'According to Crompton and Le Feuvre women experience both horizontal and vertical segregation of work. How is this explained by Sylvia Walby and Catherine Hakim? What evidence would each of these key thinkers use to support their claims?'

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Kerri Waters

‘According to Crompton and Le Feuvre women experience both horizontal and vertical segregation of work. How is this explained by Sylvia Walby and Catherine Hakim? What evidence would each of these key thinkers use to support their claims?’

Women are now in more paid work than previously with a rise of 2.25 million in female workers between 1969-89, compared to a rise of only 0.5 million men. More recently about 12 million women were employed in 1998 compared with 9.9 million in 1984. However it is clear that barriers for women to enter workplace still exists. For example, Francis Sly comments that the main barrier to women going to work is childcare. Although women are going back to work it is mainly part-time work. It is also clear that women also suffer segregation in the workplace. There are significant differences in pay, for example between 1985-95 pay was increased 71% for men but only 21% for women. Sociologists such as Crompton and Le Feuvre distinguish two types of segregation in the labour market in terms of gender. These are horizontal and vertical segregation.

Horizontal segregation refers to the sectors in which people work for example the different sectors of work. There is a lot of evidence to explain and prove horizontal segregation to exist. The Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) in 1996 concluded that women in the public sector were mainly employed in health and education, especially teaching. Nursing and primary school teaching is almost exclusively female. In the private sector women are over-concentrated in clerical, administrative, retail and catering. Research by Martin and Roberts using evidence from the Department of Employment found that 63% of women only worked with other women whilst 81% of men worked with other men only.

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Vertical segregation can be defined as segregation, which occurs at the levels and grades of jobs and pay. Women tend to be concentrated at the lower levels of employment in terms of skill and consequently status. For example in 1988 the NUT found that 50% of male primary school teachers were head teachers compared to 15% of women. Even when women do gain access to the upper professional or managerial sector, they are likely to encounter a ‘glass ceiling’ where they can in theory reach the top levels yet in practice don’t. For example in 1991, 69% of managers and ...

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