Monica Boyd, Co-PI Lisa Kaida, PI
Occupational segregation is a key mechanism of social inequality. Given that occupations are stratified by monetary rewards, skills, and prestige, the differential occupational locations between the dominant group and minority groups contribute to persistent pay inequalities faced by women, visible minorities, migrants, persons with disability, Indigenous peoples, and sexual minorities. Employment equity policies can address some of these inequalities, particularly in the public sector. However, effective policies also demand good information or inputs about the level of/ trends in occupational segregation. In Canada, the systematic analysis of occupational segregation has stalled since the 1990s, leaving us with no insight into whether segregation has declined, stayed the same, or increased in the first quarter of the twenty-first century.
Our SSHRC funded project investigates recent trends in Canadian occupational segregation between 1991-2016, with extensions into 2021. We start by harmonizing occupational classifications across the 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006, and 2016 census of population and the 2011 National Household Survey. Using the Master data files available from Statistics Canada and housed in the Research Data Centres (RDC) we divide our research into sub-projects. First, we examine current trends in gender occupational segregation within the context of earlier research (Objective 1). We find that inter-censual declines in gender segregation are small, confirming the persistence of findings observed by the 1990s by earlier scholars. These small temporal changes reflect the movement of women out of female dominated occupations into more gender integrated ones and the movement of women out of highly female concentrated low paid occupations. Yet, while women are moving into more gender integrated occupations, they are not making inroads into the heavily male dominated occupations.
Recognizing that gender, race, and migrant status are deeply intertwined categories of dis/advantage, we employ an intersectional framework in our analyses. Our research tracks recent temporal trends in occupational segregation between women and men, visible and non-visible minorities, and migrants and the Canadian born in the past 25 years. We begin with an examination of trend data in occupational segregation levels between white men and women and their immigrant counterparts who identify as Chinese, South Asian and Black. We find that levels of segregation are stable over 20 years. Recent immigrant women have higher indices than their men counterparts. However, the level of occupational segregation of recently arrived visible minority immigrant men is consistently higher than that of their white counterparts. We also focus on black-white occupational segregation, incorporating recently available 2021 census data. Trends from the 1981-2016 Census data show persistent levels of occupational segregation of blacks and whites over the past 35 years; 20-30% of black women and men would have to change their occupations to attain occupational parity with their white counterparts. For immigrants, black-white differences in entry status make a notable contribution to explaining the black-white occupational segregation levels. However, the magnitude and causes of black-white immigrant occupational segregation differ for blacks born in the Caribbean and blacks born in Africa. Visa categories of admission remain important explanations for the occupational segregation of African-born black immigrants and white immigrants. In contrast, English and French language use partially underlie the lower levels of occupational segregation that exist between black immigrants from the Caribbean and white immigrants.
