Occupational gender segregation and gendered language in a language without gender: trends, variations, implications for social development in China

This paper proposes a textual analytics approach to the discovery of trends and variations in social development. Specifically, we have designed a linguistic index that measures the marked usage of gendered modifiers in the Chinese language; this predicts the degree of occupational gender segregation by identifying the unbalanced distribution of males and females across occupations. The effectiveness of the linguistic index in modelling occupational gender segregation was confirmed through survey responses from 244 participants, covering 63 occupations listed in the Holland Occupational Codes. The index was then applied to explore the trends and variations of gender equality in occupation, drawing on an extensive digital collection of materials published by the largest newspaper group in China for both longitudinal (from 1946 to 2018) and synchronic (from 31 provincial-level administrative divisions) data. This quantitative study shows that (1) the use of gendered language has weakened over time, indicating a decline in occupational gender stereotyping; (2) conservative genres have shown higher degrees of gendered language use; (3) culturally conservative, demographically stable, or geographically remote regions have higher degrees of gendered language use. These findings are discussed with consideration of historical, cultural, social, psychological, and geographical factors. While the existing literature on gendered language has been an important and useful tool for reading a text in the context of digital humanities, an innovative textual analytics approach, as shown in this paper, can prove to be a crucial indicator of historical trends and variations in social development.

Women academics in ukrainian tertiary education: gendered image of occupational segregation

The representation of women in the managerial structure of the Ukrainian universities is the exception, rather than the rule. They are assigned to those sectors of university functioning that do not provide access to the management of resources (e.g. educational work), very rarely – position of deans of faculties and heads of chairs. After the analysis of conducted in-depth interviews with female and male rectors, vice-rectors and deans, some reasons for it could be mentioned: the influence of stereotypes (a successful woman in science is unsuccessful in family life; a woman is too emotional to be an effective leader), the insufficient activity of the women's (feminist) movement in the scientific space of Ukraine, uneven representation of women at all levels of university management. Vertical and horizontal occupational gender segregation is a mark of higher education system of Ukraine. The reasons are not only the overloading of women-researchers with housework, which does not allow them to compete with men successfully but also the effect of the “glass ceiling”, which is very acute in higher education institutions.

A Method for Studying Differences in Segregation Across Time and Space

An important topic in the study of segregation are comparisons across space and time. This article extends current approaches in segregation measurement by presenting a five-term decomposition procedure that can be used to understand more clearly why segregation has changed or differs between two comparison points. Two of the five terms account for differences in segregation that are due to the differing marginal distributions (e.g., the gender and occupational distributions), while one term accounts for differences in segregation due the different structure of segregation (what might be termed “pure” segregation). The decomposition thus presents a solution to the problem of margin dependency, frequently discussed in the segregation literature. Finally, two terms account for the appearance or disappearance of units when analyzing change over time. The method can be further extended to attribute structural changes to individual units, which makes it possible, for instance, to quantify the effect of each occupation on changing gender* segregation. The practical advantages of the decomposition are illustrated by two examples: a study of changing occupational gender segregation in the United States and a study of changing residential segregation in Brooklyn, New York.

Gender-Stratified Labor Market, Heterosexual Marriage Expectation, and LGBQ Young Adults’ Career Plans in Contemporary Japan

Previous U.S. studies showed that many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) young adults hold optimistic views about their occupational careers, despite their risk for facing labor market disadvantages as LGBQ workers. The present study uses Japan as a comparison case and illustrates how young LGBQ people plan their careers in a different national context. Analysis of in-depth interviews shows that many LGBQ young adults in Japan anticipate financial insecurity and consequently prioritize stability over pursuit of personal interests in their career planning. Their career concerns vary by gender and represent their responses to high levels of occupational gender segregation and earnings inequality as well as strong social expectations for heterosexual marriage and gendered division of household responsibilities. Overall, the study endorses ongoing efforts to understand occupational and economic disparities across sexuality groups from global perspectives by paying close attention to macro conditions.