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The authors aim to explore the link between the gender composition of occupations and women's access to managerial positions in four societal contexts.

Using EU-LFS data for 2015, the authors measure the relative gender equality performance of France, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK regarding women's access to managerial positions, defined as levels 1 and 2 of the 2008 ISCO classification coupled with the exercise of managerial responsibilities.

While gender-mixed working environments offer the largest number of managerial positions, they are also where women are least likely to reach such a position. Overall, except in Switzerland, women fare best in male-dominated occupations. Women do not appear to fare worse than men in female-dominated occupations, except in France.

The findings question the relevance of policies aimed simply at reducing occupational gender segregation without providing safeguards against the deleterious effects that gender mixing may have on women's career advancement.

The disparities between countries found here show that individual career advancement towards a managerial position may be driven by the social policies, gender ideology and institutions of the societal context. Examining how the societal dimensions involved in the poor performance of women in France and Switzerland are likely to differ sheds light on mechanisms behind the gender gap in management.

The purpose of this article is to examine matching in the graduate labour market (GLM) in order to understand how expansion of higher education is perceived and translated in practice.

The article uses meritocracy and credentialism as frames of reference to explain the role of educational certification in systems of social structuring. Correspondingly, qualifications may function as signals, screens or proxies. Qualitative evidence, drawing on 40 interviews with graduates, employers and educators gives insights on access requirements, recruitment and selection and transfer of knowledge and skills, in three graduate occupations: chartered accountants; active schools co‐ordinators; and risk managers.

Findings suggest that expanding graduate numbers has produced altered patterns of closure. Employers use the availability of relevant degrees to limit applications, define jurisdictional boundaries and exclude the less, or inappropriately qualified. Yet correspondence between degree and occupation cannot necessarily be read off by a connected degree.

Closer connections between degree and occupation imply labour market segmentation although this requires further evidence in other occupations.

Supply‐side policy interventions are countered by strategic use of graduates. The paper explores issues of relevance to policymakers, employers, educators and graduates and will be of interest to those in the field.

Starting with a comparative assessment of different welfare regimes and political economies from the perspective of gender awareness and “pro-women” policies, this chapter identifies the determinants of cross-national variation in women's chances of being in a high-status occupation in 12 West European countries. Special emphasis is given to size and structure of the service sector, including share of women in public employment and structural factors such as trade union density and employment protection. The first level of comparison between men and women concentrates on gender representation in the higher echelons of the job hierarchy, while the second section extends the scope of analysis, comparing women in high-status occupations and low-wage employment in order to allow for a more nuanced study of gender and class interaction. The first analysis is based on European Social Survey data for the years 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008, capturing recent trends in occupational dynamics. Results indicate that in general a large service sector and a high trade union density enhance women's chances of being in high-status occupations, while more specifically a large public sector helps to reduce channeling women into low-wage employment. Thus, equality at the top can well be paired with inequality at the bottom, as postindustrial countries with a highly polarized occupational hierarchy such as the UK show.

We report three findings in a comprehensive study of hourly wage differences between women and men working in same occupation and establishment in Sweden in 1970–1990. (1) Within same occupation and establishment in 1990, women on average earn 1.4% less than men among blue-collar workers, 5.0% less among white-collar employees. This occupation-establishment level wage gap declined strongly from 1970 to 1978. (2) For white-collar employees, occupational segregation accounts for much of the wage gap, establishment segregation for little. For blue-collar workers both types of segregation are important. (3) The within-occupation gaps are small, below 4% and 7% for blue- and white-collar workers.

There is renewed interest in the professions as a range of occupations pursue professionalisation projects. The purpose of this paper is turn analysis to an important omission in current research – the skills deployed in the work of these professions. Such research is necessary because skills determine the formal classification of occupations as a profession.

Drawing on qualitative research, this paper explores the deployment of skills in work of one newly professionalised occupation in the UK’s National Health Service – physiotherapists.

The findings point to a disconnect between how this occupation has become a profession (the skills to get the job, and related political manoeuvring by representative bodies) and the mixed outcomes for their skills deployment (the skills to do the job) in work as a profession.

The paper provides missing empirical understanding of change for this new profession, and new conceptualisation of that change as both symbolic and substantive, with a “double hybridity” around occupational control and skill deployment for physiotherapists as a profession.

The issue of women’s under-representation in male-dominated occupations has been a topic of research for the last few decades. The extant literature has identified gender differences and social and structural discrimination based on a theoretical lens and sensitising concepts around which career barriers were experienced by women within a developed nation’s context (Eaton et al., 2020; French & Strachan, 2009; Hernandez & Ritchie, 2015; Miner et al., 2018). While there has been research on women in transport in developed countries, there has been little research on women employees’ career experiences within Indian Railways. To address this gap, this chapter explores the career barriers of women employed in male-dominated occupations within Indian Railways, in relation to gendered cultural norms. In-depth semi-structured interviews have been undertaken to understand the lived experiences of women employees. Thematic analysis was used for data analysis. The findings highlight the interplay of barriers such as gender roles, limited empowerment and occupational segregation, working conditions, lack of role models and mentors, backlash by men, queen-bee behaviour, beta career priorities and restricted informal networks that collectively restrict women in achieving senior level positions in such occupations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the earnings differentials between the locals and the rural–urban migrants in urban labor market in Vietnam.

