Occupational Segregation By Gender - Where Does Romania Stand?

The issue of occupational segregation is a topic discussed in the foreign economic literature, but on which documents written by Romanian authors are not so numerous. Still, during the last decades, this problem gained attention and began to preoccupy more individuals, especially on the basis of female emancipation process. In the past, various occupations were destined to be developed only by male employees. Women represent more than half of the overall population of the world. Even if prejudices on women are no longer as intense as they were in the past, and the access to education is widely open even in less-developed countries, consequently increasing the number of female workers, there are still several issues regarding occupational segregation and gender inequality that need to be solved. Today, many prejudices are lost, and female employees are more appreciated and manage to occupy traditional positions, as well as the ones that in the past were allocated only for the opposite gender. An assumption met in literature is that a rich country is able to confront more efficiently its problems and that the level of development should lower the gender gaps also. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the situation of occupational segregation in Romania, through both theoretical and empirical methods. Still, the research is a qualitative one, considering that the available data is limited, at the present moment. The first part illustrates the concept of gender equality and occupational segregation, followed by an interpretation of the official data provided by the reports elaborated by the institutes in the field. The last part consist in a brief analysis of the relationship between the gender equality index and the economic growth, illustrated by the values of GDP.