Abstract
The Finnish labor market is sharply segregated by sex Previous research has shown the work of women to be inferior to that of men in that it is less autonomous, allows less freedom for self-regulation and self-determination, is more restricted in space and time, and is more monotonous. This study sought to determine whether the segregation of work by sex at the workplace affected the qualitatine aspects of men's and women's work. Data were taken from the Finnish Survey on the Quality of Work involving a representative sample of the Finnish wage-earning population (N = 4502), with 48 per cent women workers and 52 per cent men Workers were classified into three categories (single sex, balanced and token groups) according to functional sex-segregation Results showed that women usually did profit from the fact that they performed the same sort of work as men, although this effect was more apparent for the high-status white-collar than for blue-collar women. Results from the Finnish Quality of Work Survey showed that there were no objective reasons why women should not enter the typical male-dominated occupations since the salaries are high, work is autonomous, varied and less rigidly paced However, there are not such reasons for men to enter typical female-dominted occupations since men lost in pay with the integration of work by sex. In addition to the results from the Finnish Survey on the Quality of Work, some topics connected with male/female interaction patterns (unwanted sexual attention and sex-stereotypical attitudes) were sup plemented by results from a questionnaire study of men (N = 536) and women (N = 573) working in six occupations which were chosen on the basis of their sex composition and socioeconomic status.
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