The Female Job Ghetto: Women’s Voices on Occupational Gender Segregation in Unionized Ontario Grocery Stores

Abstract

This thesis adopts a socialist feminist perspective to explore women’s experiences with occupational gender segregation in unionized grocery stores across Southwestern Ontario. The thesis draws conclusions about the devaluation of women’s labour and how this devaluation impacts their economic and social status. Socialization theory and human capital theory, as well as explanations based on biology, are critiqued in this thesis, as these explanations do not fully account for occupational gender segregation. The results of this study suggest that occupational gender segregation is deeply entrenched in unionized grocery stores and the trend towards increasing profit by replacing full-time labourers with part-time labourers is further exacerbating the marginalization of women in paid labour. It is concluded that women’s labour has been steadily devalued and that class and patriarchy severally limit women’s overall upward mobility by concentrating women in highly gendered part-time low skilled jobs in grocery stores.