ABSTRACT
While the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has opened doors to employment for women and people of color, their increased access to work blurs the job sorting and segregation that still goes on within occupations (Hesse-Biber and Carter 2005). These trends are particularly visible in the professions. While traditionally male-dominated fields, the professions of law, medicine, and veterinary medicine have seen sharp increases in the entrance of women into their ranks (Boulis and Jacobs 2008; Epstein 1993; Hesse-Biber and Carter 2005; Irvine and Vermilya 2010; Reskin and Roos 1990). People of color have also made progress in these fields, but the level of that progress varies by profession and by racial or ethnic group (for health care see Grumbach and Mendoza 2008; for lawyers see Wilder 2008). Beyond just detailing the entrance of new groups into the professions, it is important for researchers to examine the types of firms, offices, and specialties in which women and people of color work once they leave professional schools. Additionally, it is important to continue to move beyond the dichotomous categorization of workers as either male or female, and white or non-white. This chapter provides a glimpse at workplace segregation today, by reviewing occupational ghettoization and using the legal profession as an illustration of professional ghettoization in today’s workforce.
