OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION IN LABOUR MARKET

Submitted by

B.MAHATHEER MOHAMED
Reg. No. BC0140035

Under the guidance of

MS. RUCHI SINGH

Assistant Professor

TAMIL NADU NATIONAL LAW SCHOOL

(A State University established by Act No. 9 of 2012)
Tiruchirappalli
Tamil Nadu – 620 009
S.no Contents

1 Introduction

2 Provisions of the Equal Remuneration Act,1976

3 Gendered nature of occupations

4 Practioners vs. professionals

5 Commitment issues

6 Internal Labour Market

7 Pay gap

8 Job satisfaction

9 conclusion

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 INTRODUCTION

The principle of non-discrimination and equal opportunity for all is embodied in our
Constitution in Articles 14 and 15. They mandate equal treatment of all citizens and prohibit
discrimination on the basis of sex, caste, religion, race or place of birth. The United Nations
Convention on Elimination of Discrimination against Women, 1979 which India ratified in
1993 requires all States to take steps to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women in
education and workplace and ensure their representation in the national and international level.
Several legislations have been enacted to provide women with a congenial and fair working
conditions and employment opportunities. The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 is one such
legislation which specifically mandates equal pay for similar work of a similar nature. It
prohibits biased hiring processes that put women at a disadvantage. It ensures non-
discrimination in recruitment, wages, work-transfers and promotion. But the question remains
as to whether the objective of this legislation has been fully achieved. Today, an increasing
number of women are requiring high-level qualifications in all fields of study. The equal
opportunities policies are very much instrumental in enabling them to enter male-dominated
professions. However, there are a few question that still remains to be answered i.e. (i) whether
gendered patterns of employment is a reality? (ii) what are the reasons for gender based
occupational segregation? (iii) whether the existing occupational segregation in the labour
market and the pay gap can be positively eliminated?

PROVISIONS OF THE EQUAL REMUNERATION ACT, 1976

The object and reasons of the Act states that the Act was enacted to provide for the payment of
equal remuneration to men and women workers and for the prevention of discrimination, on
the ground of sex, against women in the matter of employment and for matters connected
therewith. Under this Act, the employer has a statutory duty to provide equal remuneration to

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both men and women for the same work or work of a similar nature.1 The Act also prohibits
any kind of discrimination on the basis of sex in the hiring process.2 Under this Act, it is an
offence to discriminate in the pay of remuneration and it provides for penalties in case an
employer is found guilty.3

The Equal Remuneration Rules, 1976 made under this Act lays down the mechanism
for claims and complaints under this Act.4 An Advisory Committee has also been set up both
at the Central as well State level to advise the government to draft policies for the betterment
of women and affirmative action to catalyse integration of women in all occupations and to
guarantee a conducive work environment for them.

GENDERED NATURE O F OCCUPATIONS

As a result of industrialisation, new and diverse job opportunities were created. As new jobs
became established, they soon became either predominantly female or male. Some jobs were
reserved only for men and some others exclusively for women. These jobs often required a
different specific set of skills. Women are typically excluded from work perceived as
physically demanding, they are often given exclusive access to tasks viewed as routine and
requiring attention to detail. Men are employed in jobs requiring technical knowledge and jobs
requiring physical prowess. The concept of "sex segregation" was introduced into the
sociological lexicon to describe women's and men's concentration in different
occupations.5

Men and women are usually employed in distinct organizational settings. Even when
enterprises employ both sexes in the same occupation, they are assigned different job
titles. For example, when a study analysed the staffing patterns in packing jobs for a
pharmaceutical establishment, it was found that there was a practice of terming men
"technicians" and women "operators”, even though they did the same work. Therefore, the
labelling of "men's work" and "women's work" for similar tasks occurs within
organizations as well. Such sex labelling of job titles acquire tremendous inertia, even
when similar work is done by the opposite sex elsewhere in the same establishment or

1
Section 4, Equal Remuneration Act, 1976.
2
Section 5, Equal Remuneration Act, 1976.
3
Section 10, Equal Remuneration Act, 1976.
4
Rules 3 & 4, Equal Remuneration Rules, 1976.
5
Edward Gross, "Plus Ca Change ...? The Sexual Structure of Occupations over Time." Social Problems 16 (Fall
1968) 198-208.

