Mixed gender occupations bring greater pay inequality, says study

The trend for people to work in occupations traditionally seen as dominated by men or women leads to an increased pay gap between men and women, a new large-scale research study says.
Countries which have more occupations which are dominated by one sex have more equality in pay between the sexes overall, according to research by Dr Robert Blackburn, of the University of Cambridge.
In an analysis of 20 countries in five continents, Dr Blackburn's study, the first of its kind to be conducted on a global scale, contradicts assumptions about the advantages of bringing men into traditionally women-dominated occupations and women into male-dominated occupations. 
Dr Blackburn and two co-authors found that where men and women are more equally distributed across occupations, in countries such as Austria, the Netherlands, and Japan, the average pay of men was much higher than that of women.
In countries such as Brazil, Hungary, Mexico and Sweden, where there is less equality in the number of men and women in each occupation, the difference in average pay between the sexes was less.

Segregation
"Higher overall segregation tends to reduce male advantage and improve the position of women," say the authors in the study, entitled 'Vertical and Horizontal Gender Segregation: Cross-National Comparison and Analysis'. Dr Blackburn worked with Dr Girts Racko, also of the University of Cambridge, and Dr Jennifer Jarman, of the National University of Singapore.
Dr Blackburn, Emeritus Reader in Sociology and Fellow of Clare College, says the reason is that there is less competition between men and women for top jobs in more integrated occupations.

"Where you get the sexes competing, there tends to be a gender bias so that men tend to get the best-paying jobs,” he says. “However if there are no men in a particular occupation, then the highest paid jobs must by definition be occupied by women.
Dr Blackburn said the study was not suggesting that integration could or should be prevented, only that its effects be understood. 

 
The research also found that: 
 
* The greater the economic and technical development in the country, the more that men have better-paying jobs.
* Catholic countries tend to have greater pay equality among men and women than countries dominated by other religions or denominations.
* Countries that espouse laissez-faire capitalism have a bigger inequality between the pay of men and women.
* Scandinavian countries typically had quite a high level of separation of men and women in different careers and so more equal pay.