There are various approaches to understanding gender segregation. To understand the theoretical conceptualisation of what gender is as a social phenomenon, Ridgeway and Correll, 2004, put forward that gender is not, “primarily an identity or role that is taught is childhood and enacted in family relations.” Instead, “Gender is an institutionalized system of social practices for constituting people as two significantly different categories, men and women, and organizing social relations of inequality on the basis of that difference” (ibid, pp 510) They contend that the whole gender system and the social structure of inequality and difference which branches from it rests on the widely established cultural beliefs about the distinguishing characteristics of men and women and how they are expected to behave.
Acker, back in 1990 pointed out that organizational structure is not gender neutral. Their gendered nature is partly masked through nature of work and the universal worker is actually a man. Acker contends organisations are not only gendered and patriarchal where women only occupy positions on the lower ranks. As Joan Acker argued, it is part of the larger strategy of control in industrial capitalist societies and is built on a deeply embedded substructure of gender difference. Between 1995 and 1996, Lee undertook a research to find out why science, mathematics and engineering disciplines loose potential women and framed these trends as identity — acquisition issues. Lee examined the links between gender, selfconcepts and focused on how these contributed to the student’s interest in science, mathematics and engineering interests and its effect on the student’s ‘educational trajectories.’ According to Lee, on average, girls’ self-concepts are more like their perceptions of same-sex others than those of boys, and more unlike their perceptions of other science students. The discrepancies between self-concepts and perceptions of those in science-related disciplines were associated with lower interest in those disciplines. The discrepancies explained some differences, by sex, in interests. Lee used the identity theory to explain how men and women interrelate in any social relational context.
Similarly, Hacker used observatory and exploratory studies in the form of in-depth interviews with a group of young men and women engineers and discussed issues around family, friendship, childhood intimacy. Hacker found that young men studying humanities were able to communicate better emotionally than their male counterparts in engineering. The young men studying engineering learned to value control over natural — emotions, feelings, intimacy. As Cockburn, points out as an effect of this process, later in life, women are naturally perceived as better carers, while men are perceived as naturally occupying the economic role.
A number of theoretical explanations to understand how gender structures the social and economic life from a theoretical and empirical standpoint have been put forward. According to Gregory and Windebank (2000) there are two sets oftheorisations/explanations that explain women’s position in employment (paid and un-paid work.) — ‘universalistic theorisations’ and ‘particularistic explanations’. Universalistic theorisations ‘… seek to provide universal theoretical models for understanding the gender division of labour across societies based on over-arching analyses of social structures or economic behaviour. ’ For instance, in Europe, after the two major World Wars and due to the low number of men, women’s role outside the ‘home’ became prominent. A large number of women started working in paid employments and gradually gained/earned recognition. Gradually, over the years, national and state policies were designed in a way that was inclusive of women’s welfares, e. g. provision of childcare facilities and others. In this sense, economic deprivation acted as an impetus for women to seek employment. Particularistic explanations, ‘.. .does not involve an over-arching analysis of social structures, is based more often on empirical research and focuses on one or more explanatory variable.’(Gregory and Windebank, 2000, pp 102)
Till the 1960’s women’s work was assumed to be unimportant and was therefore excluded from mainstream work. The ‘unisex’ worker was given the main attention. The economic importance of domestic labour was not given any importance and women’s responsibility in terms of domestic labour was deemed as biologically natural in sociology. Women’s role as a homemaker was regarded as natural and ‘indispensable’ for the stability of the society (Parsons, 1955). The Parsonian view of the ideal family conceptualised gender relations in terms of sex roles: men performed the instrumental role and mainly catered for work outside home while women performed the expressive role of looking after the internal needs of the family. These sex roles should be kept intact so that there is peace and harmony between the occupational structure and the kinship system. However, soon after the Parsonian view received several criticism from feminist circles and the question of women’s oppression and exclusion from the labour market were highlighted and questions as to why women were primarily responsible for household care, what role does household care/ domestic labour have on the society and how this relates to women’s position in paid work were brought forward. A number of theoretical explanations (both universalistic and pluralistic) to explain women’s employment were developed — Micro-economic theorizations (Human Capital, Rational Choice, Hakim’s Preference theory), Marxist — Feminist, Liberal-Feminist, and Labour Market Segmentation.
The neo-classical economic theories of human capital: Becker (1964), Mincer (1966), Polacheck (1981) primarily focussed on the worker’s position in the workforce. It is assumed that the choices that the workers make both from the demand and supply sides of the labour market, determines their position in the labour force. Workers are viewed as a stock of human capital, which is a combination of experience and qualification. Worker’s productivity is directly proportional to their qualification and experience, which means the more qualified and experienced the workers are their human capital too increases. The more productive workers earn more money and gain more senior positions within the labour force. According to this theory, women make different decisions from men. Compared to men, they spend less time in education and training and devote majority of their time to household and domestic care. This results in lower productivity and lesser human capital than men, which is why many employers are hesitant to invest in women’s human capital. Women rationally choose to focus on child bearing and domestic work, and sacrifice better qualification or valued experiences in exchange of domestic work, thereby reducing their human capital. While men rationally choose more demanding work experience or more valued qualifications to maximise the earning of family as a unit, as a result human capital of the man increases, which implies the segregation between the man and woman increases in terms of their human capital.
Becker (1964) further developed the Rational choice theory by developing the conceptualisation of the household as a production unit within the neo-classical model to explain the growing number of women remaining in the labour force. He justified gender divisions in terms of the choices couples make to maximise the family’s wellbeing. This was explained in terms of two types of production: market and domestic. According to him, couples choose rationally to divide their time between domestic and outside work depending on their economic circumstances, abilities and preferences to maximise their well-being. This has similarities with the Parsonian view, we discussed earlier. Further explanations were suggested by Lemmenicier (1980) and Sofer (1986). According to them married women with caring responsibilities rationally choose domestic work than paid outside work to compensate the cost of expensive childcare.
