(2)
>but the reason why women are paid less is explained MORE by
>occupational segregation and further segregation within occupations.
>(women tend to be food service managers, h.r. managers, etc)
Both (1) that female workers are paid less for the same work than their male counterparts with the same qualifications and (2) that female workers are paid less because employers get away with paying less for occupations & job classifications in which we are over-represented have been true.
While sexist working-class men are responsible for having tried and/or trying to exclude working-class women from some male-dominated occupations & job classifications by formal and/or informal means, (1) & (2) cannot be accounted for by looking at working-class men alone. In fact, in the case of (1) in non-unionized workplaces, workers have little to no say in who gets paid how much. Individual workers, male or female, cannot be held responsible for much of the outcome (2); it is _the state & capital_ that under-compensate nurses, teachers, etc. Women's over-representation in some occupations cannot be explained by working-class men's behaviors alone either.
I majored in English as an undergrad & have chosen to go to grad school, studying the same. I could have studied Law, Medicine, Finance, Engineering, etc. just as well at any of the most prestigious Japanese universities (my scores on the exams put me in the top one percent of my cohorts), and in fact my (almost stereotypically) working-class father (then a steelworker) _very strongly_ advised me to go for Law or Medicine, but I chose not to do so against his counsel. (I may still go to law school as Justin eventually did if English doesn't get me any decently-paid job.) It is likely that my love of literature has been in some way shaped by sexism, but how? Certainly _not_ because _working-class men_ made me feel I should study literature as an appropriately feminine thing to do. For women without college education, working-class men's behaviors bear a larger part of responsibility for their occupational choices with lower wages than they do for mine, but still the main responsibility must lie in the hands of the state & capital.
I believe sexism shapes women's occupational "choices" (both the range of "choices" and individual "choices" made within the range by individual women), but sexism cannot be reduced to working-class men's fear of competition & job protectionism which I think have played a _secondary_ part in creating sexist outcomes. Under capitalism, the bourgeoisie can choose to do away with sexism, racism, etc. _regardless_ of how working-class white men feel since they are the class that rule ultimately, but they haven't & don't & won't.
Working-class white men's _main_ problem is that they have _not_ adopted anti-sexism and anti-racism as _their own projects in their own class interest_.
Yoshie