Beller, Andrea H. 1982. "Occupational Segregation by Sex: Determinants and Changes." Journal of Human Resources 17(3):371-392.

The human capital and discrimination explanations of occupational segregation are tested in this paper. The empirical evidence is mixed on the supply-oriented human capital explanation, but it supports the demand-oriented discrimination explanation. The enforcement of federal equal employment opportunity (EEO) programs measures discrimination indirectly. Findings show that between 1967 and 1974, both Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the federal contract compliance program increased a working woman's probability of being employed in a male occupation relative to a man's probability. This success of EEO laws suggests that discrimination was a determinant of occupational segregation originally.

The author is Assistant Professor, Department of Family and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
* The research described in this paper was supported by funds from the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College and by Grant No. 91-25-78-04 from the Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor. Initial support came from funds granted to the Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin-Madison, by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The author wishes to thank Gary Chamberlain and Richard Freeman for their helpful comments and suggestions, David Marion and Evan Shouten for able research assistance, and the late Gerald Somers for his special encouragement. This paper also benefited from presentation at the Labor Seminars at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and from helpful comments from the editors of this journal. Since grantees conducting research and development projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express their own judgment freely, this research does not necessarily represent the official opinion or policy of the Departments of Labor or of Health, Education, and Welfare. The grantee is solely responsible for the contents of this paper.

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