The Problem With Mostly Male (and Mostly Female) Workplaces

[Starry Messenger]

Last edited Thu Mar 21, 2013, 05:09 PM - Edit history (1)

Maybe the reason why women are not in male-dominated trades is because men won't hire them for those jobs. Edit:
http://m.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/the-problem-with-mostly-male-and-mostly-female-workplaces/274208/

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Occupational segregation by gender reinforces the different worlds of men and women. Twenty-six percent of workers are in occupations that are 90 percent single-sex, from truck drivers to registered nurses. Among the merely very-segregated, 69 percent of workers are in occupations that are at least two-thirds single-sex, from janitors to elementary school teachers. When you look closer—at individual workplaces instead of occupations, the segregation is great still. Most Americans today work in almost entirely single-sex peer groups. And segregation has barely budged in the last two decades.

This separation seems to help make possible many men's simple assumption that women don't really exist as people. That silent assumption is very different—and harder to change—than looking a real person in the eye and saying, "I don't like you because you're a woman, so I'm going to hire someone else." The power of segregation is people usually don't have to do that. This partly explains why sexual harassment is so common in male-dominated workplaces: The women there are perceived as outsiders who threaten the normal routine. And just like peer culture can prevail over parents' grownup interventions when it comes to socializing adolescents, workplace culture spills over into family life, as men in male-dominated jobs (such as police officers) or female-dominated jobs (where their masculinity is threatened) perpetrate violence at home.

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Here's an example of very gender-specific behavior in the workplace. The other day, acting on a tip from another lunching sociologist, I hung around watching the white male job recruiters for a large window replacement company at our student union. In 20 minutes, as dozens of people walked by, the recruiters approached 18 men and 0 women, asking them, "You guys looking for a job?" (or, in the case of a black man, "Hey man, you looking for a job?&quot .

Here is their "Now Hiring" sign, showing openings in the categories of door-to-door sales guy ("Do you like the Outdoors?&quot , event-promoter-guy ("Interact with Homeowners&quot , and sales-support-girl ("No Manual Labor!&quot :

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Not a new revelation as it happens. Firemen went nuts when women tried get into the field back in the late '70's



Women are celebrated by USW for their role in the Steelworking trades:

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. Complete misapprehension of the problem.

It is as if we never discussed the concept of benevolent sexism.

Male trades (such as welder, ironworker, construction, logging, fishing, oil rig work and plumbing) exist because the general cultural assumption is that they are too dangerous, strenuous or unpleasant for women. Because of that, girls are sent to college to avoid them.

Conversely, traditionally female trades exist because of the general cultural assumptions that a) "a man can get a job in a great number of male jobs" (and should therefore not displace any women in the female trades) and b) "women are inherently more nurturing and supportive"

To the extent that supervisors discriminate on that basis, it is for benevolently sexist reasons... which arguably constitute hostile sexist reasons depending on which shoe one is wearing.

Gender segregated workplaces are definitely a problem. Whether it's nursing, teaching or ironworking and diesel mechanics. But the problem is perpetuated by refusing to recognize the reasons.

[Starry Messenger]

2. Women have been trying to get into the trades for decades.

They are harassed out of them, abused, or not hired for them when they try.

[lumberjack_jeff]

4. Nothing you just said contradicts anything I said.

If we're going to fix the problem, we can't operate under a false set of assumptions about the root cause.

Dads want their daughters to be teachers and nurses... but not because they wish to deny them the big pay and glamorous lifestyle of trucking or commercial fishing. To the extent that men sometimes say "this (job) is no place for women", they are not describing a fun, comfortable, relaxed and spiritually rewarding workplace.

The solution to this problem is entirely dependent on the assumed cause. If we continue with the belief that men keep women out of traditionally male careers because they just hate women and don't want them in their club, then we'll continue to implement solutions that are doomed to fail.

[Starry Messenger]

5. My dad refused to help me go to college.

He said it was useless for women.

[lumberjack_jeff]

8. My dad refused to send me to college too.

He said that I should learn a trade.

Was it good advice? Bad advice? I don't know. I do know that I'm content with my quality of life despite not going to college. I've never felt that my self-identity was intrinsic to my career, as it might have been if I had a college education to justify.

Nevertheless, college attendance rates tend to support my argument. More parents are encouraging college for daughters than sons.

[Starry Messenger]

9. There are still over 60% of women in the workplace without college degrees.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2011/ted_20111229.htm

So the majority of women don't have these daddies. The number is growing, yes. But this world where every daddy is a soft-hearted daddy who only wants his little girl to have a desk job is not really the norm.

I went to college because I saw that my dad's fantasy that jobs were everywhere and college was useless for women only existed in his head. I scrape along teaching, seriously considered retooling for electrician, but didn't have the money for more school.

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. That isn't true today.