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in other setting.6 Thus, a man shall be called a technician and a woman an operator even if
they do the same work. Technicians are always men and operators always women. Sex
segregation is more pervasive on an organisational level than occupational level. Men and
women do not share job titles within an establishment.

Some jobs are reserved exclusively for each sex. Women are hired for office work
classifications in all divisions. Women are also hired exclusively to fill hostess, hostess
supervisory, and training and cabin cleaning positions. They are the preferred applicants
for positions in reservations and counter sales. They are generally excluded from the
passenger service counter, cargo service, and terminal operations because of the physical
labour involved. Women are not hired as maintenance or flight crew personnel primarily
because those jobs have been traditionally filled by men and because workers are often
required to lift or carry objects.7 Such sex-based job assignments have become standard
organizational procedure. Barriers to women' s access to some which are considered ‘male’
jobs apparently persist in all industrialized countries.

Another reason for sex segregation in jobs is that the employers prefer a certain sex for
a certain job. Many employers use sex as an inexpensive screen to fill jobs, given their
conceptions that one sex is more productive at certain tasks or more likely to justify
investments in on-the-job training. Custom contributes to segregation through employers’
stereotypes about workers and about jobs that produce a sex-specific demand for workers for
particular jobs. Employers assign the sexes to different jobs in part because of beliefs they
hold about women and men.

PRACTITIONERS VS . PROFESSIONALS

Women and men in industrialized societies are less segregated at work than in the past.
Workplaces seem more integrated. A closer look however presents a different picture. Within
organisations and within the same occupation, there exists a within-category segregation based
on sex. A sexual division of labour survives within integrating occupations.8 In the medical

6
Infra note 4.
7
Infra note 7.
8
Cynthia Cockburn, In the Way of Women: Men's Resistance to Sex Equality in Organizations, ILR Press, 1991.

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occupation, the majority of doctors are male and majority of nurses are female. Therefore
majority of each sex still work in broad occupational categories in which the other sex is
underrepresented or absent.

It was found that there exists a "segregation code” which prohibits mixing the sexes as
equals and reserves upper-level jobs for men.9 Women are usually stuck at the practitioner level
whereas the majority of professionals are men. For example, in the Indian judiciary, the number
of female judges in the higher courts is very less compared to the male judges. In the law
profession, there are many female lawyers, however, the number of female senior counsels is
very negligible. It is a fact that women must over qualify themselves to compete successfully
for male jobs.10 They are always employed in a job they are over-qualified for. Occupational
sex labels influence job assignments independent of potential workers’ actual qualifications.11
Thus a segregation exists within an occupation where the higher level jobs within the same
occupation are reserved for men. Women are found in large numbers in the lower rungs. It can
be said that women are left behind in the promotions or that women are not attributed with the
same credibility of a man doing the same job.

COMMITMENT ISSUES

Employers are hesitant to hire women as they doubt the commitment levels of women. There
is a notion that women are not dedicated to their work. Their ability to work is considered to
be less and this is attributed to the ‘second shift’ of domestic work that women face in addition
to their paid work.12. It is found that within a specific occupation, women may be more
likely to quit their jobs. Motherhood and childrearing responsibilities are the reasons to
which this is attributed. Motherhood is a substantial barrier to occupation to women as
employers hesitate to employ them in jobs that have a high cost of replacing a worker. Due to
childrearing responsibilities, women are more likely to be unemployed or employed part-time
than men.

