| Sumario: | A review of the principal theoretical explanations for the existence and persistence of occupational segregation by sex. These explanations are the neoclassical, human capital model, which assumes that workers and employers are rational and that labor markets function efficiently; institutional and labor market segmentation theories, which assume that institutions, such as unions and large enterprises, play an important role in determining who is hired, fired, and promoted and how they are paid and that markets are segmented in certain ways; and feminist or gender theories, which are mainly concerned with nonlabor market variables that economists take as given. The complex relationship between occupational segregation by sex and female-male pay differentials is also explored. It is concluded that the most compelling explanations of occupational segregation by sex are gender theories, given the enormous overlap in abilities and preferences of individual men and women.
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