Black Women and White Women in the Professions by Natalie J. Sokoloff

Author:Natalie J. Sokoloff [Sokoloff, Natalie J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317960898
Google: szLJBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-01-09T04:57:03+00:00

A Detailed Occupational Analysis

The more detailed level of occupational analysis reveals several very important findings. (See Table 6.4, Columns 3,4.) First, in the male professions/technical areas, white women “lost out” (i.e., they became even more underrepresented in relation to black men) between 1960 and 1980 as engineers (electronic, nec, and industrial) and chemists, as well as in two of the three male technical areas (electrical engineering technology and drafting).3 (In two cases, chemists and industrial engineers, white women and black men began at parity with each other; by 1980, white women had become slightly underrepresented.) These changes favoring black men in traditional male professions would have been lost from view without this finer level of analysis, although these trends should not be overdramatized: in 1980 black men still represented only a very small proportion of all engineers and chemists.

In some of the other nonelite male professions, white women maintained an advantage over black men, although it shrank (i.e., black men gained relative to white women, but had not achieved parity by 1980). Thus white women may decrease their overrepresentation by one-half as accountants (ratio moved from 5.77 to 2.49) and designers (ratio moved from 4.21 to 2.54) between 1960 and 1980. Yet in 1980 they remained 2½ times overrepresented in relation to black men. And in nonspecific college teaching (1.90 to 1.88), white women were likewise almost twice as overrepresented as black men in 1980. Despite black men’s moves toward parity with white women, white women’s greater advantage in these occupations may have been resented by black men, even though that advantage had decreased over time. However, the fact that these three nonelite male professions—accountant, designer, and nonspecific college teacher—are precisely where white men and white women reach parity with one another, but black men do not, means that black men are participating in fewer of the gains in these lower-status male professions.

The one nonelite profession in which white women might be said to have “taken over” from black men is as pharmacist. Here the index moved from parity in 1960 (1.00) to severe overrepresentation of white women in comparison to black men in 1980 (1.61). This is in line with Phipps’s (1990a) analysis that men have declined in retail pharmacies as women have increasingly entered waged-labor, hospital-based pharmacies. That white women have gained greater access to pharmacy in relation to white men was demonstrated previously. However, why white women’s gains in pharmacy are even more pronounced in relation to black men, according to my data, is unclear.

In each of the large female professions and technical areas, white women decreased their overrepresentation vis-à-vis black men yet remained very severely overrepresented in 1980. The one exception was in social work, where white women were only moderately overrepresented in 1980.

In the large gender-neutral professions, white women greatly decreased their overrepresentation in comparison to black men. Black men improved their representation, but did not come close to reaching parity with white women, except as counselors, personnel and labor-relations specialists, and computer programmers. As

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