More Men Are Taking ‘Women’s’ Jobs, Usually Disadvantaged Men

Your judgments about the "status" of a job are awfully subjective, don't you think?
And your reference to "disadvantaged men" is sort of insulting, no?
But you did a great job of dividing everybody up into opposing micro-cohorts of race and gender and etc.
At this rate we'll never have to deal with the pay inequality at the root of the problem. We'll just go round and round in a sea of data, miserably.
Brava!

In my life I have never ever seen a male hotel room cleaner, male preschool teacher, male daycare aide or male school cafeteria lunch cook. There are probably other positions unlikely to be filled by men. Yet these all being very hard and exceptionally low paying jobs I doubt we'll see men in these jobs anytime soon. Secretaries and nurses are also mostly female.
Without women filling these VERY important jobs the economy would come to a standstill.
P.S.-Always, always tip your hotel housekeeper.

It would be prudent to stop referring to jobs as female jobs or pink collar. This language creates a stigma around a male's accepting such work. Why would retail or food-related jobs need to have a gender association? Males have always dominated retail positions at some sorts of stores.

I think also that calling these jobs unskilled misses the mark and is insulting. Anyone who has ever sought the assistance of one of the sales people in a store or anyone who has worked in, say, food service knows that skills absolutely are required to do the job well.

The skills are only different from the skills required of, say, a dental technician, a blue collar worker, or a physicist.

The problem I find, or at least observed, is that as women enter the higher professional fields of work, they tend to want to marry men of equal or greater status, whereas men, they'll tend to marry a women of equal or greater status, or of lower status....This I think makes for a greater concentration of bubbles, or super zips.

How about all jobs provide a living wage regardless of what gender chooses to work them. All these divisions do is distract from the real issue. A large number of people are falling behind because of income inequality. That should be our focus not gender wars.

Perhaps when more men work in these positions, other men will consider them important enough to pay decent wages.

Every single person who works 40 hours per week, no matter the job, should be able to afford, with NO difficulty:
-Food and Personal Care items
-Housing and Utilities (including phone/internet)
-Transportation
-Healthcare (including Dental, etc)
-Clothing
-Some quality-of-life purchases (recreation, music, classes, fun stuff).

It doesn't matter whether you're cleaning toilets or running a multinational corporation. Anyone who is employed full-time, working 40 hours per week, deserves *all of the above*. It's not a handout...it's *earned*. The degree of luxury is all that should be different.

*All* work matters, and all workers are needed. Clean equipment and facilities are necessary for health and safety. The elderly and infirm need assistance with activities of daily living in order to survive. Bus drivers are needed for people to get to work--how would those businesses survive without their workers?

Everyone who gives 40 hours per week of time and work deserves a life of dignity, as they are contributing to the functioning of society and the economy. It's time we start valuing *people*.

I continue to be surprised at how few men work as Executive Assistants. The pay range can be much better than other service jobs ($60K - $80K), and the work is interesting and challenging. A college degree is not necessarily required either. Typically one needs industry experience, strong skills in project management, communications, and proficiency in Microsoft Office, along with a professional demeanor and attire. In my 30+ year career across several industries, I have only met/worked with 2-3 male executive assistants. I would encourage more men to apply for these jobs.

The government has not done enough to educate future STEM employees. With an aging population more healthcare workers are needed. Scientific jobs are going to foreign visa holders for lack of qualified U.S. applicants. Most people can get funding for retraining through their unemployment offices or attend community college to obtain a USEFUL degree that will lead to work in the STEM fields in as little as 2 years. In a capitalist society you have to keep moving!

I respect anyone who works.
What you call "lower-status" jobs, I call respectable and responsible attempts to provide for oneself.

They might be "lower status" to East Coast Ivy Leaguers, but not to the rest of us.

To call a job "lower status" is to reveal your own completely unacknowledged view of the world. Sad.

It would be interesting to see the Gender, Race, Immigration Status, and Education separably. This would indicate to readers the relative importance of these factors.

Good. Enough with the " women's " jobs and " men's " jobs. The PERSON that can do the job and willing to work for what is offered, should get the job. Maybe if more men work traditionally female jobs, we can all get paid a little more. Yeah, I know. But, I can hope.

Does anyone else think this article is written in a stigmatizing way?? How about we applaud minority (or white) males for taking on roles in 'traditionally female' fields such as nursing, teaching, reception, clerking, etc.

“More privileged men can resist entry into predominantly female occupations more readily than their less privileged counterparts" the author writes, as though the privileged thing to do for a man is to "resist" entering a career that is female dominated... Many would think it is a privilege to be a healthcare worker, a teacher, a radiation therapist, etc whether you are male or female.

I work at a nonprofit that is dominated by female employees. Many men who work at our company or in the industry actually like working in a space that is primarily female and there is nothing wrong with that. Women have worked in male-dominated industries for years, what's the big deal about a man working in a female-dominated industry?

My hope is that men who are moving into lower-skilled jobs generally held by women are comfortable with themselves and do not consider it any sort of social failure to be employed in a job where they are doing honest work. If I was one of the "black, Hispanic, less educated, poor and immigrant men" in a female dominated industry reading this article, it would not make me feel great about my career, and that is shame.

Making America Greater Again: It is not enough for nonwhites to serve a white male, but to include white women. The purpose is to ensure that equality is met for both white men and women, and throw a splash of others to distract from the collective. Just like slavery. Good ole days.

"Making America Greater and Greater Again and Again" The reason I make more than entitlement people is because I'm educated and work harder than all of them. I earned the right to live comfortably because I'm smart and went to school. I can't deal with the constant complaints of some people who want fair equity like I do. It has to be earned not given.
Be delusional and create a new mantra "Broken America Dying to an End."

