4.3 - Occupational Distribution

Before examining women's occupational distribution, it is important to understand the rapid change that has taken place in the type of work available to Canadian women and men.

FIGURE 21 shows the proportion of the labor force (women and men) engaged in each of three broad industrial sectors:

Primary Industries - including agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining.

Secondary Industries - including all manufacturing and construction.

Tertiary Industries - including transportation and communications, utilities, trade, finance and service (community and business service, government service, recreation service, personal service, public administration and defence).

Note that:

• Prior to 1941, each of these three sectors represented about a third of the labor force. First the primary and then the secondary industrial sectors began to employ a declining proportion of the labor force. Rather than continuing to provide the same high level of employment, these industrial sectors now rely increasingly on automation.
  
  The result has been that a greater and greater proportion of the workforce is engaged in the tertiary sector.
  
  
• The growth of the tertiary sector has been matched by women's increased participation in the workforce. This parallel growth has had at least two important implications:

1. Women have entered clerical and service occupations, not due solely to socialization, but at least in part to the greater availability of these jobs.
   
   
2. The increased participation of women has not directly displaced men in the workforce. Rather, men's job losses can be attributed to automation in the primary and secondary industries, while women's job gains have been due to expansion in the tertiary sector. This may well account for the current absence of "backlash" against women workers as occurred at the end of World War II .

• Declining employment is now beginning to reach the tertiary sector. As office and service sector automation become more prevalent (e.g., self-serve gasoline, automated banking, food preparation and service, etc.), it is predicted* that unemployment will accelerate in the tertiary sector as well.
  
  If women remain in tertiary sector jobs, they will be hardest hit by far. However, with declining employment in other areas, it is not clear that women should be encouraged to seek work in the declining secondary industries (usually referred to as "non-traditional" jobs). Instead, this study recommends that every effort be made to ensure that women make informed career choices and that they train for the broadest possible range of jobs. This includes training women for both the new, high technology jobs that are replacing today's clerical occupations and for jobs that are "traditional" but which, with implementation of pay equity laws, need not pay "women's wages".

* See, for example, Armstrong, P. Labor Pains, 1985 Menzies, H.
Women and The Chip, 1982.