irma’s time, they were the exceptions. Most women’s relationship to their husband was similar to Irma’s. Their whole job was to make him happy. While this may seem appealing to men today, the reality was that males, in theory at least, had sole responsibility for the financial well-being of their families. They too seemed to have no other choice.

As you can see, gender roles change over time. Here are some definitions that will further clarify this distinction between sex and gender. It is followed by a discussion of other terms used in the course.

Sex and gender: Research, activist, and policy literature distinguishes between the words sex and gender. The word sex is used to refer to biological differences between males and females. Gender, on the other hand, refers to the distinctive roles, responsibilities, expectations, and attitudes of males and females determined by social and cultural values. Comparing the two:

• Gender differences are constructed by society and are learned. Sex is biological and is determined at birth by our chromosomes, not society. Few biological differences should necessarily affect occupational selection. For example, the fact that most men are physically stronger than women is relevant to only a few jobs.
• Biological differences between men and women are the same in all countries. Gender differences vary by culture. They also change over time; what was expected of you as a woman or man in 1776 is not the same as it is now. Further, because gender differences are constructed by society, they can be changed by society—through education, government policy, media images, and the actions of opinion leaders.

Here are a few examples to illustrate that gender roles and expectations are developed within the context of a culture:

• In some African cultures, women have primary responsibility for agriculture, particularly for growing the family food. In most parts of Europe and the United States, only men wear the label of farmer.
• During the era of the Soviet Union, a majority of physicians in that country were female; in the United States there were few women doctors at the time. Now, nearly half of all medical school students are female.
• In some Asian societies, sons are expected to look after their aging parents, while in most Eurocentric cultures, daughters play this role.

It is important to note that gender-based roles and expectations are also heavily influenced by race, ethnicity, social and economic class, and age in nearly all cultures. In the United States, for example, Hispanic and African American women face more kinds of discrimination than their white counterparts in employment possibilities, earnings, and promotions. This is true of men of color as well.

One final comment: despite technical definitions, many people use the terms sex and gender interchangeably, and the distinction between them is blurred.

The “Traditional” Role

Irma married in 1940 at the age of 22. She had three children. Neither she nor her husband had any post-high-school education, but he was ambitious. He built several businesses— some were successful; others failed. This meant sometimes they were well off and other times they and their children were squeezed into a tiny apartment. Her job was first and foremost to take care of him and her children. She cooked, cleaned, moved to new towns, raised the children practically alone while he worked. She never had a job outside the home. Divorce was unthinkable. She rarely challenged him, did not ask for something directly—always hinted until he responded. She could not understand what younger women sought. “I always got what I wanted, didn’t I?” she asked her daughter

Sexual Division of Labor (6 of 9)

Sexual Division of Labor

Societies assign different tasks to males and females based on both sex and gender. Perhaps the most obvious division of labor based on sex is bearing children—only women birth children because of their biology. Beyond that, almost everything is a matter of gender, prescribed by society for men and women.

Differentiation of responsibilities is called the sexual division of labor. This too varies among and within cultures; but common to most societies is the assumption that a clear and consistent division of labor within the household exists. Sometimes this is true. Typically, women’s roles are divided between productive roles (i.e., producing goods and services) and reproductive roles (e.g., childbearing, family caretaking, and housework). Most attention in cultural myths has been paid to women’s reproductive role.

While we in Eurocentric cultures tend to think that women in earlier times did not work outside the home, this is inaccurate—poor women have always worked out of necessity. So did children until 100 years ago. I will repeat this several times through the course, because the image we have, promoted by the media and others, is that women (and children) have always been in the home. That is, of course partially true, but before the Industrial Revolution home was not separate from work as it is now.

In most cultures, men are considered the major income earners, the providers, and since the industrial revolution, their primary work has been outside the home. Interestingly, no terms have been developed to differentiate male roles (that I know of). It should be noted that this separation of men from food-provision roles is not found in some remaining hunter-gatherer cultures in places such as Australia, South America, and Africa. Particularly in subsistence economies where a money economy has not yet developed (i.e., people hunt, gather, and barter rather than use cash), both men and women are responsible for family food provision, although they often contribute different parts of the diet.

The sexual division of labor changes over time, and it changes according to both individual and societal situations and circumstances. For example, when typewriters were first invented, most typists were males, who routinely served as clerks and secretaries. Now most clerical employees are female. Also, before World War II, women were considered unable to work in heavy industry because of its physical demands. Actually women, particularly those on farms, were often involved in heavy lifting. Further, when much of the male work force went to war in 1941, women were actively recruited to work in defense-industry factories building ships, tanks, and other equipment for the Allies. In fact, to encourage women to work in defense-industry manufacturing, the U.S. government created an elaborate campaign about one of these women, “Rosie the Riveter,” a welder, transforming her into a national icon. Their efforts were quite successful, and millions of women went to work in factories. As soon as the war was over, however, women were expected to retire from these jobs so that the men returning from military service could have them back.

