Explaining Occupational Segregation

It would rational to assume that occupational segregation decreases the wages of women relative to men through the fields and jobs women choose and the ones women are restricted from through gender socialization. It is illegal to pay men and women different wages for comparable jobs, but through segregation of labor markets men have a disproportionate amount of the jobs that require more skills and talent leading to higher wages for men. This is not done on purpose by most employers, employers are just use to men holding certain jobs and can sometimes be blind to the possibility of women doing the job. This applies to not only college graduate women, but all women in the labor force.
Through segregation women are restricted to a smaller amount of jobs. Barbara R. Bergmann, a professor of economics, uses an example of a Pink tribe and Blue tribe of the same talent, energy and luck that collect berries on an island. If the tribes spilt the island equally than each gatherer would bring back the same amount of berries. But if the Blue tribe is able to get a disproportionately larger share of the island than the Pink tribe then the workers from the Blue tribe would collect a larger amount of berries on average than the Pink tribe. Over time the Pink tribe will exploit their land trying to collect the same amount of berries as before. Their yields per-person will then be less than before causing the Pink tribe to have lower productivity than the Blue tribe. No one is telling the Pink tribe that they are getting less berries than the Blue tribe because they are Pink, but because of the rules that are in place. In Bergmann’s example, the berries a person gathers is his or her income. Since the Pink tribe has less territory to pick from their income is lower since they are less productive. In this example it is not because of a difference in human capital, but rather that certain workers are confined to lower productivity jobs. The Blue tribe does not have innate superior talents that give them more income, but they get more income because of segregation.