Sosiologi gender
Women and men experience different types of mobility within the workplace. Women tend to experience a glass ceiling, an invisible barrier that prevents them from moving up the corporate ladder. Men in jobs traditionally held by women, such as nursing, elementary school teaching, and social work, experience a "glass escalator" effect in which they are able to quickly ascend the job hierarchy to become managers and principals. There also tends to be a gender pay gap between men and women, with women earning 77% as much as men.
One cause of the gender pay gap may be due to occupational segregation, which pushes men and women towards gender-specific forms of employment, rather than pay discrimination. Another cause is the double burden, a phenomenon in which women perform most of the unpaid childcare and household work despite being otherwise employed for pay. A third cause is occupational sexism, one part of which favors men for promotions due to their traditional breadwinner status. The 2001 class action lawsuit, Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., charged Wal-Mart with sexist hiring and promotion practices.