So, contrary to cultural myths, role distinctions are rarely rigid. Some men have always participated in household and family work and some women— particularly poor women—have always worked. Popular myths just did not take that into account, and until relatively recently, there was little information to refute the myths.

Changing Gender Roles in the 1960s

 Irma’s daughter Lynn married at the age of 22 in 1967, after graduating from college. She and her husband each had their own careers, before they divorced. Lynn has no children. In her mid-30s, she earned her Ph.D. and now practices as a family therapist. She owns her own house, travels widely, cooks occasionally and cleans only when company comes. She is independent, speaks her mind when it is necessary, though not with the ease she would like. She plans to retire in a community with like-minded friends

Sex-Disaggregated Data (7 of 9)

Sex-Disaggregated Data

In the early sociological research, data were collected from and about men; women’s situation was assumed to be the same as their husbands (even if they did not have one). For example, statistics on poverty described households as if there was only one kind: male-headed, with a wife/mother and several children. These studies did not identify who was really poor (e.g., female-headed households or elderly single women). Eventually, researchers began to collect sex-disaggregated data (data collected and analyzed by sex). These data are crucial to understanding differences in quality of life of males and females and how they are differentially affected by governmental policy, legislation, and social change. In the United States, data disaggregated by sex are becoming the norm. Internationally such data are increasingly available as well.

So far, this Commentary has focused primarily on gender issues in the United States. Before continuing with terms, I want to talk a little bit about how collection of sex-disaggregated data has evolved internationally, because it provides a valuable tool for understanding how not paying attention to gender can affect social and economic change, and what can be done about that.

As you may know, more affluent nations in the North have been involved in development assistance programs to lower-income nations since just after World War II. Donors include the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Europe, Taiwan, a few Middle East nations, and Japan, as well as the United Nations and other multilateral (e.g., multi-country) organizations such as the World Bank. Initially this assistance assumed very specific gender roles. U.S. foreign assistance in agriculture, for example, was targeted exclusively to men, because in the United States only men were considered to be farmers; and there was no information to challenge that assumption.

In the early 1970s, however, female economists and others began to collect and publish data documenting the fact that women were not participating in and benefiting from these foreign-assistance development programs. In fact, data show that women were sometimes adversely affected. With this realization came the development of tools for gender analysis, which examines the sexual division of labor and access to resources such as land, income, and education, as well as proposed project resources and benefits. More rigorous gender analysis examines gender differences in socio-political, economic, and cultural arenas as well. Such analysis has become more common in development programming, though not universal by any means. Its value is not a mystery: with information about both males and females, development practitio­ners can plan and implement programs that are more likely to be successful because they take all of the population—not just the male half—into perspective.

A few additional comments: Although we do not use the term gender analysis in the United States, it is integral to most socioeconomic research that guides policymakers. It should also be noted that gender analysis is a standard market-survey practice; manufacturers routinely clarify the sexual division of labor in households so they can target commercial product messages to males or females appropriately.

For example, television commercials for household cleaning products almost always show women doing the dishes or laundry. If men are doing housework in television commercials, they are usually young men at college or otherwise away from home.  They are not high-powered executives.

Finally, viewed across cultures and countries, gender analysis demonstrates clearly how gender roles and responsibilities are socially constructed, how knowledge of these roles can be used to promote effective programs, and how, in some cases, such roles must be satisfied or challenged for desired improvements in the quality of life to take place. Now, let’s return to our definitions of terms and concepts.

Gender Roles in the New Millennium – 2002

 Lynn’s niece Alice is a senior in wildlife biology at a major Midwestern university. She plans to go to graduate school, hopes to marry and have children after her career is established. She assumes that she and her husband will share much of the housework and childrearing responsibilities, though how they will sort this out remains a mystery. Her parents encourage her to make a career in the sciences and develop a professional career. Still, they worry just a little that Alice will delay marriage and a family too long.

Work, Occupations, and Professions (8 of 9)

Work, Occupations, and Professions

While we often use these words interchangeably, they do have distinct meanings.

• Work refers to activities producing goods and services for one’s own use or in exchange for pay and support.
• Occupation is generally defined as one’s trade, profession, or business—literally that which occupies your time. In this case, however, it refers to collections of jobs that involve similar activities in different establishments.
• Profession is an occupation or vocation that requires advanced education and training and involves intellectual skills such as teaching, medicine, law, engineering, and theology.
• Job is a specific piece of work, typically with a specific employer.

