Would be interested to get updated statistics in this and how COVID environment made this set back. Is there already another article outlining the differences?
Some men are given preference in traditionally dominated female sectors like teachers etc
I notice RN is not mentioned despite being a massive pink collar job with >3 million nurses of which 85-90% are women. I realize it doesnt fit well into the author's point given that it is relatively high paying compared to other jobs mentioned here, but any examination of these issues cannot ignore the largest pink collar job in the country. Lumping healthcare into a bucket is akin to lumping together everyone in law firms from named partner to mailroom staff. Just something to consider.
1
“Some men would rather endure unemployment than accept a relatively high-paying women’s job and suffer the potential social stigma."
Give me a break. Any man in 2020 who still feels that way deserves to be unemployed.
2
I was on the board of directors for our preschool and we had an exceptional male applicant who wanted to join the staff. Everyone wanted to hire him, but he had special rules to follow - he couldn't help the children in the bathroom. Had to use his own separate bathroom. Couldn't be with the children by himself. It was all to protect him in addition to the children, but... "how humiliating," I thought to myself, "to try to do something like this out of passion, for little money, and be treated like a predator."
3
According to the BLS jobs report linked in this article (the one that's always the biggest news every month), the employment/population ratio for males age 20+ is 69.3, while the equivalent figure for females is 57.3. The employment/population ratio for males age 16+ is 66.8, while that for females is 55.7. Those are huge gender gaps. Greater numbers of self-employed males must partly account for the difference between this article's figures and the jobs report (boosting males in the numerator of the E/P ratio), as well as much greater numbers of male prisoners (not included in the E/P's denominator).
3
As with all generalities, this study, the statistics, and the article that explains it miss the important subtleties- the incredible pleasures of doing important work such as teaching young children. I am a man now in my mid 70s, an artist and I taught pre-school for over twenty years, twenty years ago. I was almost always the only man doing this wherever I taught, loved the work and my classes always had parents clamoring to get their kids enrolled. Of course the pay was low, but I only worked part-time, got full health benefits and a full summer's vacation, which left plenty of time for my studio work. And- many, if not most of the young children I taught saw the males in their lives for only minutes a day. I felt it was very important that I represented a positive male model for them, and was often told that very thing by their moms, who I saw when the kids were dropped at school. It was an absolutely wonderful job! I later taught at universities, which was nowhere near as rewarding, or fun. I never felt remotely strange doing what I knew to be essential work helping kids get off to a good start.
9
"One big reason is that the occupations that are shrinking tend to be male-dominated, like manufacturing, while those that are growing remain female-dominated, like health care and education. "
The thing that is disappearing is good paying jobs of all types. If nurses and teachers were that highly paid, their jobs would get cut too. Also, manufacturing can be done anywhere but nursing and teaching still need to be done onsite.
3
Drilling down, the conclusion in this article would mean valuing emotional connection and human empathy more. Perhaps that means finding some mythic exemplar...there are male and female saints who embodied this value.
Or does it mean, in addition, finding a way to make care work more fulfilling by eroding rigid bureaucracies like hospital administrations -- so nurses, for example, can cease to be afflicted by the double whammy of low status and no autonomy?
What would a world be like that valued caring people? That lived by the golden rule. I want that job. It sounds like heaven on earth to me!
1
@Maine introvert : The best way to erode rigid bureaucracies would be to replace the idea of rank with that of authority. Persons in management would have situational authority, but not necessarily outrank individual contributors or get paid more than them. Then you would get people in management who were there because they are good at it, not because it paid more.
1
Industrial Revolution redux.
I wonder when they'll change laws to allow child labor.
We've destroyed our jobs base - families now NEED two incomes to raise a family and keep even a fingernail's hold on the middle class.
Yet there's more wealth than ever. It just hasn't been shared with workers.
Why is it we're going backwards as a society?
11
@cynicalskeptic What middle class? There is no middle class anymore. There are just the haves and the have nots.