Of the 3.1 million youth age 16 to 24 who graduated from high school between
January and October 2011, about 2.1 million (68.3 percent) were enrolled in
college in October 2011. The college enrollment rate of recent high school
graduates was slightly lower than the record high set in October 2009 (70.1
percent). For 2011 graduates, the college enrollment rate was 72.3 percent
for young women and 64.6 percent for young men. The college enrollment rate
of Asian graduates (86.7 percent) was higher than for recent white (67.7
percent), black (67.5 percent), and Hispanic (66.6 percent) graduates. (See
table 1.)

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm

Roughly 3 out of 4 female HS graduates immediately enroll in college, while fewer than 2 out of 3 young men do.

Because the young men can always get work setting tile.

[Starry Messenger]

11. I'm looking at the BLS numbers from 2011 too, Jeff.

This is their chart:



Only 36.4% of women in the workplace have attained college degrees.

I don't know what the young men plan. Evidently they feel they can skate through college and life gets handed to them on a platter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Nearing graduation, Rick Kohn is not putting much energy into his final courses.

"I take the path of least resistance," said Mr. Kohn, who works 25 hours a week to put himself through the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "This summer, I looked for the four easiest courses I could take that would let me graduate in August."

It is not that Mr. Kohn, 24, is indifferent to education. He is excited about economics and hopes to get his master's in the field. But the other classes, he said, just do not seem worth the effort.

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Department of Education statistics show that men, whatever their race or socioeconomic group, are less likely than women to get bachelor's degrees — and among those who do, fewer complete their degrees in four or five years. Men also get worse grades than women.

And in two national studies, college men reported that they studied less and socialized more than their female classmates.

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Perhaps parents feel college is wasted on students who don't plan to work hard and just get by. Tuition is expensive.

[lumberjack_jeff]

12. Me too. I provided a link.

It stands to reason that women 64 years old are less likely to have attended college.

... but they are not representative of attitudes of parents today.

But clarify something for me... are you saying that young men today aren't worth "spending the tuition on"?

[Starry Messenger]

13. I provided a link too.

Several, in fact.

My post in the OP was about women trying to enter male-dominated fields and being discouraged and pushed away. Women at present in the work force are not majority college-degree-bearing workers. Considering the number of women workers without degrees, there should be more representation in the blue-collar trades.

[bench scientist]

3. kicking, read this this am. good article.

[Starry Messenger]

6. Thanks bench.

I thought it was very thorough.

[Starry Messenger]

7. Women in Male-Dominated Industries and Occupations in U.S. and Canada

http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-male-dominated-industries-and-occupations-us-and-canada

A non-traditional or male-dominated industry or occupation contains 25% or less women in total employment.1 While women have made headway into certain industries and occupations, there is still a great gap between women and men in many industries and occupations.2

Sex segregation persists in the labor force despite shifts over recent years that have desegregated certain occupations from being dominated by one gender. Women continue to be highly overrepresented in clerical, service, and health-related occupations, while men tend to be over overrepresented in craft, operator, and laborer jobs.3

Male-dominated industries provide particular challenges for women’s advancement. Catalyst research has found that talent management systems are frequently vulnerable to pro-male biases that inevitably result in less diverse employee pools. Because senior leadership teams, which tend to be dominated by men, set the tone for talent management norms, masculine stereotypes can creep into HR tools. Employees who meet criteria (potentially based on masculine stereotypes) are selected for promotion and/or tapped as future leaders and/or offered development opportunities. Because male-dominated industries and occupations tend to be particularly vulnerable to masculine stereotypes due to lack of diversity, women may find excelling in these industries or occupations to be particularly difficult.4

[Starry Messenger]

14. How Single-Sex Workplaces Are Feeding Rape Culture

http://jezebel.com/5991726/how-single+sex-workplaces-are-feeding-rape-culture

Jezebel commentary on the Atlantic article in the OP:

Largely single-sex workplaces are a problem that go beyond the dearth of women in corporate leadership positions, or the nagging brand of puerile misogyny that seems to plague the tech industry — such workplaces help cultivate an insidiously subtle culture of sexual assault in the way they keep men and women from developing the sort of mutual respect (whether personal or professional) that full-fledged equality demands.

The Atlantic's Philip Cohen has (bravely) tiptoed out onto a fairly treacherous limb by suggesting, as he does in his rumination about the evils of inequality inherent in single-sex workplaces, that widespread sexual assault in the U.S. military and even the Steubenville rape case owe their existence, in large part, to the fact that places like the military or high school football teams are male-dominated insitutions where women are most often perceived as outsiders. When men and women work in near-exclusive single-sex spaces, they run the risk of creating little enclaves of insulated culture, sex-based "clubs" where the unrepresented members of broader society are denigrated or dismissed by virtue of their absence. Just like the Little Rascals' He-Man-Woman-Hating Club, only without an adorable Petey dog to help distract you from all the incipient misogyny.

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Cohen points out that 26 percent of workers are in occupations that are 90 percent single-sex, and that a whopping 69 percent of workers are in occupations that are two-thirds single-sex, or, as he writes, "merely very-segregated." In a male-dominated occupation like truck driving, for instance, Cohen explains that the absence of women can cultivate the idea among men in the trucking field that women don't really exist as full-fledged human beings — they belong in non-trucking occupations.

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