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, migrant status and sexuality 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 also extend North American research on the relationship between sexual identity and occupational segregation with 2021 census data (Objective 2). In line with our theoretical framework, we draw on an institutional perspective noting the public and private sectors are “embedded in a different institutional environment on equality of opportunity” including employment equity policies, union coverage, firm size, standardized human resource development and operations systems (Objective 3). We also study other emerging forms of difference and disadvantage in the context of the labour force (Objective 4). Specifically, occupational locations (and hence occupational segregation) reflect parental roles and responsibilities, the type of work (full- vs part-time; precarious work versus standard work), and entry class for migrants. These social indicators are inspired by emerging international scholarship and the 2016 and 2021 Census data.
