Occupational sex integration

Between 1970 and 1980 occupational sex integration increased by 10 percent, but the sex wage gap for full-time workers declined by under 2 percent. For many occupations, greater occupational sex integration may be opposed by patriarchy in the work place. Religions, and the occupations that sustain them, in general, appear to be very much opposed to sex integration. Efforts to integrate various occupations and the work place are occasionally met with violence.
Sex wage gap
When the dominant group is married men, for example, the sex wage gap need can be due to the need of themselves as household heads for a "family wage". When millions of women became heads of households, occupation supplanted as the principle for assigning wages. Whereas the major disparity is between the married men at the top who own or manage and married women whom they usually pay less for the same work and qualifications than singles. By the seventeenth century the wages of men are higher than women’s and the tasks done are different, though similar in skill and strength requirements.
"When gender imbalance at the top (with men in the majority) is combined with greater sex integration further down the hierarchy, women experience greater “fit” within the organisation than when that gender imbalance permeates all management levels." Further, an integrated top management team in terms of gender mix is possibly the single most important factor in creating a culture in which women feel comfortable and valued.
Corrections
With an increase of women in corrections has come a trend toward sex integration of the workforce in all-male facilities.
Military patriarchy
Israel is the only nation to conscript women and assign some of them to infantry combatant service which places them directly in the line of enemy fire. In Israel, with respect to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the 2000 Equality amendment to the Military Service law states "The right of women to serve in any role in the IDF is equal to the right of men."
"The patriarchal and often misogynist structure of the military and the gendered hierarchy which exists, applies to the Canadian, Amencan and most Western European armies and is arguably an ontological feature of any modem military structure." The twentieth century has been witness to massive militarization, and the military culture that pervades our society may be patriarchal in both form and function. though this remains a minority opinion among classical historians. But, evidence of high-ranking warrior women comes from kurgans in southern Ukraine and Russia. David Anthony notes, "About 20% of Scythian-Sarmatian "warrior graves" on the lower Don and lower Volga contained females dressed for battle as if they were men, a phenomenon that probably inspired the Greek tales about the Amazons." Up to 25% of military burials are of armed Sarmatian women usually including bows.
Apparently, a group of women served as combatants during the American revolutionary war, though their numbers are unclear.
Priests
On July 29, 1974, eleven women were ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church. The possibility of allowing women to be ordained clergy first arose in the Episcopal Church in 1920 at a Lambeth, England, conference of the Anglican Communion.
The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America is another female-ordaining denomination.
Due to a shortage of male priests most of the three hundred priestless Roman Catholic parishes in the United States are "pastored" by women.
Apparently, there are women clerics of Islam in Central Asia. And, women Mullahs exist in the Islamic Republic of Iran, although not officially sanctioned.
Within the various Jewish denominations there are different requirements for rabbinic ordination, and differences in opinion regarding who is to be recognized as a rabbi. Almost all types of Judaism ordain women as rabbis and cantors.
Within the Australian labour market, 'ministers of religion' is one of the least sex integrated occupations.
Integration into low-status occupations
Japan has greater occupational age segregation than in the United States, which demonstrates the degree to which workers have to "wait their turn", with managerial and administrative occupations in particular dominated by older males.
Domestic work
The average number of hours spent in paid work and education by those aged 15-29 has changed very little between 1986 and 1998. A breakdown by age groups tells a different story: for the 15-19 group the big decrease has been hours spent in education rather than on paid work. Kolkata Metro Railways started the practice of reserving two entire compartments for females. There are even whole trains only for women.
Violence at work
In Sweden and other countries the labour market is highly segregated, where most occupations and organizations are partly, or to a great extent numerically dominated by one of the two sexes. For female-dominated work sites, both men and women laborers reported more than twice as many threats of violence than at sex-integrated work sites, and three times as many than at male-dominated work sites.<ref name=Svedberg/>

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu