Studying Race or Ethnic and Sex Segregation at the Establishment Level

Abstract

Scholars of employment segregation now recognize that gender, race, and class processes are mutually constitutive. Coupled with new data-collection strategies, understanding of the organization of work and distribution of inequality will improve. The authors explore the strengths and weaknesses of longitudinal establishment data collected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), comparing these to other data used to study workplace status processes. Findings both confirm and dispute well-known occupation-based analyses of workplace segregation and lead to similar substantive conclusions. EEOC data are useful for discovering trends in segregation, for locating segregation in spatial, temporal, and industrial contexts, and for combining with organizational data to uncover mechanisms.

Settling for Less? Organizational Determinants of Discrimination-Charge Outcomes

“…All private work establishments with at least 100 employees and all federal contractors with at least 50 employees are required to file annual EEO‐1 reports. These reports cover more than 40 percent of persons employed in the private sector nationally (Robinson et al 2005:16). The EEOC also collects data describing the basis and outcome of each discrimination charge it receives as well as charges filed with FEPAs 6 .…”

Does the Presence of Women in Management Impact Gender Inequality?

“…For example, the counts by job title allow one to compute the level of gender segregation in each workplace, or examine the level of representation of women (and other groups) in each job category. A detailed discussion of the strengths of the EEO-1 data can be found in Robinson et al ( 2005 ).…”

What Trends? Whose Choices?

“…Estimates by other scholars based on slightly different populations show different results. Analyses of firms' annual reports to the EEOC on their sex and race composition across broad occupational categories (i.e., EEO-1 data) reveal an 8 percentage point drop in the segregation index between 1990 and 2005 (Robinson et al 2003).…”