9
William T. Bielby & James N. Baron, Men and Women at Work: Sex Segregation and Statistical Discrimination,
American Journal of Sociology 91, no. 4 (Jan., 1986): 759-799.
10
Reskin & Roos, Job Queues, Gender Queues: Explaining Women's Inroads into Male Occupations, Women in
the Political Economy, Temple University Press, 1990.
11
Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer, The Sex-Labeling of Jobs, Industrial Relations, Volume 7, Issue 3 May 1968,
219–234.
12
Arlie Hochschild, The Time Bind, Journal of Labor and Society, Volume 1, Issue 2 (July-August 1997) 21–29.

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 If an employer incurs significant turnover costs due to the expense of finding and
training new employees, the number of females hired for the job is very less. In fact, hiring
processes tend to be biased for such jobs. Recruiters often question the women on their ability
to balance work and family more than they test their capability for the job they are being hired
for.

Women are forced towards part-time jobs in order to fulfil their duties at home. In
general, women average fewer hours per year than men. Occupations which employ mostly
women are more likely to employ workers part-time and part year.13 The responsibilities at
home have discouraged women from taking up jobs that disturb these responsibilities. It was
found that women were disinclined from taking jobs in plants due to rotating shifts which wreak
havoc with childcare arrangements.

INTERNAL LABOUR MARKETS

Internal labour market conditions also dictate the sex segregation. The organisation is
structured in such a way that women in positions of authority almost always supervised
other women, though it is also common for women to be supervised by men. This means
that women are not given authority over men. This makes it almost impossible for women to
be in positions of actual power and authority.

The internal labour market favours men over men. This is seen in cases of promotions.
Women are much less likely to be in jobs with promotion opportunities, and career
ladders are typically longer for men. The few jobs containing men and women are
mostly in entry-level slots at the bottom of organizational hierarchies, and typically
women's promotion opportunities diminish almost entirely after moving a step or two
beyond entry level.

The internal workplace environment is not conducive to women where men dominate
in numbers and authority. Where production is highly interdependent, male workers may
perceive the entry of women as particularly disruptive to stable work group relationship.
Men' s exclusionary actions contribute to this by indicating that women are unwelcome in
men' s jobs.. Men are unconsciously hesitant to share their workplace with women and behave

13
Andrea H. Beller, Occupational Segregation by Sex: Determinants and Changes, Journal of Human Resources,
1982, vol. 17, issue 3, 371-392.

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so.14 In some cases they even go as far as sabotaging the female peers’ work in order to make
them look less attractive to employers.

Internal labour markets can preserve segregation, especially when entry-level jobs
are in segregated job categories. That is, when entry level jobs are itself segregated based on
sex, there is no scope for women to move forward in their career. Even a gender-neutral
promotion system can contribute to segregation as women are not present in jobs eligible for
promotion. As a result, the higher a job is on the ladder, the more skewed its sex ratio.

PAY GAP

Pay gap between men and women does exist though not formally. A significant pay gap is
prevalent in jobs where pay is based on individual bargaining. It is found that female dominated
jobs pay less, all things being equal. Cultural beliefs have devalued ‘women’s work’.
Contribution of female workers is underestimated. This coupled with the sex-labelled jobs
leads to a situation where women are paid less for the same work compared to men.

This pay gap has started a trend where women aspire to enter male jobs. A particular
attraction of male jobs is their higher pay. The higher pay and better benefits of male jobs are
particularly attractive to women supporting families15. Customarily male jobs also provide
better promotion opportunities and are more likely to confer authority.

Pay gap is due to two reasons: Women due to their childrearing responsibilities, have an
experience gap than their male peers; and the segregation of women into low-paying jobs.
When women take intermittent breaks to have children, they have to join their juniors when
they come back. They lose out on several opportunities because of this. Studies have found that
more the women in a job, the lower its pay. Female-typical jobs also are less likely to
provide benefits, on-the-job training, promotion opportunities, and the opportunity to
exercise authority.

