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mechanisms of assimilation will provide theoretical guidance to research on assimilation if
testable hypotheses can be derived. The book would have provided greater guidance if the
analysis on the rich data rigorously tested the proposed causal mechanisms.
RReevviieewweerr::Lingxin Hao, Johns Hopkins University
Occupational Ghettos: The Worldwide Segregation of Women and Men
By Maria Charles and David B. Grusky
Stanford University Press. 2005. 381pages. $55 (hardcover); $21.95 (paperback).
Maria Charles and David B. Grusky (with substantial contributions from Kim Weeden, Mariko
Chang, Joon Han and Jesper Sørensen) have provided the community of employment
segregation scholars with a powerful review and extension of their sustained comparative
and methodological work. This methodologically careful work has evolved through analyses
of sex by aggregate occupation contingency tables, often comparing countries or time trends
within countries and starting with the baseline question, “Is there a worldwide sex
segregation regime?”
On a theoretical level the book proposes that in most countries there are two basic
segregation processes at work. The first is a vertical mechanism, through which men tend
to dominate the best jobs. The second is a horizontal mechanism, in which cultural notions of
gender essentialism tend to match women to non-manual service work. They find in analyses
of multiple countries, some over time, that both dimensions tend to be in play and that males
tend to get the best jobs within the manual and non-manual sectors, but women tend to be
overrepresented in the typically higher status non-manual sector. Thus the horizontal gender-
essentialist mechanism tends to promote segregation but undermine inequality. Vertical
gender segregation tends to be stronger in the manual sector, reflecting the stronger
influence of egalitarian norms and politics on the non-manual sector. The mix of vertical and
horizontal mechanisms varies across countries, and time and there is substantial national
variability in detailed segregation patterns leading to the conclusion that there is no worldwide
sex segregation regime.
One of the great puzzles in the sex segregation field has been that gender equalitarian
countries often have high levels of sex segregation (e.g., Sweden). Charles and Grusky show
that this is because Sweden has particularly high levels of horizontal segregation tendencies.
Importantly, this insight demonstrates that gender essentialism and gender egalitarianism can
operate simultaneously. Gender essentialism promotes a separate but equal segregation
regime, while gender egalitarianism challenges the legitimacy of vertical segregation
mechanisms such as sex discrimination.
Both methodologically and theoretically this line of research is linked to the classical
analysis of mobility tables in sociology. A key strength of this approach to national sex
segregation patterns is that it allows researchers to explicitly model the contributions of
cross-country or cross-temporal occupational and sex distributions to observed segregation.
This is an advantage relative to conventional summary indices of segregation (e.g., the Index
of Dissimilarity) all of which are margin dependent in one way or another. That is, estimated
segregation (depending on the index deployed) is partially a function of the national
occupational distribution and/or the sex composition of labor supply. In classical mobility table
analyses the key question was for a long time, “Net of changes in the marginal distribution
(i.e., structural mobility), has intergenerational mobility increased with modernization?” Thus
margin-free models were always implied by the theoretical question. It is not so clear that
Book Reviews •
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margin-free models are demanded by sex segregation research, perhaps because the
theoretical questions have not been specific enough to provide clear guides. My sense is that
this issue is always empirically important and that both the development of employment
structures (the occupation margin) and labor supply (the sex margin) should be
conceptualized and modeled.
Charles and Grusky argue against the use of margin dependent indices, proposing a new
index based on odds ratios and so is margin free. They further propose that summary indices
of all types hide as much as they reveal. Both proposals seem justified by their analyses. I
am particularly convinced that disaggregated analysis that uses odds ratios to evaluate the
degree of segregation is a useful approach. The use of odds ratios to study segregation is not
limited to aggregate contingency table analyses. Thus, while most researchers in this field
prefer workplace data when they can get it, we would do well to learn from the
methodological contributions of this work.
One of the remarkable things about this book is the intellectual journey the authors have
taken from the original search for parsimony to a conclusion that while there are two generic
mechanisms out there producing segregation, there is also tremendous variation in local
practice. By the end of the book the authors are paying empirical attention to the role of
industry in producing segregation and theoretically recognizing the role of institutional
organizational theory and the importance of firm level processes. I have always thought that
analyses of national occupational aggregates hides as much as they reveal, but this book
suggests that with strong and evolving methods and a pluralistic approach to theory that what
was once hidden can indeed be revealed.
RReevviieewweerr::Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Women’s Movements Facing the Reconfigured State
Edited by Lee Ann Banazak, Karen Beckwith and Dieter Rucht
Cambridge University Press,2003. 372 pages. $75 (hardcover); $25.99 (paperback).
Women’s Movements Facing the Reconfigured State brings together leading scholars in the
field to examine shifts in the interactions between women’s movements and states from the
1970s to the 1990s within North America and Western Europe. Drawing comparisons across
countries, policy domains and time, the book analyzes how women’s movements influenced
and were shaped by state reconfiguration. As the editor’s introductory chapter suggests,
state reconfiguration involves four structural shifts in state authority: downloading to lower
levels of governments, uploading of authority to international bodies, lateral loading (i.e., the
delegation of authority to non-elected agencies), and offloading of services through cutbacks
and privatization.
Contributors’ analyses are guided by these themes and analytical framework, but vary
theoretically. For example, David Meyer portrays feminist activists as strategic actors,
explaining variation in their demands and strategies over time and across countries in terms
of their political conditions. Other scholars, such as Alexandra Dobowlsky, Carol Mueller and
John McCarthy, place greater emphasis on the role of identity politics in shaping feminists’
political behavior. Overall, contributors’ findings suggest that while state-movement
interactions varied considerably across countries, they generally became more
institutionalized with moderate wings of the women’s movement and middle class women
gaining concessions, while radical wings and poor women suffered political setbacks and
became more marginalized over time.
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• Social Forces Volume 84, Number 2 • December 2005
