Introduction

Women's economic position is not comparable to that of men's. Data on both earnings and occupational achievement leave no doubt that women have a secondary economic position. This is true not only in the United States and England, but in all countries for which data exist (see Blau et al., 1986).

Women are segregated into what some have called ‘women's jobs’. Table 6.1 depicts the relatively unequal occupational distributions for 1960–81. But even this table cannot detail the more subtle sex differences omitted by broad occupational categories. Whereas women seem to be sufficiently represented in prestigious occupations such as the professional category, this statistic is somewhat misleading. Professional employment includes teachers, nurses, and other relatively low-paying jobs within the professional category. Thus looking at broad occupations is not always a satisfactory way of measuring female economic success. For this reason earnings data are often used to obtain more information on the relative position of women.

Table 6.2 contains earnings data. Gender differences in economic well-being are clear. Pay of women averages 65% to 90% that of men. The gap has been relatively constant (Beller et al., 1988), but here is some evidence of a narrowing in recent years (see table 5.4 above, and O'Neill et al, forthcoming.)