Gender segregation : from birth to occupation

Abstract

Most of the existing literature studies the gender segregation induced by occupational choices in the employed population. This paper also studies the segregation induced by age/education characteristics and labor market participation decisions in the population consisting of non-students of working age. The gender segregation index used, related to the entropy notion in information theory, is additively decomposable for any partition and it has a commutability property. The empirical part uses Labor Force Survey data for Spain for 1977 and 1992. In both years, most of the gender segregation takes place within, rather than between age/education subgroups. In 1977 labor market participation decisions account for 67.6 per cent of overall gender segregation. During the 1977-1993 period, most of the 27 per cent reduction in overall gender segregation can be attributed to labor market participation changes, while gender segregation induced by occupational choices remains essentially stable.