The real problem is that nearly all work which transforms elements into components, finish goods, understanding, new capabilities is undervalued and certain capital assets are overvalued so "rents" are high relative to the dynamics of the overall economy.

Often the second working spouse will accept a wage lower than the what comparable talent who is the breadwinner would be willing to accept. They do this because they can. Employers know it. It drives down wages. (IMHO this is a major factor in why many women are paid less for the same job title and responsibilities even when outperforming male peers.) Yet, I have witness the same rationale applied by hiring employers to candidates which are the male spouses and partners whose job would be the lower-status and lower-income source to the family.

It would actually stimulate the US economy to prohibit employers from asking about previous wages and earnings. Employers would have to offer compensation that is relevant to the job and the relationship between local persons' incomes and local property values and rents as well as other costs would be more closely correlated. Workers would have some disposable income.

Studies like this--or at least articles about such studies--seem designed to breed resentment and division, when what is needed is solidarity across and within all groups of workers.

I, for one, refuse to be baited into pitting worker against worker.

The real villain is the rentier class.

You need an education, not a penis.

Leslie McCall's quote should have been the lede:

"...policy makers who want to improve jobs should focus not on gender or race, but on general working conditions at the bottom of the income ladder."

Identity politics divide us and economic politics unite us. Hopefully we learned that lesson last November, when working class white women voted Trump.

Nothing will improve in an environment created by pitting men against women. If we want equal pay for women and men of all races, we must unite to fight income inequality and not be divided by identity politics.

When economic survival is on the line, the gender politics of affluent women become yet another liability for less educated working women.

"...the women who have continued to make inroads into more prestigious male-dominated professions in that period are likely to be white, educated, native-born and married, according to the research"

I am non white, not born here and single and I work in finance technology industry which is predominantly male. I think being married only hurt you not help you.

“People are focusing too much on the white, male working class,” she said, “but if you look at the working class more broadly, the issues are quite similar across all groups: wages, economic security, employment support, training.”

Anyone who works for a paycheck is working class whether they are poor, working class, or middle class. The idea that someone who works for a living shouldn't make a living wage unless they've got a college degree or a master's and work in an office is ridiculous. There are people who will never be able to earn a college degree. There are people who haven't graduated from high school for whatever reason. To penalize them and their families by paying them substandard wages on the grounds that they don't deserve a decent place to live, enough food not to go hungry, and the chance at a decent life is wrong. If America truly believes in the dignity of life we'll stop cutting to the bone programs that keep people out of poverty.

We'd also stop telling people that it's their own fault they can't find decent jobs. There is real discrimination out there that starts almost as soon as one graduates and enters the job market. Young and female: will marry and get pregnant. Young and male: as long as you're white you're good. Experienced in a field: over 10 years, you're too expensive. Aged 45 and up: you're too old. Over 50: don't even bother. Have degrees and certifications and experience: too expensive.

Everybody will get the best job they can find for the skills and abilities they have. The job of nurse's aid is the lowest paying because it requires the least skill. You don't really even have to be able to read and write very well. The same thing is true of janitorial jobs. At my coop in NYC, the porters who vacuumed the carpeting and took out the garbage were nice guys, but their literacy was pretty low.

The factory and construction jobs that low-skill men used to take were similarly undemanding intellectually. They did, however, require a fair amount of strength and endurance, which was why the pay was somewhat higher.

But in today's society, both men and women who don't know much have limited options.

Don't NYTs writers read the comments on the stream of earlier articles on women in the workplace? If they did, they would see some that pointed out it is possible to make their points without the requisite over-generalizing of white men.
The conclusions of researchers and those who report on their work should be limited to what is learned in the study; respecting the study's limitations, including what was and wasn't looked at; and keeping their own biases to a minimum.
Did the research actually look at whether "at all levels of work, it seems white Americans have more choices?" Were white Americans actually asked, particularly men, if this is true? Or are their "choices" more constrained than might be assumed?
Men are asserted to have "privilege." Was this proven in the course of the study, or just someone's assumption based on a particular view of what that term means? Again, were white men asked about privilege? In the "Christian Laetner" movie, one of the hypothesis given for why some people hate him is because he is privileged. The movie showed he was not.
Was reverse discrimination part of the study? Are the study authors or the reporter advocating reverse discrimination? If not, what are their solutions? If so, while best to admit it, be prepared for a second Trump Administration.
Finally, isn't this somewhat of a good news article? If so, why not just emphasize that progress?

Really interesting -- how about linking to the new research paper?

...While work done by women continues to be valued less, the study demonstrates

And I stop reading

Here is the bottom line here imo.

Anybody should be encouraged to do any job they want free of discrimination, intimidation etc. whether it be pot scrubber or President. If obvious discrimination can be proved it must be remedied.

Having said that, approaching it from a gender or ethnic angle runs the risk of
"playing the card" or the opposite, "demonizing the person with the better job.

"The majority of doctors are still men, but women have become the majority in some health care specialties, including pharmacists and veterinarians."

My husband and I have been to a plethora of animal hospitals, clinics and specialists over the past 40 years. We have noticed a dramatic increase in the number of female veterinarians we have encountered. The ratio has become a 4-1 increase in many of the places we frequent (with 12 cats it's never very long between visits for one reason or another). Every female vet we have ever encountered has always been as professional, empathic, sharp as a cat's claw, and brilliant as their male counterpart. The one aspect which has NOT changed in over 40 years is that each practice/hospital/clinic we visit is still owned by men.

The correlation between women in health care and men in military careers and the proposed cuts/spending by the Trump admistration is another under reported component of the budget debate.