2.2 Example: Strategies to counter the sexual division of the labor market Gender policy strategies can also be analyzed using the concepts listed in the tables above. In this context it is particularly important to analyze whether all three factors of gender relations(duality, polarity and hierarchy) are reduced to an equal extent. Strategies such as the advancement of women and ensuring women’s representation and participation are aimed at changing the hierarchy between the genders and do not have effects on duality and polarity. However, in order to attain a real and lasting change in hierarchy, strategies must also question duality and polarity and be capable of changing them. Attempts to break down the hierarchy between men and women can be successful only when gender policy strategies • dispel the strict demarcation between male and female and thus begin to overcome duality, • erase the contouring of male and female as opposites and contradictory and thus begin to overcome polarization. Duality and polarity are the pillars that support and stabilize hierarchy. The following analysis of strategies against gender-based segregation in the labor market serves to provide examples of such an approach. All are aimed at ensuring equality among men and women by reducing segregation, the separation of the labor market into sectors and professions for men and women. In order to reach equality objectives and uphold them over time, it is clear that hierarchies as well as duality and polarity must be dismantled. The hierarchy between the sectors and professions for men and women are evidenced in their different social status, pay and structure. The sectors and professions for women are worse off than the sectors and professions for men. The gender specific placement in these professions occurs on the basis of the aptitudes that are generally assumed and sometimes mediated in socialization processes. Thus, women who work in these sectors or in“female” professions have less social recognition, lower pay and are confronted by professional structures that hamper promotion and advancement. The sectors for man and the structures of male professions, on the other hand, are more highly acknowledged, associated with higher pay and offer opportunities for promotion and advancement(Krüger 2003). Aptitude for professional work is very gender-specific and is based on dual and polar gender models. Aptitude for technical work has a male connotation; aptitude for social work a female connotation. This assumes that these two types of aptitude exist and that they are mutually exclusive. Individuals therefore are assumed to have a certain aptitude on the basis of their gender and which members of the other gender lack. Aptitude is thus construed as dual(technical or social) and polar(technical aptitude excludes social aptitude and vice versa). At the same time, occupational training is also subject to a “gendering” that corresponds to the traditional dual and polar concepts of the competences of the genders It is assumed that male occupations have no requirements with a female connotation and that female occupations have no requirements with a male connotation. Even job evaluation systems show how deeply rooted these concepts are. They systematically disregard requirements such as physical strength in the nursing professions and social skills in technical professions. Gender policy strategies that counter the division into sectors for men and women and into male and female occupations can now be analyzed to determine those factors in gender relations which they affect. 18