Bio: (1946-) American sociologist. Barbara Reskin holds a Ph.D. from the University of Washington and has taught at several universities, including Harvard. The focus of her scientific research is gender and racial professional segregation. In the book Job Queues, Gender Queues: Explaining Women’s Inroads into Male Occupations (1990), co-authored by Reskin and Patricia Roos, the authors conclude that since 1970, women have succeeded in entering some professions that, until then, were exclusively male. Based on research conducted for ten case studies of women from different professions, they came up with a "queuing theory" that refers to the gender composition of a profession. The queuing theory starts from the assumption that employers, in most professions, prefer to hire men. Workers of both gender, on the other hand, also make lists of the most desirable professions. The result of these two lists of preferences is that the best-ranked workers take the most desirable jobs. Only when there is a shortage of qualified men for a profession, than can women "get their turn" to enter that profession. Even when entering a profession, advancement in the hierarchy is still limited for women. Reskin and Ross also concluded that race and ethnicity, in addition to gender, also affect professional segregation and differences in wages.

In her book The Realities of Affirmative Action in Employment (1998), Reskin argues that anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action policies, and similar measures have not yielded the expected results in equating white men with white women or other races in employment. These measures have been successful only in resolving cases of overt discrimination, but most segregation takes place through covert discrimination. These measures have had a greater impact on equalizing employment opportunities when the employer is the state or local government than when it comes to private employers.

Main works

Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Workplace (1986);

Job Queues, Gender Queues: Explaining Women’s Inroads into Male Occupations (1990);

Women and Men at Work (1994);

The Realities of Affirmative Action in Employment (1998).