1
One of the biggest problems is that women's strengths are not valued on par with men's. People want us to volunteer to help others. They frame it as if we are crass to desire good compensation for having a heart in our efforts. What crap: pay me. I am not a philanthropist. And I've seen over and over again in the private sector that male nurses, administrators and servers get better compensation and advantages in scheduling. The women remain undervalued.
10
"American women have just achieved a significant milestone: They hold more payroll jobs than men."
Framing a statement like this makes it sound ominous, as if this is a zero-sum game (that if women gain, men lose). And maybe that really is the case, but that should never be the goal. What we should strive for, is equal pay for equal job performed in the exact same manner with the same excellent result.
14
I wonder if the answer to getting men to work some of these pink collar jobs is to sexualize the atmosphere; introduce more competitive pressure; encourage workers to shout and interrupt each other more; pay for company outings to whiskey bars and strip clubs; or in general make the work environment more inviting to men.
That's what's recommended for male dominated workplaces, isn't it, to cultivate a more female friendly environment? Encourage men to act and think more like women?
3
@Big Cow As a woman who has worked her entire career in a male-dominated feel, I can tell you with certainty the recommendation to employers is not "have men think and act more like women." Actual recommendations include ideas such as 'acknowledge and disrupt implicit bias' or 'demonstrate from the top down that diversity is a priority.' Anecdotally from what I have seen (and I have seen a lot over the years), the companies who have adopted this type of inclusive environment have the happiest employees - men and women - by far.
9
I think attitudes about work, women's or men's, are formed at home.
When I came to USA I was clueless about cooking in general, let alone the more complicated Indian food. My husband was more adventurous in general and also about food, so he took the lead in the kitchen.
Over time he gained a reputation for being an excellent cook, so much so, that our friends teasingly declared that they would come over for a meal only if he was cooking the meal. As a result, both my sons grew up seeing their dad and I working side by side in the kitchen. They in turn share equally with their wives in all the chores of running a house.
Cooking which is considered a female chore is no longer so for my sons.
If we have husbands and wives sharing the work of cleaning the home, cooking, caring for whoever is ill, then we remove the stigma from women centered work.
9
@Meenal Mamdani chef work is a male job in America...
2
And still women are demonized for working, sometimes making more than men, and penalized for not being men. Seems to this woman that if we are getting the jobs that require skills we ought to be getting the money for those skills. Men are not always the best.
13
More evidence every day that women are the smarter gender.
6
Would have liked to have had a graphic comparing wages based on sectors. I understand it is hard to generalize that broadly but surely it can be approximated.
"A new experiment found that when unemployed men looked at job postings, they were willing to take a job that employed mostly women. But if it called for stereotypically female traits like interpersonal skills or care work, they were not. Moreover, a study published in December by Ms. Yavorsky found that men, across education levels and job types, were less likely to be called back by employers for interviews when they applied for traditionally female roles."
Of course it is politically incorrect to state the obvious, and so the obvious has been studiously avoided in this article. Everyone dances around the fact that just perhaps the reason men are not interested in jobs that are traditionally female is that they are not good at them, and that's why employers don't call men back for interviews at jobs at which they will obviously perform poorly.
But if you open that can of worms and admit that perhaps the reason the system, and the workers themselves, select for jobs where skill sets are gender related, the path leads both ways. If there are jobs that men as a group aren't good at, like interpersonal communication, there may also be jobs that women aren't good at as a group also, like aggressively ruthless leadership.
6
@Chuck French
People are individuals. Some women are capable of ruthlessness. Some men are very empathetic and great with people (my brother, who is a pastor, for example).
11
Pink-collar?? STOP. Why is this article only focusing on men, and reinforcing the myth of "feminized jobs"? Where is a stat like, "Women are now over 50% of the workforce, but they only earn XX% of the salary"?
Women are paid less than men, no matter what field. Not because women aren't skilled, hard-working, capable, but because of this nauseating habit of media defining the women's role in a secondary to the men's role.
Let's not forget that there are more CEOs named Dave than there are women CEOs.
13
Let's face it. No man wants to be known as a male nurse. That's the reality.
