Data from 44 societies are used to explore sex segregation by field of study. Contrary to accounts linking socioeconomic modernization to a "degendering" of public-sphere institutions, sex typing of curricular fields is stronger in more economically developed contexts. The authors argue that two cultural forces combine in advanced industrial societies to create a new sort of sex segregation regime. The first is gender-essentialist ideology, which has proven to be extremely resilient even in the most liberal-egalitarian of contexts; the second is self-expressive value systems, which create opportunities and incentives for the expression of "gendered selves." Multivariate analyses suggest that structural features of postindustrial labor markets and modern educational systems support the cultivation, realization, and display of gender-specific curricular affinities.

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Around the globe and starting in the affluent West, women have made major, even revolutionary, strides toward equality with men. However, while access to major social institutions has equalized dramatically, expanded participation in labor markets and educational systems often comes in the form of gender-differentiated roles within these institutions. This article reviews international trends on different indicators of women's economic status and considers explanations for observed patterns. The forms of equality that tend to persist in advanced industrial societies are those that are readily interpreted as outcomes of free choices by formally equal but innately different men and women.

This article introduces a structural approach to analyzing sex segregation data that rests on margin-free measures of the underlying association in sex-by-occupation arrays. The starting point for the analyses is a log-multiplicative model that is formally consistent with the conventional practice of summarizing cross-national variability in a single parameter pertaining to the overall strength of sex segregation. Under this baseline specification, the segregation regime is forced to take on the same basic shape in each country, with the only form of permissible variability being a uniform compression or expansion of the peaks and valleys characterizing the shared segregation profile. Although the latter model does not account for the cross-national variability in our illustrative data, it can be readily generalized in ways that both improve the fit and yield new insights into the structure and sources of sex segregation. These elaborated models can be used to examine the hierarchical structure of segregation, to identify the dominant "segregation profiles" in industrial countries, and to parse out the net residue of segregation at multiple levels of analysis.The study of occupational sex segregation appears to be entering its takeoff period. This can be seen, for example, in the recent resurgence of interest in describing how the structure of sex segregation varies across Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the American

Scholars and policy-makers increasingly treat occupational sex segregation as a generic indicator of female economic disadvantage. This view is difficult to reconcile with evidence that levels of sex segregation are lower in reputably 'gender-traditional' countries such as Italy, Japan, and Portugal than in 'progressive' Sweden and the United States. Understanding such seemingly anomalous patterns requires a two-dimensional conceptualization of occupational sex segregation -in particular, an analytical distinction between vertical and horizontal gender inequalities. Based on data from 10 industrialized countries, claims regarding (1) the hybrid nature of sex segregation and (2) the cultural and structural factors that influence its various components are empirically assessed. Results confirm that unequal distributions across the manual-non-manual divide ('horizontal segregation') and status differentials within these sectors ('vertical segregation') together account for a considerable share of occupational gender inequality. Gender-egalitarian cultural norms are associated with lower levels of vertical segregation in the non-manual sector, while postindustrial economic structures coincide with greater horizontal segregation (and more vertical segregation of non-manual occupations). The complex horizontal and vertical dynamics revealed here cast further doubt on unidimensional conceptualizations of sex segregation. They also provide the key for deciphering some long-standing empirical puzzles in the field.

Scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) occupations are strongholds of gender segregation in the contemporary United States. While many Americans regard this segregation as natural and inevitable, closer examination reveals a great deal of variability in the gendering of STEM fields across time, space, and demographic groups. This article assesses how different theoretical accounts accord with the available evidence on the gender composition of scientific and technical fields. We find most support for accounts that allow for a dynamic interplay between individual-level traits and the broader sociocultural environments in which they develop. The existing evidence suggests, in particular, that Western cultural stereotypes about the nature of STEM work and STEM workers and about the intrinsic qualities of men and women can be powerful drivers of individual aptitudes, aspirations, and affinities. We offer an illustrative catalog of stereotypes that support women's STEM-avoidance and men's STEM-affinity, and we conclude with some thoughts on policy implications.Keywords: gender; STEM; segregation; stereotypes; culture; work; occupations; science; inequality For more than three decades, American educators, policy makers, activists, and business leaders have engaged in research and policy initiatives to increase the presence of women and other underrepresented groups in scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) occupations and fields of study. These efforts have been motivated by interests in broadening opportunities in lucrative, high-status occupations and in ameliorating acute STEM labor shortages that are believed to threaten national prosperity, private profits and the public welfare.Despite wide-ranging research and policy efforts, STEM occupations remain strongholds of gender segregation in the contemporary United States. Women made up nearly half of the US labor market in 2015, but only 28% of all scientific and technical workers. Within STEM, gender segregation is also very strong, with women comprising 48% of life scientists and 60% of social scientists, but only 28% of physical scientists and 15% of engineers (NSF 2018, Appendices 3-12). 1 While some fields have integrated over time, others have become more segregated. Women's share of US bachelor's degrees in computer science, for instance, declined from 28% to 18% between (NSF 2018.While many Americans understand men's dominance of scientific and technical work as natural and universal, the gender typing of STEM fields varies a great deal across space, time, and socio-demographic groups. Recent comparative studies have shown that scientific degree recipients are disproportionately female in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Romania, and Georgia, for example, and that the gender gap in children's STEM aspirations is larger in more affluent societies (Charles 2011a(Charles , 2017 1 Even within engineering women and men tend to do different work: about 10% of mechanical and electrical engineers are women, compared to 20...

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