Dr. Bheemeshwar Reddy, Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad Campus, presented a seminar titled “Winners and Losers: Gender and Social Group Occupational Segregation among Wage Workers in India” on January 30, 2017, at the office of the Foundation.

The presentation aimed at looking at empirical evidence on occupational segregation by the intersectional axes of gender and social groups. It employed a statistic, called the segregation measure, to compare a group’s occupational sorting with the occupational structure of the economy. In the context of multiple groups, a particular group is considered to be occupationally segregated as long as its occupational distribution differs from the occupational distribution of the economy. The presentation also tried to highlight the influence of occupational segregation on monetary losses or gains to a group.

The presentation underlined the inequalities prevalent within an occupationally segregated group, for instance women, thus portraying that such groups are not homogenous. It showed that occupational segregation and the resulting wage differential experienced by SC, ST and Muslim women led to a double whammy of exclusion based on gender as well as that based on social group. Women in the work force belonging to socially marginalized groups, and not women workers in general, were, therefore, the net losers of occupational segregation. The speaker concluded by emphasizing the need to focus on the intersection of different axes of exclusion while explaining the concept of occupational segregation.