Occupational segregation by sex in Spain: Exclusion or confinement?

type="main"> <p>Spain has one of Europe's highest levels of occupational segregation by sex. Using data from the Spanish Working Conditions Survey, this article investigates the determinants of workers' probabilities of employment in male-dominated and female-dominated occupations. Combining Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition technique with counterfactual analysis based on a sample of “hypothetical women”, the authors probe the unexplained components of the probability differentials they identify. While gendered labour market dynamics are found to account for the bulk of segregation, the strength of this effect owes more to “positive discrimination” favouring women in female-dominated occupations than to discrimination against women in male-dominated occupations.