Changes in the shape of the job queue

In their study, Reskin and Roos (1990: 39-42) emphasised the way that transformations in the US economy reshaped the job queue by generating millions of new service sector jobs. In this context, women were able to enter many traditionally male-majority jobs largely because demand outstripped the supply of men with appropriate skills and qualifications. Indeed, their findings suggest that sex segregation dropped most in the fastest-growing occupations.

Table 6.4 shows the pattern of job growth for the 1990s and the share of new jobs taken by women for the male-majority occupations with a disproportionate rise in female share (as listed in Table 6.1).

As anticipated, the majority of occupations listed - 14 out of 22 - experienced above- average job growth. Some, such as personnel/training managers, computer systems managers, medical practitioners, solicitors and management/business consultants, saw job growth of around 50% or more over the 1990s, raising the share of all employees in these five occupations up to 2.2% by 2000. In each case, women’s share of new jobs was higher than their share of the occupation in 1991-93. Indeed, several of these male-majority occupations saw women taking the vast bulk of new jobs during the 1990s (more than 80%), representing a clear break from past patterns of recruitment and retention. Examples include personnel/training managers; authors, writers and journalists; actors/ stage managers; and police officers (sergeant and below). The evidence therefore does seem to support the general idea that job growth fosters feminisation. Given the relatively high skill characteristics of these occupations, it is possible that fast job growth has opened up male occupations to women since the supply of suitably qualified male candidates was exceeded by demand.15

There are also examples where women enjoyed job growth despite a substantial decline in numbers of men employed in the occupation. For the occupation, ‘banking etc. managers’, the number of male employees collapsed during the 1990s from around 80,000 in 1991 to a little over 50,000 in 2000. But female employment increased from just over 20,000 to close to 30,000 by 2000.

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We want to stress, however, that our sketch of employment trends does not make this finding generalisable; further work is required to test whether or not there is a statistically significant relation between feminisation and job growth. Indeed, some of the strongly male-dominated occupations that have so far proven resilient to change (identified in Table 6.3) also experienced fast job growth, including treasurers/financial managers, marketing and sales managers, security guards, and drivers of road goods vehicles.

Table 6.4 Job growth in feminising male-majority occupations, 1991-93

to 1998-2000

Percentage change:

Total job growth Women's share of new jobs*

All occupations 7.4 55.9

Administrators - national government -22.5 --

Personnel, training, etc. managers 53.3 84.3

Computer systems etc managers 62.8 26.8

Banking etc managers -20.8 --

Other managers & administrators 36.4 67.9

Biological scientists & biochemists 35.7 63.4

Other natural scientists 2.5 --

Planning & quality control engineers -32.6 --

Medical practitioners 50.1 44.5

Education officers, school inspectors -8.2 --

Solicitors 46.9 65.5

Chartered & certified accountants 4.6 --

Management accountants 28.7 55.0

Management, business consultants, etc.

90.5 39.3

Computer analysts, programmers 37.0 37.9

Authors, writers, journalists 13.7 89.8

Actors, stage managers, etc. 25.4 82.4

Vocational & industrial trainers 32.8 62.8

Other associate professionals etc 85.2 55.3

Police officers (sergeant and below) 8.2 81.3

Technical & wholesale sales reps -7.7 --

Other sales reps -0.6 --

Notes: List of occupations taken from Table 6.1. * Calculation of women’s share of new jobs is only provided where both men’s and women’s employment increased.

Source: Labour Force Survey.

We also need to examine the extent to which feminisation of these male-dominated occupations has been associated with the change in the share of female employees in part-time jobs. Table 6.5 does this for all feminising occupations (defined, as above, as occupations with an increase in female share of at least three percentage

points during the 1990s period) - with separate columns for the 22 male-majority occupations and for the 15 female-majority occupations. At the aggregate level, there was very little change in the proportion of female employees in part-time jobs during this period, from 43.3% to 43.8%. However, among the 22 feminising male-majority occupations, the share of women in part-time jobs increased by more than the average aggregate level in all but five cases. We must treat estimates of part-time shares with a good deal of caution because of small sample sizes. Nevertheless, evidence of the growth of part-time work appears to be especially apparent among administrators in national government (with a rise from less than one in ten women in part-time jobs to close to one in five); management/business consultants (from 4% to 15%); and police officers (sergeant and below) where again, although the sample size is too low to be reliable, the size of the change does suggest a significant rise.16 2001 and 2005 data support this rise for police officers (sergeant and below) with a near doubling of women part-timers, from around 4,000 to 7,000, a jump from 12% to 20% of female officers.

