Facilitating Women's Occupational Integration. Background Paper No. 26.

Occupational sex segregation is one of the most obvious facts of economic life. The largest declines in the sex segregation index between 1970 and 1980 were in the managerial and professional specialty and in the service occupations. Changes were greater for white-collar than blue-collar occupations for both white and minority women. White women reduced their entry into a number of traditionally female white-collar occupations that minority women, leaving private household work, continued to enter. It has been easier to pass laws mandating equal opportunity and affirmative action than to eliminate institutional and informal obstacles, such as sexual harassment or coworker hostility, outmoded administrative rules and procedures by employers and unions, and gender-tracked promotional ladders. There has been some growth in the number of women training for and entering higher-status, skilled blue-collar crafts. There are more women apprentices than women currently employed in the occupations. In construction, federally-mandated goals and timetables established in 1978 have led to increases in women employees, although enforcement efforts have been lax since 198l. In 1978, over 150 programs were able to recruit and train women for apprenticeships; only 50 remain after training and enforcement cutbacks. Federal training programs are doing relatively little to recruit and place women into nontraditional jobs; however, funding under the Perkins Vocational Education Act has been crucial to sustaining the successful community-based preapprenticeship training programs. (The paper also includes sections on integration of white-collar work, the impact of technological change, and policy implications and recommendations. Four data tables, a list of organizations contacted, and 115 references are included.) (CML)