Gender Segregation

Gender Segregation

The nation has transitioned through many important grass roots campaigns that have brought about radical, but significant change. The land of opportunity as we know it to be in present day may not be as such if brave men and women had not stood up for equal rights. One campaign in particular is best known as the women's suffrage movement which aimed to achieve a woman's entitlement to vote. Collectively, their pleas for equality gradually grew loud enough to influence the government to enact The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The gradual progress to true equality between men and women has been at the forefront of many social and political research studies. Brooks and Jarmin (2010) from the Institute for Women's Policy Research in Washington, D.C., have continued to study the difference between men and women. On September 15, 2010, the Human Resource Management Journal published their latest study, Gender Segregation, which highlights empirical data which proves gender segregation has not entirely disappeared, but gradual improvements can be seen.

Brooks and Jarmin (2010) analyzed data from a Population Survey to evaluate gender segregation in U.S. employment from the early 1970's to present day. The study found that women are making progress in some lucrative male-dominated professions. For example, the percentage of women lawyers has risen from 4 % in 1972 to 32% in 2010. The study utilized the Index of Dissimilarity which is a common measure used for assessing segregation between two groups. This tool measures scores from 0 to 1, where the higher the number, the more segregated the two groups are. This measure computes the sum total in a larger area of the differences in the relative populations in sub areas. Overall, the study found that progress towards equality has stalled since 1996.

Women continue to dominate traditional female professions by and large earn less income. Women accounted for over 95% of kindergarten teachers, librarians, dental assistants and registered nurses this last year. Some sectors have seen a significant deterioration, with the percentage of women computer programmers falling from more than one-third in the late 1980s to less than 21 percent in 2010, and from 13 percent of civil engineers in 2005 to just over 7 percent in 2009. Researchers also found that young women experienced more segregation in 2009 than they did ten years previously; eliminating 20 percent of the improvement achieved through 1968. The study explains that women are now more likely to have some years of post-secondary education than men. However, the study found that regardless of job specific education requirements, professions predominantly held by women continue to attract lower average salary earnings in comparison to professions that are composed of an even gender base and professions predominantly held by the male gender.

Dental hygienists, who are majority women, have higher average weekly earnings of $956 than occupations almost exclusively held by men such as electricians earning $856 or