If I Had A Hammer, I’d Hammer Out Occupational Segregation

When I was a teenager road constructions signs around my town read: “MEN WORKING.” I wrote our local newspaper outraged about the message that sends to women and girls: good-paying construction jobs are not jobs for women. Friends told me not to worry – those signs weren’t such a big deal. But the hard truth is that occupational segregation is very bad for women.

Those “MEN WORKING” signs remain a pretty darn accurate reflection of who actually works in construction. In fact, women made up the same measly percentage of workers in construction trades and related occupations in 2010 that they did in 1983 – 2.6%!

Throughout the labor market women are clustered in jobs that are primarily done by women, many of which pay low wages. Nearly 40% of women work in occupations that are at least 75% female, and women make up the majority of workers in the 10 largest occupations that pay under $10 an hour. According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), progress in the 70s and 80s toward integrating occupations stalled out in the mid-90s. 

When it comes to occupational choices, IWPR explains, “a substantial body of social science research suggests that socialization in relation to gender norms continue to influence men and women’s average preferences and behavior.” Barriers to entry include lack of information about potential jobs and discrimination, ranging from active discouragement (“MEN WORKING”???) to severe harassment.

We need to set the wheels of progress toward integrating occupations for men and women in motion again. Washington State took a step in the right direction this week by changing its state laws to use gender-neutral language that makes clear to one and all that firefighters, police officers, and the like can be men or women.

This is important because words matter. So do laws. As NWLC and our coalition partners described at a congressional briefing last week, Congress can take another critical step when it reauthorizes the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act by continuing to hold states accountable for training women and girls for higher-paying jobs that are nontraditional for their gender. Opening up these jobs to women will go a long way toward closing the wage gap – stuck for more than a decade at 77 cents on the dollar – and moving low-wage working women and their families out of poverty and into the middle class.