3
@Diana That's their problem.
Men would prefer men nurses, so there is a call for them.
I prefer to focus on what this article DOES NOT discuss, such as:
"When women enter fields in greater numbers, pay declines..."
WHY?
And more infuriating - why not improve the salaries of these traditionally feminized jobs for women? NOPE. The article focuses instead on the men. "But there’s another solution, researchers say: improving the quality of pink-collar jobs, in terms of wages, stability, benefits and hours. That could both attract men to these jobs..."
11
@Diana I've had male nurses in the ER and hospital. They were AWESOME. Efficient, extremely knowledgeable, I could go on. It's impossible for me to believe that these awesome guys could be good at a job they hate. If you think of nursing as some sort of easy-peasy just make the patient happy kind of job, I can only say you must not have much contact with medical care beyond a clinic, because hospital nursing aint' that.
10
@Diana
Re label the position as 'physician assistant'.
1
I would like to see an article on this topic written by a man, preferbly one of blue collar origins. Fair is fair. Maybe this is an area of traditionally female employment that men could enter. Frankly I cannot relate to the feminine deconstruction of male motives. I also wonder if the nature of work in an area is modified when significant numbers of females enter. I drive a lot and briefly worked construction in college. I have never seen a woman on a jack hammer, the the men who ride the jack hammer never get a break holding up signs any more.
6
And, don't forget, raising pay greatly would multiply demand for those jobs, and the shares of women working in them would crash.
4
That's what happened to computer programming. In its infancy, programming was a woman-dominated field.
7
One big reason the service economy is expanding is because you pay less for labor there.
(Duh.)
6
Please stop referring to these jobs as pink collar. It's not the best selling point to get men to enter these careers.
22
What people are paid is a question of what kind of work is valued by our society. Do we value work that involves educating our young? Do we value the work involved in healing physical and mental illness? Do we value our children, our elders, and frankly people at all -- and the people who help them to grow, be well, and die with dignity? It seems that our society puts the selling and consuming of material resources above all else. That's why investment bankers are paid more than nurses, social workers, or teachers. Many kinds of work are important, including traditionally "masculine" work like manufacturing or technology (where would be be without roads, bridges, buildings, and medical equipment, cell phones,etc?) But not more important than taking care of other humans (and other living beings) who make our society and our lives more (or less, if neglected) rich and meaningful.
16
@Michelle M.
I couldn't agree more! I am an early childhood educator and have worked with young children and families for 30 years, mostly overseas in international schools that paid me a wage equal to that of elementary and high school teachers. Returning to the US, it was dispiriting to find that it is nearly impossible to make a worthy wage working with young children, regardless of experience or education. In fact, most people working in child care make an average of 10 dollars and hour and have no health care or other benefits. The lack of funding put into this essential work is the reason we are now struggling with "child care deserts" in nearly every state. Who will care for our children when we give this job so little respect?
12
@Michelle M.: If the market is getting it wrong, how do you fix it?
Most men have daughters, that they can treat women like this when they are married and have families I just wonder about people.
4
Can you do a follow-up article on Why Bosses do this? now that would be interesting.
4
"another solution ... improving the quality of pink-collar jobs, in terms of wages, stability, benefits and hours (to) attract men to these jobs and also benefit women."
But this is backwards! (And also harmful.) If men start to want these jobs, that will double the labor pool. That will lower wages.
Pushing men to get, for example, nursing degrees, will result in one thing: lower wages, lower stability, lower benefits for everyone with a nursing degree. The only way to avoid it is to convince half the people to get out of the field.
Ditto, pushing men to get teaching degrees.
This reminds me of the push to get students to major in chemistry (back in the nineties.) The idea was if there were more chemistry majors, there would be more jobs for chemists. Dumb!
All that happened was a bunch more people than ever before had degrees in chemistry and they couldn't get jobs, and the jobs available had lower wages and stability than they might have, due to the oversupply of chemistry graduates.
