A Sociological Perspective on Gender and Career Outcomes

Both economists and sociologists have documented the association between gender and career outcomes. Men are more likely than women to participate in the labor force, and men average more hours of paid labor per week and more weeks per year. Women and men tend to hold different occupations and to work in different industries, firms and jobs. Furthermore, men outearn women, hold more complex jobs and are more likely to supervise workers of the other sex and to dominate the top positions in their organization. The challenge for both disciplines lies not in showing that gender is linked to employment outcomes, but in explaining the associations. Economists have sought explanations in the characteristics and preferences of individual workers or employers. Some have attributed the associations between workers' sex and their career outcomes to sex differences in training and experience, career commitment or competing demands on time and energy. Others focus on employers' preferences for workers of one sex over the other ("taste discrimination") or on employers' beliefs that workers of one sex or the other are more costly or less profitable to employ ("statistical discrimination"). The sociological approach differs from that of economists in recognizing sex segregation as a causal mechanism that gives rise to other differences between women's and men's careers. This emphasis on segregation reflects sociologists' interest in the ramifications of societal-level systems of differentiation and stratification. It stems also from the discipline's concern with the impact of people's location in social structures on a variety of life outcomes. By concentrating men and women in different jobs, segregation exposes them to more or less similar employment