Curiously, similar evidence of a rising share of women in part-time jobs is also true among feminising female-majority jobs, as shown in the right hand side of Table 6.5. In 11 of the 15 cases, the part-time share of female employment increased more than the average aggregate level (again, subject to disclaimers about small sample sizes). However, what is clearly apparent is the difference in relative levels between the two columns of occupations. The part-time share of women’s jobs in 1998-2000 differs significantly between feminising male-majority and feminising female-majority occupations. Feminising male-majority occupations have part-time shares ranging from 8% to 30%, while feminising female-majority occupations range from 17% to 61%.

Hence, while the increased shared or women in part-time jobs in male-majority occupations is part of the story underpinning women’s gains in male-majority occupations, on the whole women’s share of new jobs has not been strongly contingent upon accessing new opportunities to work part-time. In less than half the 22 occupations shown has the increase in the part-time share of women’s jobs been more than three percentage points. Among expanding occupations, the vast majority of women’s increased employment was in full-time work. Among police officers, for example, where jobs increased slightly above the national average at 8% during the 1990s, women accounted for four in five of the net gain in jobs and only around one in four of these were part-time.

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Pooled data for 1991-93 show 766 female part-timers working as police officers (sergeant and below) and an increase to 8,922 for 1998-2000. This compares to 47,338 female full-timers in 1991-93 and 67,934 in 1998-2000.

Table 6.5 The share of women in part-time jobs in feminising occupations, 1991-93 and 1998-2000

Feminising male-majority occupations Feminising female-majority occupations Share of women in

part-time jobs

Share of women in part-time jobs

1991-93 1998-2000 1991-93 1998-2000

Administrators - national gov’t 9.2* 17.8* Other sales reps 33.4 29.7 Personnel, training, etc.

managers

6.8* 10.9 Other financial etc managers

14.9 18.3 Computer systems etc managers 2.9* 9.6* Education registrars 15.0* 26.9* Banking etc managers 7.9* 8.8* Pharmacists,

pharmacologists

31.1* 22.4* Other managers & administrators 12.6 14.6 Special education

teachers, etc.

30.8 33.9 Biological scientists &

biochemists

15.2* 15.8* Other teaching professionals

62.8 61.3 Other natural scientists 11.1* 11.8* Medical, dental

technicians, etc.

31.6* 45.0 Planning and quality control

engineers

5.9* 8.4* Legal service& related occupations

14.3* 17.0* Medical practitioners 26.3* 21.3 Matrons, houseparents 24.9* 30.6 Education officers, school

inspectors

11.6* 16.6* Careers advice, etc, specialists

30.3* 28.9* Solicitors 13.0* 11.1* Local government clerical

staff

31.5 30.1 Chartered & certified accountants 8.4* 12.8* Counter clerks & cashiers 34.7 45.9 Management accountants 7.0* 8.2* Filing & record clerks 33.5 35.1 Management, business

consultants, etc.

3.6* 14.6* Hospital ward assistants 59.1 61.0 Computer analysts, programmers 12.6* 17.7 Routine laboratory testers 31.6* 44.4* Authors, writers, journalists 14.0* 16.0* Other related farming

occupations

44.8* 52.5 Actors, stage managers, etc. 11.5* 22.1*

Vocational & industrial trainers 17.6* 23.3 Other associate professionals etc 18.4* 17.7* Police officers (sergeant & below) 1.6* 11.6* Technical & wholesale sales reps 17.5* 9.4*

Notes: Definitions of feminising, male-majority and female-majority follow those adopted above. Figures with a ‘*’ involve sample sizes below 20,000 (for the pooled data) and are therefore not reliable estimates.