Faculty Bookshelf

Beginning in 1970, women made widely publicized inroads into male occupations. Based on eleven case studies of feminizing occupations, Reskin and Roos propose and develop a queuing theory of occupational sex segregation. They describe the operation of gender queues, with employers preferring male over female workers. Workers also rank jobs into job queues. The operation of these queues provide an explanation for why some traditionally male occupations feminized in the post-1970 period, and others did not.