5
@KTT
Your whole argument could be applied to the position that women should never have entered the workplace to begin with...... That is what essentially doubled the number of workers which dropped the price of labor which is why both men and women now need to work full time.....
3
@David
That's an interesting idea, and sad, if true. Two harried parents, one employer making out like a bandit.
6
@David Is the standard of living for the middle class higher in 2020 than it was in 1950? And if so, why do you think that is? I'm not an expert, but I would say productivity (technology advances) and a larger workforce (in proportion to population). The larger workforce is due to women entering it. We are not living in a zero-sum world.
Sure, female serfs earn less than male serfs but all are good serfs and will work hard for low wages because they are loyal to their wealthy overlords. You see, fortunately, their parents forced them to believe in magic beings in the sky and then educated them to be very subservient to authority, authority that can be purchased at reasonable prices if your a wealthy overlord. So now, we must find ways to pit workers against workers. By intentionally paying one group less we can make two groups enemies and that will keep them from turning their attention to the wealthy overlords.
The workers do not have the will to change the status quo and they never will because their education prevents them from thinking.
17
Take heart, it's not all that bleak.
I was already around when some men who had been medics in Vietnam, discovered that they liked the work and were good at it, returned, and enrolled in nursing school. (Medical school is harder to attain; aside from the enormous expense, it requires first completing a bachelor's degree.)
Maybe these guys just had stronger egos than most. Far from being uncomfortable at finding themselves in an almost exclusively feminine environment, they continued to do good work, and (mostly) even demonstrated the empathy that a good nurse must have.
It might have helped that by this time nurses were paid a bit more than in the really bad old days, when hospital nurses had to live in hospital dormitories.
13
Virginia is the final state to ratify the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment). If it can be maneuvered past roadblocks thrown up over time by various vested interests and become our 28th Amendment, it will be the major force in breaking the equal pay for equal work barrier.
I know many men who are terrific caregivers and teachers for young children, and also have the physical strength and concern to care for adults, especially elders. In fact, I suspect many of them would have enjoyed being encouraged to follow caring occupations in their youth. Equalizing the pay gap between "male" and "female" occupations will go a long way to giving men options to follow their ideals and inclinations. The only thing holding them back is the anxiety that patriarchy drills into them as boys to avoid anything "girl". Thank heavens the generation now coming up seems far less hamstrung by stereotypical expectations.
6
Part of being a grown man is doing the job at hand that needs to be done whether it suits you or not. Many jobs are not desirable. Yet, someone has to do them. Handing men the options that women fought hard for is not the answer. The best solution for the inequitable pay gap is to move more women into those better paying jobs that are dominated by men.
15
@From Where I Sit Why not make women do these undesirable jobs then? Seems like this statement "Part of being a grown man is doing the job at hand that needs to be done whether it suits you or not. Many jobs are not desirable. Yet, someone has to do them." is simply enforcing the culture of toxic masculinity.
In many ways, its "Women's World." But also a "Men's World." Both are true, and always has been. It was once said: "Why do men go to war? Because Women are watching."
Women coyly play innocent when, like Lady Macbeth, they quietly pressure their men do do anything required to go for he gold. "Behind every successful man..." The Philip Roth Book (and compelling film based on it) "Indignation" shows a (supposedly) ambitious Jewish student pulling out all the stops to achieve a legal career. The story makes clear, however, that it is not his own ambition, however; he is merely the executor of his puppeteer mother's ("Someday you will argue at the Supreme Court," she nudges him) ambition.
But the more sinister aspect of feminine power in the contemporary economy pertains to a fundamental asymmetry in the power (im-) balance: It is nearly always, at least in the 20th century and beyond, culturally permissible for women to step into and traditional men's role, while culturally the opposite is not true, without incurring stigma. This means that in the contemporary world, all jobs are open to women, and some only to women. The latter, though often menial and low status, are actually a life-saving boon unavailable to the many economically displaced men now killing themselves on opioids in financial despair and helplessness.
Time was, in the days of the "glass ceiling," any women who wanted money could be a secretary or clean homes, with no stigma. Men never had that...
