Occupational Segregation - Measuring Occupational Segregation

Measuring Occupational Segregation

Occupational segregation is measured using Duncan's D (or the index of dissimilarity), which serves as a measure of dissimilarity between two distributions. D has to be calculated first:

  1. Identify N different occupations.
  2. Calculate the percentage of men (or other ascribed category) who work in each of the occupations and the percentage of women who work in each occupation. Give men and women a variable name (m1 could = men, w1 could = women).
  3. Duncan's D is calculated using this formula: D=½εi|m1-w1|
    • It is important to note that Duncan's D uses percentages. So in a given occupation, the number of men (or women) in that occupation should be divided by the total number of men (or women) in all of the occupations. For example: You may have 10 men who are nurses out of 600 total men. The value for the occupation of male nurses should be 10/600, or .0166.
  4. The number you get after calculations will be in decimal form, and you will need to multiply it by 100 to get its percentage. For instance, if your answer is .45, this means that 45% of men or women would have to change jobs for the distribution of men and women across occupations to be exactly the same.

Read more about this topic:  Occupational Segregation

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