Gender and Career Dynamics within a Segmented Professional Labor Market: The Case of Law Academia

Relatively little research has explored sex inequality in careers across evolving segments of professional labor markets, a line of inquiry warranted given the growth of secondary jobs within and women's inroads into these segmenting professions. I examine whether women advance more slowly than men within the law academic labor market and, if so, what factors explain these sex differences. Several stories emerge from the analysis. Women move more slowly than men across the secondary-primary job boundary in law academia, but neither choice nor structure, alone, accounts for women's slower rates of movement. Instead, sex differences in mobility rates appear to reflect a mixture of factors, including family and geographic constraints, social capital, employment origins, and the structure of opportunity within the secondary labor market.