Using the new Vietnam Rural-Urban Migration Survey 2013 (VRUMS2013) that is specifically designed for rural–urban migration, the author applies Appleton et al.’s (1999) procedure correcting for potential selectivity to decompose the offered earnings gap between the locals and the rural–urban migrants into within- and between-occupation pay differential. Bootstrapping is used to derive the standard errors for the decomposition results. The author further applies the propensity score matching (PSM) method to check whether the results are robust by restricting the sample to the “common support.”

Within-job difference, particularly, the favorable treatment toward urban workers contributes significantly to the overall and total unexplained earnings gap. Further, between-job pay differential attributed to the over-representation of urban workers in high-paying job also helps to widen the gap. These results are robust restricting to the “common support” sample using PSM.

Due to the sample size, occupations are only classified into three broad categories. Finer classification will allow a better comparison between the contributions of between and within-occupation to earning inequality. The data are only limited to a few cities and do not include other urban centers that also receive rural–urban migrants.

Policies to promote equal pay and alleviate within-job “discrimination,” especially the preferential treatment favoring the locals (rather than to provide equal access to different jobs) are crucial for migrants’ labor outcome. Moreover, this study can, to some extent, be seen as a timely contribution for the debate on household registration reform in general and in Vietnam specifically. Given China’s announcement to grant permanent household registration (hukou) to unregistrated migrants in late 2015, investigating whether there is a two-tier labor market in the cities in Vietnam is particularly important for the ongoing debate regarding future of household registration system (ho khau).

This is the first study in Vietnam on rural–urban migration and occupation segregation – an area that has been relatively less well studied in developing/transitional countries. Vietnam is also one of the few developing countries who have household registration system in place. This has made it an interesting case. The author uses a new survey data to apply the Appleton et al. (1999) decomposition on the offered wage gap rather than observed wage gap. Standard errors of the decomposition results are bootstrapped and a robust check using propensity score method is conducted.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether the gender wage gap at the beginning of the working life in France varies with the gender composition of occupations (male-dominated, female-dominated or mixed) and its main determinant (educational pre-sorting or labour market sorting).

The first stage of the methodology is to decompose segregation indexes at occupation level into the two components of determination noted above. The occupations are then divided into five groups on the basis of their gender composition and the weight of the educational segregation. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions are then applied to each group.

Among 54 strongly gendered occupations, the segregation in 26 stems mainly from educational pre-sorting. This context is favourable to reduction of the gender wage gap. However, a modest wage differential is not proof of convergence towards equity, as it may conceal the existence of a significant discrimination component, as in male occupations.

The results relate to a cohort of French youth. The earnings-equalizing impact of education-based occupational segregation should be tested in other national contexts.

Public authorities should put in place incentives to encourage women's participation in a greater range of education and training courses and to improve the matching between education and the skill content of jobs.

The originality lies in the suggestion that a strong connection between education and skill requirements helps to narrow the occupational gender wage gap.

This chapter examines the dynamics of occupational segregation by gender in the German vocational training system (VET) and explores the validity of two hypotheses regarding the causes of changes in the sex composition of occupations. According to the first, the ‘job growth hypothesis’, feminisation of occupations occurs when women increasingly enter growing employment sectors that are experiencing a shortage of (preferred) male candidates. According to the second, the ‘exit hypothesis’, the movement of men out of selected occupations is the main mechanism driving the changes. Using official data from enrolment into the VET of skilled crafts for the period of 1997–2013, we find a very high level of occupational segregation, a very modest trend toward desegregation and a substantial increase of female representation in a group of selected training occupations. Our analysis implies that the rising share of female apprentices within these fields cannot be explained by an increased entry of young women into growing employment sectors, but that it mainly results from a disproportionate reduction of male participation in select occupations.

This study aims to investigate on access and communication of COVID-19 information among Tanzanians.

Quantitative methods were applied to identify a total of 636 respondents.

Results show that the majority (86.9%) of respondents seek information on COVID-19. Gender, age, education and marital status did not influence individual’s information-seeking behaviour. Respondents largely used social media, particularly WhatsApp, to communicate. Respondents prefer blending professional and traditional information to combat COVID-19. The majority (51%) of respondents indicated that COVID-19 information was not communicated ethically. Employed people are more likely to ethically communicate information on the pandemic in social media.

Findings imply that novelty of the pandemic has enhanced active information-seeking behaviour. Respondents rely on multiple information sources to seek and collaboratively communicate COVID information. Employment status is associated with respondents’ information-seeking behaviour. Audio-visual sources are mostly preferred and relied in communicating information on the pandemic. Social media usage has enhanced timely and appropriate decision-making measures to tackle the COVID menace. Level of education has an influence on the use of credible sources and ethical communication of information on the pandemic. Utilization of COVID-19 preventive information was not statistically associated with socio-demographic variables. Availability of information infrastructures, particularly the internet, influences access, use and clear informed decision on prevention and treatment of COVID-19 disease.

The study contributes to knowledge and literature on response and preventive measures on COVID-19 pandemic in developing countries.