Editor:
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía
Issued date:
2012-12
ISSN:
2340-5031
Sponsor:
Guinea-Martin acknowledges funding from the
Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom through grant RES-163-27-1003, and from the
Spanish government through contract RYC-2008-03758, and grants CSO2008-03222 and CSO2011-30179-C02-02.
Mora acknowledges financial help from the Spanish government through grant ECO2009-11165. Ruiz-Castillo
acknowledges financial help from the Spanish government through grant SEJ2007-67436
Serie/No.:
UC3M Working papers. Economics 11-40
Keywords:
Britain
,
Disadvantage
,
Ethnicity
,
Gender
,
Intersectionality
,
Mutual Information Index
,
Occupations
,
Segregation
Rights:
Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 España
Abstract:
This article studies the effects of gender and ethnicity on occupational segregation. The traditional approach to this topic measures the two sources of segregation separately. In contrast, we measure the joint effect of gender and ethnicity by applying a multThis article studies the effects of gender and ethnicity on occupational segregation. The traditional approach to this topic measures the two sources of segregation separately. In contrast, we measure the joint effect of gender and ethnicity by applying a multigroup segregation index–the Mutual Information or M index–to the product of the two genders and seven ethnic groups distinguished in our census data for England and Wales in 2001. We exploit M's strong group decomposability property to consistently pose the following two questions: (i) How much does each source contribute to occupational segregation, controlling for the effect of the other? (ii) Is the combined
impact of gender and ethnicity greater than, equal to, or smaller than the sum of their individual effects? The main empirical findings are the following two. First, we confirm previous results showing the greater importance of gender over ethnicity as a source of occupational segregation. However, we find that ethnicity contributes 13.5 percent of overall segregation in geographical areas where minorities concentrate. Second, contrary to intersectionality theories, we find that there is a small, “dwindling” interaction effect between the two sources of segregation: ethnicity slightly weakens the segregative power of gender, and vice versa.[+][-]