A powerful recent paper in Sociology by Jarman, Blackburn and Racko (for ref see below) raises some tough issues when it comes to thinking through the implications of gender segregation in occupations. (I'm grateful to Athene Donald's blog for drawing it to my attention.)  Covering 30 countries, the authors show (I'm summarising, obviously) that the position of women is more favourable where segregation is high. In the first place, men's advantage on pay is less in countries where occupational segregation is high.  I knew that Scandinavian countries have low inequality but high segregation, as women work largely in personal services such as health and education. But the pattern extends beyond these countries.…