Revolving doors reexamined: Occupational sex segregation over the life course

Scholars have argued that although occupational sex segregation is high in aggregate terms, women-frequently move between sex-typical and sex-atypical occupations over the life course-hence the "revolving doors." I reexamine the revolving doors thesis using career history data from Great Britain, I argue that the conventional boundaries for occupational sex types need revi sion, at least far Britain. Specifically, female-dominated occupations shou ld be distinguished from heavily female-dominated occupations. I show that although the strong version of the: revolving doors thesis (which rules out path dependence) dues not apply to both "female" and "heavily female" occu pations, a weak version describes the former better than it does the latter , This result points to a ghetto effect.