More than ‘Mutual Information’: Educational and sectoral gender segregation and their interaction on the Flemish labor market

We build on the Information Theory foundations of the Mutual Information Index of Segregation [Mora and Ruiz-Castillo, 2003; Frankel and Volij, 2011] to analyze two horizontal dimensions of gender segregation on the labor market. We provide a novel, three-way additive decomposition of their effects on overall segregation. Using survey data from 41,712 Flemish employees, we find that choice of study field has a larger effect on overall segregation than sectoral choice. Their mutual interaction is negative, indicating that sectoral segregation, although low, is still partly explained by educational choices.

► Mutual Information Index used to analyze two dimensions of gender segregation on the labor market.
► Novel, three-way additive decomposition of this index.
► Isolates two ‘pure’ Mutual Information indices + information interaction.
► Application to survey data from 41,712 Flemish employees.
► Study field has a larger effect than sectoral choice, mutual interaction is negative.