Unlimited unskilled labour and the sex segregation of occupations in Jamaica

• Author: Heather E. RICKETTS,David V. BERNARD
• Published date: 01 December 2015
• Date: 01 December 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2015.00026.x

International Labour Review, Vol. 154 (2015), No. 4

Copyright © The authors 2015

Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2015

* University of the West Indies, Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work,

Faculty of Social Sciences, emails: heather.ricketts@uwimona.edu.jm and dv@dvbernard.com.

Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors, and

publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

Unlimited unskilled labour

and the sex segregation

of occupations in Jamaica

Heather E. RICKETTS* and David V. BERNARD*

Abstract. In the developing world, standard measures of occupational segrega-

tion by sex may be deeply misleading because of structural, cultural and historical

differences between developing countries and the developed countries that often

feature in studies of segregation. In Jamaica in particular, the legacy of slavery

has made female labour an integral part of the workforce for centuries – whereas

large-scale female participation in the developed countries can only be measured

in decades. The authors nd that the country’s large, undifferentiated pools of un-

skilled labour ironically translate into lower levels of occupational segregation,

with women outpacing men in the professional categories.

H

igh levels of occupational segregation by sex do not always translate into

simple narratives about male domination or female disadvantage

– especially in the developing world. Before we can make sense of occupa-

tional segregation and wage differentials, we must rst ensure that structural

or cultural factors – like a country’s labour force composition and its history

– are not unduly shaping what these measures mean. While wage differen-

tials will be addressed in a subsequent paper, we argue here that, in Jamaica

in particular, certain structural and cultural peculiarities make analyses of

sex segregation misleading at best. The reason for this is the large propor-

tion of unskilled labour that tends to exist in poor countries – and the way

that such large, undifferentiated pools of labour can inuence observed oc-

cupational segregation.

In the Caribbean, plantation economies emerged from the system of

slavery (see Beckford, 1972). Slavery depended on those pools of unskilled

manual labour, and so it used the brutal architecture of the plantation econ-

omy to control that labour. Plantation economies dened the structure of the

International Labour Review476

labour force, shaped gender relations and produced social dynamics that are

strikingly different from those that exist in the developed countries.

The remainder of this article is organized into four main sections. The

rst discusses some of the structural determinants of occupational segregation

by sex in the developing world. The second presents our data and measurement

methodology. The third section descriptively reviews available labour force

statistics on age, education, training and occupational categories, and analyses

the data on segregation. The fourth section concludes.

Structural determinants of occupational segregation

by sex in the developing world

After the Second World War, the Saint Lucian economist and Nobel Prize

laureate, W. Arthur Lewis (1958) drew attention to the “unlimited” supply of

unskilled labour in poor countries by noting that there were typically more

people willing to work at the subsistence wage than there were jobs. Lewis

highlighted the “disguised unemployment” that existed in the small agricul-

tural holdings that were typical of the rural Caribbean (ibid., p. 402). For ex-

ample, while all the members of a (family) farm might technically be listed as

farmers, the productivity of the land would be unaffected if some members

sought employment outside the farm. Lewis noted similarly large pools of cas-

ual workers and small retailers in the developing world’s urban areas. Though

nominally employed, they were in fact surplus, unskilled labour. To put this in

perspective, in 2010, 71.1 per cent of Jamaica’s employed labour force had no

training whatsoever – no vocational training, no tertiary training, no on-the-job

training. In that same year, 65.7 per cent of Jamaica’s total employed labour

force had never passed a regional or national qualication exam, or attained

a degree. Such a large, undifferentiated pool of unskilled labour is bound to

have a profound effect on calculations of occupational segregation like the

Duncan and Duncan (1955) Index of Dissimilarity. It would necessarily trans-

late into low levels of segregation, making the ndings either misleading or

irrelevant. Indeed, if the vast majority of people (both male and female) are

unskilled labourers, then the most pressing concern is not segregation per se,

but the fact that most workers are unskilled.

Similarly, due to the peculiarities of the plantation economy, the social

structures of Caribbean countries exhibit crucial differences from those of

the developed countries typically featured in studies of occupational segrega-

tion by sex. For one thing, given the realities of slavery – and indentured ser-

vitude after emancipation – large-scale female labour force participation has

a history stretching back ve hundred years, not mere decades as is the case

in the developed economies. Joycelin Massiah, the former head of the Uni-

versity of the West Indies’ Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER)

at Cave Hill, Barbados, put it succinctly when she said, “women in the Carib-

bean have always worked” (1986, p. 177). Massiah highlighted the condition

of female slaves “as labourers in the caneelds alongside the male slaves, as