Segregacja płciowa na polskim rynku pracy

Gender-based segregation in the Polish labour market may be evidenced by the following proportions: Under 10% of Poles, male and female, hired under job contracts, work in occupations where the proportions of women and men are similar (40-60%). Around 60% of men work in occupations where the share of women does not exceed 20%, and around 60% of women work in professions where the share of men is under 20%. Women much more frequently than men work in professions that require intense contacts with other people (the trade and service sector, education, medicine, office work). Men prevail in sectors tied to handling machinery and requiring physical force (the construction sector, driving vehicles, mechanics, security services etc.). This pattern of gender segregation applies not only to full-time hired workers, but also to the unemployed job seekers and persons engaged in their own business activity. The lower the level of education tied to the given type of work, the stronger the segregation. The strongest segregation is seen among employees who did not complete secondary education, while among those with tertiary education it is the weakest. Employers’ preferences regarding the gender of persons sought for particular position provide a rather good reflection of the existing occupational segregation. Men are usually preferred in male-dominated professions, while in the female-dominated professions women are preferred - albeit less categorically. There are, hawever, certain professions where one of the genders dominates despite the absence of clearly defined employers’ preferences - these include healthcare professionals (mostly women) and IT professionals (mostly men). Given these exceptions, and the segregation seen also among the self-employed, it would be right to conclude that employers’ preferences regarding the gender of their employees reflect the natural differences between the genders in terms of their occupational predispositions and choices rather than being the causative factor responsible for gender segregation in the labour market. The gender segregation is clearly visible already at the stage of upper secondary education. Depending on the gender: Students choose different areas of education in technical upper secondary schools, specialized secondary schools and vocational schools. Students of general secondary schools declare different plans for further education. Students choose different fields of university education. Even among university graduates of similar study fields, differences in the choice of careers are observed (e.g. women clearly more frequently than men work as teaching and education professionals, from among graduates of almost all groups of study fields). This clear gender-based segregation, observed in the Polish labour market, is very important for the analysis of the so-called wage gap. Many studies of this issue disregard the fact that the degree of gender segregation increases when the occupational categories are defined more precisely. As a result, salaries of persons from the same general occupational category are compared, even though in fact they perform very different work. A separate problem is the non-recognition of the fact that even people performing the same, precisely defined profession, differ in terms of the scope of their experience, obligations associated with their position, the size of the company where they work, the cost of their employment for the employer, etc.