Women, skills and divisions of labour in the Scottish electronics industry

Abstract

This paper describes the skill and gender structure of the Scottish electronics industry. Scottish electronics had proportionally fewer high‐skill employees and more female employees than British electronics. Female electronics workers in Scotland experienced greater occupational segregation than did females in Britain. Across the various electronics subsectors, the level of skills and the degree of feminization varied widely. Scottish electronics subsectors were not segregated into overlapping skill and gender divisions of labour. With few exceptions, increasing relative feminization of Scottish electronics subsectors was related to employment expansion; decreasing relative feminization to employment decline.