14
Barbara R. Bergmann & William Darity, Jr., Social relations, productivity, and employer discrimination,
Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 104, No. 4 (April 1981), pp. 47-49.
15
Irene Padavic, White-Collar Work Values and Women's Interest in Blue-Collar Jobs, Gender & Society,
Volume: 6 issue: 2, (1992) 215-230.

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 JOB SATISFACTION

Men and women want different things from their jobs and their workplace. Job satisfaction
depends on not just earnings, but fringe benefits, working conditions, effort requirements, and
the chance for promotion, the quality of co-workers and supervisors, and the intrinsic benefits
from the actual work being done. Studies have found that job satisfaction of women is higher
in female dominated jobs. The higher job satisfaction of women in female dominated jobs
exists only because those jobs have unmeasured characteristics that women value. Higher
earnings add more to the job satisfaction of men than to that of women. Increased usual hours
of work

are often associated with lower job satisfaction of women but not of men.16 Studies conclude
that men consider earnings and responsibility to be more important than women. On the other
hand, they conclude that women consider good co-workers, a good supervisor, and the
significance of the task to be more important than men do.

Job satisfaction also depends on the work environment in which gender segregation also plays
a role. The extent of segregation may itself be considered a job attribute over which workers
have preferences. Men do not dislike working with women but dislike working for a woman.
But women’s job satisfaction increased with higher presence of women in the firm. This can
be attributable to the hostile work environment perpetuated in a male-dominated workplace. A
study with gender composition variables all things being equal found that women in
predominantly-male occupations often experience hostility and harassment from male co-
workers, feelings of isolation, and stress due to high visibility. Women in male-typed
occupations experience more sexual harassment and suffer more from it.

Flexibility is a factor of job satisfaction more important for women. Flexibility includes both
the formal policies of a firm and the informal ‘culture’ of the firm which is manifested by the
attitudes toward workers and individual accommodations for worker needs.

CONCLUSION

A variety of societal and economic changes have enhanced women's perceived access to
men's jobs. The women's liberation movement challenged traditional norms that had consigned

16
P. J. Sloane & H. Williams, Job Satisfaction, Comparison Earnings, and Gender, Labour, Volume 14, Issue 3
(September 2000), 473–502.

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the sexes to different kinds of work and today women are progressing in different fields that
were traditionally denied to them. However, studies show that occupational segregation based
on sex is still a reality because of lackadaisical enforcement of equal opportunity legislations,
organizational inertia and employers' outright opposition to integrating jobs. As long as these
issues exist, sex discrimination is likely to persist as a force in job assignments and promotions.
The growth in female headed households and the decline in families’ total earnings mean that
they pay gap that exists is detrimental to the welfare of the society. Women support their
families as much as men. It is therefore pertinent that the current situation changes. The present
trend of change though heartening is still not sufficient to address the issues faced by working
women.

Bibliography

1. Irene Padavic, White-Collar Work Values and Women's Interest in Blue-Collar Jobs,
Gender & Society, Volume: 6 issue: 2, (1992) 215-230.

2. P. J. Sloane & H. Williams, Job Satisfaction, Comparison Earnings, and Gender, Labour,
Volume 14, Issue 3(September 2000), 473–502.
3. Barbara R. Bergmann & William Darity, Jr., Social relations, productivity, and
employer discrimination, Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 104, No. 4 (April 1981), pp. 47-
49.
4. Andrea H. Beller, Occupational Segregation by Sex: Determinants and Changes, Journal
of Human Resources, 1982, vol. 17, issue 3, 371-392
5. William T. Bielby & James N. Baron, Men and Women at Work: Sex Segregation and
Statistical Discrimination, American Journal of Sociology 91, no. 4 (Jan., 1986): 759-
799.
6. Reskin & Roos, Job Queues, Gender Queues: Explaining Women's Inroads into Male
Occupations, Women in the Political Economy, Temple University Press, 1990
7. Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer, The Sex-Labeling of Jobs, Industrial Relations, Volume
7, Issue 3 May 1968, 219–234.

ACTS

1. Equal remuneration Act,1976.

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