ABSTRACT
Occupational sex-typing is the process by which jobs are designated as male or female. Occupational sex segregation, the degree to which men and women are concentrated in distinctive jobs, has been extraordinarily constant. Despite the rise of antidiscrimination laws and changes in gender norms, occupational sex-segregation declined only slightly between 1950 and 1981 (Reskin and Roos 1990). There are at least five major theories of occupational sex-typing: Sex-Role, Labor Supply, Status Segregation, Buffering from Labor Costs, and Political Process, Historical evidence has cast doubt on the usefulness of the first two while supporting and validating the continued importance of the last three. Most discussions of women's work use all five, with no author being particularly associated with any one position.
