Economic and Sociological Explanations of Gender Inequality

Abstract

This commentary discusses theoretical and methodological issues that arise in the articles by Brines and Fiorentine. It commends Brines's careful tests of three models of the household division of labor but criticizes some of the principal tenets of the economic model of the household division of labor that Brines tests. It also criticizes a number of Fiorentine's generalizations about the state of the sociological literature on gender stratification although noting that there are intriguing issues to be pursued in the area of the differential attrition of women from male-dominated fields before and after they enter the labor force. The commentary concludes with a call for more rigorous development of sociological theories of gender inequality.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Acker, Joan . 1990. Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender and Society 4:139-158.

Adams, David. 1988. Factors relating to the persistence of men and women engineering freshmen. Ph.D. diss., Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania.

The American freshman: National norms. 1989. Los Angeles: University of California, Higher Education Research Institute.

Becker, Gary . 1991. A treatise on the family. Enlarged ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bergmann, Barbara . 1986. The economic emergence of women. New York: Basic Books.

Block, Fred . 1990. Postindustrial possibilities: A critique of economic discourse. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Brinton, Mary C. 1988. The socio-industrial bases of gender stratification: Japan as an illustrative case. American Journal of Sociology 94:300-334.

Clark, Burton . 1960. The cooling out function in higher education. American Journal of Sociology 65:576-596.

Coverman, Shelley . 1989. Women's work is never done: The domestic division of labor. In Women: A feminist perspective, edited by Jo Freeman , 4th ed., 356-368. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.

10.

Friedan, Betty . 1963. The feminine mystique. New York: Norton.

11.

Goffman, Erving . 1952. Cooling the mark out: Some aspects of adaptation to failure. Psychiatry 15:451-463.

12.

Goldin, Claudia . 1990. Understanding the gender gap. New York: Oxford University Press.

13.

Jacobs, Jerry A. 1989a. Revolving doors: Sex segregation and women's careers. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.

14.

Jacobs, Jerry A. 1989b. Long-term trends in occupational segregation by sex. American Journal of Sociology 95 (1): 160-173.

15.

Levinson, Richard M. 1982. Sex discrimination and employment practices: An experiment with unconventional job inquiries. In Women and work: Problems and perspectives, edited by Rachel Kahn-Hut , Arlene Kaplan Daniels , and Richard Colvard , 54-64. New York: Oxford University Press.

16.

Reskin, Barbara F. 1988. Bringing the men back in: Sex differentiation and the devaluation of women's work. Gender & Society 2 (1): 58-81.

17.

Reskin, Barbara F. Forthcoming. Sex segregation in the workplace. Annual Review of Sociology.

18.

Reskin, Barbara F. , and Patricia Roos . 1990. Job queues, gender queues: Explaining women's inroads into male occupations. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

19.

Rosenfeld, Rachel A. , and Arne L. Kalleberg . 1990. A cross-national comparison of the gender gap in income. American Journal of Sociology 96:69-106.