The functionalist Parsons would argue that women are naturally suited to their “expressive” gender roles and therefore a women’s place is within the home. Women are not necessarily meant to work, that is the role of the “instrumental” breadwinner male. He claims that the gender inequalities outlined by Beechy are based upon biology and the different biologically determined gender roles explain the lack of female employment and horizontal segregation.
Further functionalist ideas are “The Human Capital Theory” in which it is claimed that women’s lack of commitment to paid employment leads to the inequalities they suffer within the workplace. Due to child birth and the need to look after children they are more likely to interrupt or abandon their careers. This leads to less experience within the workplace and often fewer qualifications. Therefore women are less valuable to employers; explaining the pay gap, vertical segregation and the likelihood of women working part time. Obviously this was heavily criticised, Witz argued that women who do work continuously, still tend to have lower-paid lower-status jobs. Women who are just as qualified as men are likely to hit the glass ceiling and be unable to achieve the top jobs.
Barron and Norris attempt to explain vertical segregation with the “Dual Labour Market Theory”. They claim that there are two labour markets: the primary market with stable, high paid jobs that have favourable promotion prospects and the secondary market with lower paid, poor security jobs with few promotional opportunities. Employers use the different labour markets to obtain the different levels of skills that they need to perform different tasks. Barron and Norris claim that men and women both appear within the secondary market, but that it is mainly women. This inequality of women within the workplace is due to the employers being able to ascribe certain characteristics which make them suited to the secondary market; they are generally not the breadwinners and have less interest in gaining new skills are two examples given. Barron and Norris are able to look at discrimination without too much focus on family life while stressing that structures outside female control create the workplace inequalities.
Beechy is critical of the Dual Labour Market Theory as it is unable to explain why women in skilled professions, she gives the example of the textile industry, still receive lower pay. Furthermore she criticises Barron and Norris for not explaining why women gain less promotions than men who do the same jobs as women.
Radical Feminists move away from blaming social inequalities on the capitalist base but instead blame the exploitation of women on men. They claim that patriarchy is the cause of gender inequality. Men exercise their power over women within the workplace by using intimidation and exclusion resulting in the discrimination of women within employment. Stanko argues that through sexual harassment in the workplace women are kept subordinate to men. Women are unable to complain about the sexual harassment due to their lower positions within their employment and fear of losing their jobs; this is particularly prominent in traditionally male occupations. However traditional female jobs are sexualised, for example nurses. Stanko claims that women’s subordination in eroticised in an attempt to keep women inferior to men. Furthermore waitresses and barmaids are expected to be sexually attractive and to accept unwanted sexual attention.
Pringle furthered this argument through her studies of secretaries. She said that secretaries are often represented as feminine roles “wives, spinster aunts, mistresses and femme fatales”. The emphasis on the sexual makes the roles of secretaries appear trivial. Pringle found that in every place of work where she conducted her study at least one person assumed that as she was studying secretaries she was researching sexual scandals. Pringle summarised that through intimidation and ideological power men are able to enforce the gender roles and sustain inequality within the workplace. However Pringle was criticised for paying little attention to the operation of the gender market as a whole.
Compton and Sanderson did case studies on four different areas of employment- pharmacy, accountancy, building societies and cooking and serving in their study “Gendered Jobs and Social Change”. They concluded that women suffer disadvantages within the workplace however the reasons for this inequality and the degrees of discrimination vary depending on the industry. However Compton and Sanderson did claim to see a reduction in horizontal segregation. Adkins and Lury were critical of Compton and Sanderson as they seem to claim that women have more choices than they really have within employment when in reality women are highly restricted by the actions of male workers.
In contrast to Adkins and Lury, Hakim proposed her highly debated five feminist myths. She claimed that feminists make claims about women’s attitude to employment that are untrue; she proposed that women’s employment has not actually been rising, if part time employment is measured in full time equivalent numbers. Hakim questions why there is an emphasis on the supposed increase in female employment and not the questioning as to why despite social, economic and legislative changes women have not improved their standing within the world of work. She summaries that despite feminist movements a large amount of women simply accept the sexual division of labour and see home making as a woman’s activity and earning money as a man’s. Therefore Hakim is suggesting that the gender inequality within the workplace is due to women accepting their social inequality. Ginn et al agree that there is often a misleading picture created about the increase in equality within work, however they criticise Hakim for ignoring cultural norms within the workplace and the family which make it difficult for women to gain equality. Hakim largely ignores the cultural and ideological background.
It is hard to say whether structural problems or cultural attitudes create inequalities within the workplace. However it is apparent, by looking at horizontal segregation that expected gender roles create inequality within the workplace. Although as more women infiltrate traditional male occupations it is possible to argue that gender roles are becoming less important. Furthermore, if one is to follow a functionalist line of argument, women are now doing better than men at gaining qualifications so will it now be that women start achieving more of the top jobs than men? However biology will always have an effect as women who wish to have children will require maternity leave and this may lead to opinions that women are not taking their career as seriously. Radical feminists such as Firestone claim that although contraception is assisting equality between the sexes it is not until babies are able to be made outside the womb will gender equalities truly have a chance of existing.