4
That was not a complaint against women, btw, but rather to acknowledge that society has always affored some gender-specific livelihoods or income opportunities to each gender. Until the late 20th century, women had non-stigmatized jobs such as housekeeping/cleaning, secretary work, and nursing (the latter two entailing a wide range of skills, pay levels, and statuses), so usually, however lacking in skills, credentials or connections, women could usually find work of some form. This is true largely because women's work was typically not a socially/culturally regarded as an arbiter or verdict on their fundamental human value, so stigma did not generally apply; whereas it's true the cleaning occupations implied lower social status, secretary and nursing work entailed no stigma, and were respected, honored and honorable work. And women were free from any competition from men in these occupations; they were a female monopoly.
As women achieved equality in the workplace, they largely kep that monopoly but challenged men in every traditiional male occupation. Nothing wrong with women having these opportunities of course (I'm not a caveman after all), but that womens gains and men's losses on the "male" occupation side were not offset by new opportunities to men, whose lot was exacerbated by gutting of industrial manufacturing. This was the price paid by women's gains: displacement, depression, opioid deaths and the like.
Women have always been able to "wear men's clothing"...
4
The reason that most pink collar jobs pay less is not that they are "less valued" as repeatedly described in the article. The jobs are less demanding and the pay correspond to the lack of difficulty. Being a child care provide, nurse's assistant, or an elementary school teacher isn't very difficult. It is absurd to say that the jobs should be overpaid to attract men. It is really a sham to have the jobs paid more than what they are worth. The real reason that there is a so called pay gap is that men are willing to work harder than women.
6
@Bored No job on Earth is more difficult than taking care of dementia patients. It requires physical strength to clean, dress, and lift patients, it exposes one to danger from aggressive, agitated people, not all of whom are frail; it literally stinks, and it breaks the heart. If the patient has AIDS or another infectious disease, the job can be life threatening.
27
@Bored Teaching children is easy? Try it. Just try it.
Spend a few years earning a M.Ed. and then teach a mix of kids--some with learning disorders and/or ADHD, some with severe trauma histories, some homeless kids, hungry kids, kids with undiagnosed brain injuries...
Teach them to treat others well... in many cases better than their parents treat them and their siblings.
Teach them to read, write, spell, and do math. Teach them history, geography, and science.
Do that. Then come back and tell is all how much easier every woman's job is than any man's.
24
@Bored Have you ever tried being an elementary school teacher? You clearly have no idea how hard it is! The reality is that there was a time when men dominated fields that became “women’s fields” (secretary, is an example), and pay generally declined, not because women are not willing to work as hard, but because bosses could get away with it. When I was a graduate student in math and taught as an adjunct lecturer in the CUNY system, the chairman of the math department at Hunter College said outright that he would offer me fewer hours because male applicants needed the money more to support their families. This was the 1970s. I didn’t bother taking him to court. I had no time for that. I just took a job at City College, even though I had to commute further, but where I was treated as an equal. (I did tell the chairman that I didn’t know we lived in a socialist country, where people were paid according to their needs, as if he even knew my needs.)
14
We have stereotyped the sexes so much and yes females are seen as inferior. In other countries, education is highly valued and paid well this is not true in America we value sports. We have placed too much importance on greed and wealth at the costs of everything else and we are losing big time. Changing what we consider important as a society is in much need and hopefully we start to value others as equal.
8
In 1950, accounting and engineering professions were almost exclusively male. Accountants tended to be paid more than engineers. Both were skilled professions, requiring technical training but neither required a four year college degree.
Skip ahead to 1990. Both professions require four or five year degrees. College enrollment in accounting departments is over 50% female, while in engineering departments it's 10-15%.
It is possible that women are discouraged from majoring in engineering because engineers are sexist pigs or are discriminating in subtle and unconscious ways.
However, in addition to intellectual expertise, engineering also requires some outdoor activities, like climbing up a building or bridge in the wind to evaluate whether the rivets are being properly installed, hanging around plugged sewage lines to investigate how they got plugged. Many jobs have 24/7 coverage, so shift work is required.