Hakim’s (1996,1998, 2000) Preference theory is the refinement of the rational choice and human capital theories. She adopted a Beckerian approach to explain the nature of women’s employment in the labour force. She identified three basic types of women in relation to their family and work commitments, (work centered, home centered and adaptive women.) According to the Marxist Feminists, women have a different place in the production/reproduction process to men because of their role in domestic labour. They emphasise that women’s oppression within capitalism have a material basis, which is domestic labour. Further theories developed from the notion that women’s employment patterns were to some extent determined by capitalist relations. Marx’s ‘cyclical reserve army’ theory implies that women are pulled into the labour force by capitalism when there is an economic boom and returned to the family in times of recession. Braverman’s theory on the other hand explained that women spent a much longer time in employment not as a result of cyclical variations but due to the fact that Taylorist-inspired managerial strategy led women to take up newly deskilled jobs. Secondly, there was a progressive shift of household tasks to the factory due to the emergence of machines replacing some of the basic household duties.
The Marxist segmentation theory explains the divisions between by gender, ethnicity and social class within the labour market in terms of the outcome of the struggle between capital and labour. It divides the society into two types of labour markets, the primary market which provides the top jobs associated with stability, good pay and secondary market, which is characterised by ‘precarious and unstable employment. (Collin and Young 2000)
Thus Marxist Feminists explain why capitalism acts as a primary source for subjugating and oppressing women and their secondary status in the capitalist society due to their continuing responsibility for domestic labour, which is often deemed as ‘unproductive’ in the Marxist sense. Firstly because domestic work cannot be exchanged in the market against a wage and secondly’ it does not work directly with the capital’s means of production to produce commodities which have a calculable exchange value from which surplus value can be directly extracted (Gregory and Wind — ebank, 2000). It is interesting to note that Marxists Feminists analysis does not highlight the fact that women’s participation in the labour market can be examined as part of a patriarchal system and whether gender relations are part of the capitalist mode of production, patriarchal mode of production or both (Hartman 1981, Walby 1990, 1997).
The Feminist Marxists propagated that women’s oppression in terms of their employment and domestic work was linked to capitalism and patriarchy and that women’s domestic labour needed to be looked at from the angle of the patriarchal system. Women’s primary responsibility for domestic and household duties puts them in an unfavourable and disadvantaged position. According to Hartmann, patriarchy is “a set of social relations between men, which have a material base, and which, though hierarchical, establish or create interdependence or solidarity among men that enable them to dominate women.”(Hartmann, 1981: pp) The ‘material base upon which patriarchy rests ’ is fundamentally men’s control of women which is manifested in terms of men excluding women from participating in the labour force, and ensuring women are the primary carers for domestic and household duties and childcare. Women are denied access to economically productive resources as a result of domestic and household responsibilities, thus lacks the opportunities to acquiring training and upskilling and on the other hand men form an alliance with capital (Walby, 1990). The evidence for this is cited in the development of capitalism, as well as the working class response to its problems in the form of demands for protective legislation and family wage. The main logic behind was that both were fought for by male workers in order to benefit them by putting women into household duties where they could both service men and be controlled sexually by them. (German, 2006) In Britain, the development of capitalism destroyed domestic production and forced men, women and children to forcibly enter the factory system. This changed the dynamics of the traditional family setting as women were working longer hours and depending on older children to look after the younger ones. And this had a devastating repercussion on the reproduction of the working class. As a result of this, infant mortality reached horrific levels, (as Marx stated in Capital) because women were working long hours away from home. Marx and Engels described the horrific early factory system in, ‘The condition of the Working Class in England’, how it pulled the old pre-capitalist family apart as more and more members from each family became ‘wage labourers’. It was also during this time that the demand for protective legislation and family wages came up. Walby further advanced the theories of patriarchy and developed the concept of ‘private’ and ‘public’ patriarchy and put forward gender relations as an autonomous relation from capital. She describes private patriarchy as being based on the household where women are denied all access to paid employment and are dependent on the father or husband as the patriarch. Whereas in the public patriarchy, women are subordinated within the structures other than the household, and are segregated from men, given lower pay and status. Walby points out that there is a shift from private to public patriarchy, mostly in industrialised nations, which arose as result of the capitalist interest of employing more women who were able to readily available for cheap labour and also partly due to a feminist movement. The conflict within capitalism lies within the patriarchal structure and private patriarchy.
Blackburn et al, 2002 put forward the social reproduction and changing gender relations theory in contract to the theories discussed earlier, which they state as ‘essentially static, and unable to explain a real situation which is continually changing and developing. ’ They take into account three important processes which have crucial influence on gender segregation and inequality which would possibly capture its dynamic nature. They are firstly, the substantial expansion of education in last 50 years, secondly considerable change in occupational structures and thirdly an increase in adult female participation in the labour force which has become relatively easier, especially for women with childcare needs. In order to understand and theorise why women entered the labour force, we need to focus on the women’s familial and social roles and their relation to the labour market. Traditionally women were in charge of the sole responsibility of rearing the children, taking care of domestic responsibilities and providing an ideal atmosphere where the man of the family could progress and succeed in their profession. Women’s multiple role as an obedient daughter, skilful, efficient and capable wife, and a caring mother as predisposed by the patriarchal notion of family puts them at a disadvantage to be a skilled worker.