Gender: The Major Causes Of Gender Segregation In Literature

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Gender segregation refers to the employment of men and women in different industries, occupations, firms, or jobs. A growing body of literature has documented the extensiveness of gender segregation and has attempted to explain its origins (see Reskin, 1993, for a review). Gender segregation is a major cause of the gender gap in wages, benefits, and retirement income (Perman & Stevens, 1989; Reskin & Hartmann, 1986; Treiman & Hartmann, 1981). Also, female-dominated jobs provide fewer opportunities for training and formal mobility than male-dominated jobs (Baron, Davis-Blake, & Bielby, 1986; Bielby & Baron, 1986; Halaby, 1979), and women's concentration in lower level positions may make them more vulnerable to repeated unemployment than …show more content…

The contextual perspective focuses on factors that pre- dict variation in gender segregation across jobs, occupations, or firms (e.g., Bielby & Baron, 1986; Blau, 1977; Reskin & Roos, 1990). The cognitive perspective concentrates on how individual decision makers use gender when evaluating job applicants (e.g., Futoran & Wyer, 1986; Heilman, Martell, & Simon, 1988; Hitt & Barr, 1989). Although the cognitive perspec- tive does not directly examine gender segregation, it has clear implica- tions for segregation because the selection of men and women into dif- ferent jobs is a precondition for gender segregation. Specifically, we argue that decision makers' propensity to use gender as a basis for selection and promotion decisions varies across organizational contexts. A number of researchers have called for examinations of how organizational and individual fac- tors jointly affect individuals' workplace outcomes. For example, Cap- pelli and Sherer (1991: 90) argued that it is essential to link organizational context to individual outcomes by "finding mechanisms through which context can affect the …show more content…

Cappelli and Sherer (1991) argued that internal labor markets limit the influence of external labor markets on a variety of in- dividual outcomes, including skill acquisition and compensation. Simi- larly, Auster (1989) argued that task characteristics mediate the relation- ship between organizational context and individual compensation; Baron and Pfeffer (1993: 55) made a comparable argument about job titles and other "organizational categories." We follow in this general tradition; however, instead of emphasizing structural mediators between organizational context and individual outcomes, we focus on the mediating role of the cognitive processes of organizational decision makers. This focus is important because, as Reskin (1993: 250) has noted, although employers play a major role in creating and perpetuating gender segregation, "surprisingly little attention has been paid to the effect of employers' gender- role attitudes on their personnel decisions." Specifically, a scarcity of male applicants (or a large num- ber of female applicants) increases women's access to male-dominated jobs (see Reskin, 1993, for a review). Many firms create formal job ladders to govern the recruitment and mobility of employees (Doeringer &

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