In comparison, accountants work in offices, mostly 9-5 with weekends off.
The supply of potential accountants doubled. The pay for accountants is around 80% of the pay for engineers. Supply and demand. Self selection rules, no sexism required.
I state this as a woman who started out as an engineering major in '72 and switched to accounting. No regrets, even had I known there would have been a 25% wage differential for selecting engineering.
3
@ebmem I think you'd find that engineering today doesn't look much like what you're describing. Engineers today work on computers--not outside. Your information is dated and inaccurate.
7
@ebmem Echoing Madeleine's comment, yeah, you have no idea what quite a log of engineering work entails. Civil engineering is only one part of a much larger field.
4
In mid-80s, I toured a lab in a hospital and noted most of the workers were women, and the few that were not were minority men.
I assumed immediately that the pay was low, and it was.
I worked there 2+ years and moved way on, but women's pay was always less and will be for rest of my lifetime.
4
It's called "the market."
It is *illegal* to pay women different wages than men for the exact same work with the exact same experience.
In a market-based economy, there will always be self-selection.
11
Infrastructure.
It is crumbly, overcrowded and insufficient in the USA.
It can't be done anywhere else.
Men like that stuff.
Do that. Build that.
Health care and education are almost impossible to ship overseas. Women have come out the beneficiaries in employment for that reason. You can even see the Obamacare bump in the graph.
Sad about low wages for women in health care and education? Don't worry, when the men's job come back, if they come back, they won't be Eldorado either.
4
Women demanded the right to better paying jobs and benefits, so they took on traditional male dominated fields.
First let me say all job fields deserve livable wages and benefits. A person working a full time job shouldn't be homeless, on food stamps or working two jobs and still living in poverty.
Now let me comment since men need jobs, they should enter traditional women dominated fields, but only if those fields step up and increase wages and benefits. And this would be a way for women to close the wage gap?
So the women are only good enough for higher wages once the men join the team. This will not close the wage gap, men who enter nursing are paid more then women.
How about pushing for the ERA? Given time and many lawsuits, based on a constitutional right, that might close the gap.
22
"When women enter fields in greater numbers, pay declines, the sociologist Paula England and colleagues have found."
It's called flooding the labor market, and it has nothing to do with being a woman.
32
@Midwest Josh If that's true, why doesn't the pay rate go up when men leave the profession and leave mostly only the women. There actually have been studies about this, and that pay rate doesn't go up even when the number of participants goes back down. So nope, that's not it.
6
@Joy Thompson...if the number of jobs also decreased by the same number as the number of men leaving the profession, there is not an increased level of scarcity that would drive up the price of the service. I have not seen the studies to which you are referring to, however.
2
We're still living in a patriarchal society and this is designed to suppress and even exploit women.
Until we move to a society based on parity for all people, we will experience these kinds of disparity.
Ask yourself why it's still very difficult for a woman to get a job as a firefighter? If you're lucky enough to get the job, the male firefighters make it a living hell for any woman who has the temerity to pursue such a career.
Women will never have a level playing field in the job market until and unless they demand it. Sexism and inequity must end.
8
@Pamela L.
It is still very difficult for a woman to get a job as a firefighter because there are extremely stringent requirements of strength and endurance. Most of these requirements are such that being bigger and stronger are beneficial. Biologically men on average are significantly larger and stronger than females. When the few strongest humans are selected out of the population very few are female. This is due to biology. I would have liked to be a firefighter but my physical size put me at a distinct disadvantage in the standard tests. That doesn't mean the test was rigged against me, I just was not qualified for the job.
5
I think I understand the point of the article. However, it's misleading to lump together female dominated home health aide jobs and highly skilled RN and PT jobs. Also, Licensed Social Workers are highly educated with Masters degrees and are fairly compensated based on the employer. In NYC, many RNs, PTs, and Social Workers who are employed by hospital systems are members of a union and have substantial benefits including health insurance ( self funded by Union and hospital) 4-5 weeks vacation, sick days and a defined pension plan. Workers may not be getting rich but are being well paid for their work. Not all female dominated caregiving jobs pay subsistence wages, thanks to unionization.
