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18 Women in the Economy (MWG-011)
(off peak work vis-à-vis peak season time-bond activities) also lead to wage differences
between men and women workers.
• Use of obsolete technology: In industry the tasks assigned to women are usually
performed by using low capital-intensive technology. The processes they participate in, tend
to be more primitive, using crude tools, consuming more of manual/physical energy. As a
result, production tends to be slow, the product non-standardized and the wages low.
• Engaged in dispensable labor: For example, with regard to handicrafts, women’s skills
mostly consist of capital and energy saving ingenuity. They are seldom found giving a definite
distinctive character to the final products which leads to the survival of handicrafts. Women’s
skills are limited to helping with ancillaries and are therefore dispensable making women’s
wages low.
• Loose ties with labor market: The low wages is related to the loose ties of most of the
women with the labor market. Having internalized the patriarchal values, they feel that their
first responsibility is to look after their homes and their children. They give up a job after child
birth and reenter the job market when their children start going to full time school.

Q7. What are the effects and measures to remove wage differentials?
Ans. Effects of Wage Differentials
• Subordination of women in the workplace.
• Family
• Community and public life
• son preference
• Man is treated as a ‘bread winner’
• Head of the Household
For identical work profile, women are paid less. And women are confined to relatively inferior tasks
and more of contractual or casual work. Women employees get differential opportunities, differentials
treatment and differential treatment.
Despite the rapid and global increases in female paid employment in recent years, occupational
segregation by sex remains a worldwide phenomenon. It can be an important indicator of women’s
disadvantaged position in labor market. Indeed, higher levels of occupational segregation are
generally associated with poorer labor-market conditions for women, lower pay, lower status, and
more limited career opportunities, among others. It can be also be a source of labor market rigidity
and thus economic inefficiency.
Women are more likely to be working in ‘men’s job’ than the opposite. But, as a rule, women are
employed in a narrower range of occupations than men. Male-dominated, non-agricultural
occupations are over seven times more numerous than female-dominated occupations. Women
dominate in clerical and secretarial jobs and in low-end service occupations (as shop assistants,
waitresses, maids, hairdressers, dressmakers), and as professionals they are most likely to be teachers
or nurses. The ‘female occupations’ generally pay less and have lesser status and advancement
prospects.
A distinction is usually made between two different forms of occupational segregation. Horizontal
segregation, refers to the distribution of men and women across occupations (e.g.,, women as maids
and men as truck drivers); while the other, termed as vertical segregation refers to the distribution of
men and women in the job hierarchy in terms of status within an occupation (e.g. production workers
versus production supervisors). Neither form of occupational segregation correlates well with the level
of socioeconomic development across countries. Both vary by region, however, which suggests that
social, historical and cultural factors might be important in determining the extent of occupational
segregation by sex.
The level of horizontal segregation is lowest in the Asia and Pacific region and highest in the Middle
East / North Africa. It is also relatively high in other developing regions, while of average magnitude
in the OECD and transition economics in Eastern Europe. There are also large and significant
differences in occupational segregation by sex across OECD sub regions. North America has the lowest
level, while Scandinavia as a sub-region has the highest. The reason for the high level of segregation in
the latter seems to be related to the way in which the welfare has created occupations that have
remained ‘female’.
Occupational segregation by sex is often justified on the grounds that women have specific attributes
which make them more suitable than men for particular types of work. It is argued that traditionally
‘female’ occupations involve caring types of work, manual dexterity and experience at typical
household activities, all of which women are expected to possess. Similarly, subservience and docility,
the other characteristics commonly associated with female workers, are thought to shape gender
employment patterns.