ABSTRACT
Despite highly visible exceptions local television news anchor teams, most occupations remain skewed toward either men or women. The concentrations of women and men in different jobs, occupations and industries are what sociologists mean when they refer to the gender segregation of work. The early 1980s was a period of great energy and optimism both for research and policy on occupational gender segregation. The most widely used measure of segregation is the "index of dissimilarity," which measures the proportions of women who would have to change fields in order to be represented across types of occupations in the same proportions as men are. The surge in women's education is probably linked to gender segregation at work in several ways. While forecasting trends is treacherous, it seems safe to predict that the gender segregation of jobs in the year 2020 will resemble current patterns.