So, work is a kind of generic term for employment or self-employment, including forms that involve barter or providing services for support. An occupation would be a particular kind of work, and a profession is an occupation that requires advanced education.

Putting It All Together: Gender, Occupations, and Professions

When we look at gender and sex in relation to occupations and professions, we discover that gender rules! Here’s how. First, most occupations are sex segregated. That is, men and women are concentrated in different occupations. This is called occupational segregation. While occupational segregation by sex has diminished since the 1960s, it remains the norm.

Occupational segregation takes place across occupations and within them. Thus we can distinguish between two forms of occupational segregation by sex. Horizontal segregation refers to the distribution of men and women across occupations, where women and men are clustered in different, specific fields. Women are found over-whelmingly in a few fields: clerical occupations, nursing, child care, and other service work. Almost half of all women work in occupations that are more than 75 percent female. Males are found in most other occupations: construction, extraction industries, manufacturing, engineering, transportation, and clergy to name a few. Vertical segregation refers to the distribution of men and women in the same occupation, but with one sex more likely to be at a higher grade or level. For example, men are more likely to be production supervisors while women are production workers.

Also, female-dominated occupations are consistent with typical gender stereotypes about women. So women predominate in health and other services industries— reflecting the nurturing stereotype about women. Indeed, until 50 years ago, in the United States, nursing and teaching were virtually the only two professions for women. This has changed somewhat: women now comprise nearly half of both law and medical school students. However, gender-stereotyped occupations are not necessarily consistent with biological differences between the sexes. For example, the chief executive officer of a multinational corporation does not need great physical strength for his job (a male stereotype).

Finally, female-dominated occupations tend to have relatively low pay and status. Even within occupations dominated by women, men have higher earnings (as the schematic on vertical segregation illustrates).

Overall therefore, women are concentrated in a limited number of occupations and their earnings are lower than those of men. Within any particular occupation or workplace, women and men are likely to have different jobs, rankings, access to career ladders, and other benefits. Much of the difference in earnings is commonly attributed to factors such as: women spend fewer years in the paid workforce; they are more likely to work part-time and thus do not enjoy the benefits of much career ladders available to men; they do different work; and so on. However, statistics indicate that women who work full-time and all year still take home three-quarters or less pay than their male counterparts. The situation is worse for women of color. Latina or black woman face more barriers to employment than white woman even when both have equal qualifications. High school drop-out rates are higher among Latina females than among black or white females. Therefore we need to remember that within the category of gender are found many subcategories; all males and all females do not have the same experiences related to occupations and professions because of these other factors.

So What? (9 of 9)

So What?

Remembering that this is a course on gender—not women—occupations, and professions, we should perhaps describe another view, because there are others who see this differently. Some believe men pay a price for their dominance. More men are in jail. Men die younger. They have higher rates of suicide. So, men’s greater access to resources (income and clout, for example) seems to have some down sides. Noting this runs the risk of appearing to minimize the challenges women face in the workplace or of leaping across critical women’s issues to lump everyone together in a great mass of humanity. That is not the intent.

What do we do with this information? Well, first we can acknowledge that we have a well-developed language for describing differences in gender roles and responsibilities, needs, attitudes, and expectations. We also have made great strides in our ability to plan, implement and evaluate policies and programs that are gender sensitive. On the other hand, all the data clearly demonstrate significant inequality between males and females—not just in occupations and professions but also in levels of poverty, education, access to education, and other indicators of quality of life. This has implications for both the present and the future. For example, if a family is headed by a woman, children are much more likely to be poor. With poverty comes less access to resources that will help them successfully navigate their lives.

To address this “So what?” question, we can begin with ourselves. Return to the essay you prepared for Lesson 1. Are there new insights about how gender has affected your own professional development? While there is no written assignment answering this question in this lesson, I encourage you to keep this subject in mind as you proceed with the course. For example, consider the gender dynamics within your own profession or the profession you hope to enter.

Finally, for more information, to supplement the reading, and to stir up your thinking, here are some additional resources.

International Resources: The International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have classifications of occupations and publish sex-disaggregated statistics on them that can be used for research as well as for considering changes in one’s own occupation.

United States: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes an Occupational Outlook Handbook; they also manage a Web site. Also, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) manages a Federal Classification System for work in the federal government. The Women’s Bureau in the Department of Labor also maintains accessible sex disaggregated data on employment.

All of these are available on the Internet and links can be found on the course Web site. They are also available at major libraries.