PSTC sociologist Ananda Martin-Caughey is helping illuminate the continued presence of gender-based segregation in the workplace by looking beyond standard occupational categories in the examination of social survey data. Specifically, by focusing on more nuanced respondent answers such as job title and workplace responsibilities, Martin-Caughey’s ongoing research project seeks to capture the realities of intra-workplace stratification that the broad category of “occupation” may otherwise obscure. 

“As I learned more about occupations and how the categories are generated, I began to question what might be hidden within occupations, which are essentially categories of work,” Martin-Caughey says. “This led me to question what forms of inequality might be hidden within occupational categories.”

Job titles and tasks can reveal a worker's status, authority, seniority, and even job quality, she explains, all of which may vary significantly within occupations. “If demographic groups (such as men and women) are unevenly distributed across job titles or tasks, this suggests that segregation runs deeper than occupation-based research can tell us.”

In her 2021 paper, published by American Sociological Review, “Occupation Variation and Gender Segregation Using Job Titles and Task Descriptions,” Martin-Caughey applies this strategy to examine the ongoing presence of gender segregation in the workplace.

“Gender segregation—the tendency of men and women to concentrate in different occupations—has been shown to be one of the primary drivers of the gender pay gap, leading men to earn more than women,” she says. “The survey responses I studied, which describe workers' job titles and tasks, can provide clues as to whether men and women are further segregated into different roles within occupations.”

Moving forward, Martin-Caughey is planning to apply this same framework to examine data from the American Community Survey to analyze how occupational categorizations may also be obscuring race-based job title segregation in the workplace, as well as how job titles themselves have proliferated over time. 

“For researchers using occupation data, the biggest lesson from this research is to be aware of the heterogeneity within occupations,” she says, “And to consider the ways that might affect the interpretation of your results, even if you don't have access to job title or task data.”