17
While we are discussing job equity, let's remember that over 90% of job-place fatalities are men. Can you imagine the headlines if instead of men, it were women dying in such numbers? But nope, its men, so no headlines about social justice.
I am all in for equity, but there is more to it then just equal pay.
24
@Andrew Should we make teaching and healthcare more deadly?
4
Then let’s also consider the rising maternal mortality rate in the US. Or that the leading cause of death for young women is the US is related to domestic violence. So a man’s job choice might incur a greater risk of death for a certain class of men, but just being a woman, without equal rights or justice before the law, can be more lethal.
14
@Andrew I suspect that most of the job-place fatalities are the result of irresponsible behavior on the part of men, in particular the higher-ups who risk their employees’ safety to increase their profits. In the days when I worked at Bell Labs, there was a motto that went something like (it’s a long time ago) “Accidents don’t happen, accidents are prevented.” If the upper management - overwhelmingly men - took that to heart, there would be far fewer work-place fatalities and accidents.
6
One alternative theory is that female dominated jobs offer non-financial rewards that make them more attractive to women. This could include flexible hours and summers off (when the kids are at home.)
A Harvard study of transit workers in Boston found that women earned $0.89 for every dollar men earned after equalizing for experience, etc. There can be no bias because the jobs are unionized and pay is based solely on tenure. The study concluded "that the weekly earnings gap can be explained by the workplace choices that women and men make."
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bolotnyy/files/be_gendergap.pdf
9
@J. Waddell I didn't realize men did not have children.
13
@NYC Mom
Men have wives to care for children and do housework.
The men preference the career. The wife preferences the children and home. Her career suffers, as does she (exhaustion).
Let's not pretend we don't understand this VERY well. Women work a double shift. On top of that, when they retire, they are penalized with lower retirement. If the get divorced, they get less, because they make less.
SOMEONE has to raise the children. Society requires that we have children. It is a social good. Without children, everyone fails. but women bear the brunt of the costs.
2
Golly, the last thing considered, is always raising wages. I wonder why that is?
13
It's all about $$$. Pay women the same as men for the same job. It's beyond time for the ERA to pass.
23
@Colleen Yes, the value should be placed on the job, not on the person doing the job.
3
@janetintexas The argument in this article is that women are taking jobs that pay less overall. For example, even male elementary school teachers are not well paid - in most states there is a pay scale that prevents gender from being considered in their pay anyway. But more women choose to be elementary school teachers then men.
1
What's there to fix? Seriously, what's there to fix? Thank you.
3
Our school district recently raised hourly pay for special education para-educators significantly because they couldn't attract or keep workers at the old pay level. The cost of living in the Bay Area has made it difficult to hold onto teachers as well. I don't think school districts can actually afford to pay what is required to allow people to live within a decent commute distance. This is the ceiling that also keeps pay down for workers in traditionally female jobs which are often subject to the limits of taxation or the ability of families to pay for care. In the case of care giver jobs there is also the history of such work traditionally falling to women in the family and being done for free. From free to a living wage is a long haul.
17
@s
If low wage earners can’t afford to work at my company, there’ll be fewer available, and I guess I’ll just have to pay more to get one. There are no “high paying jobs,” just jobs where you have to pay high to get someone who can do them.
Markets are better problem solvers than ideologues - mostly.
7
@Charlierf
Until you always have more people then there are jobs.... How does the market solve that problem?
5
Somehow the very educated and intelligent people who did this research neglected one key factor: men and women are just plain different. Men on the whole dont go for jobs like nursing and physiotherapy because that's not what most men are or do. It has nothing to do with upbringing, gender bias, notions of masculinity, etc. Its just that men do different things to women, on the whole. So as more and more women take on traditionally male jobs in manufacturing, building, trucking, etc, etc, often because one salary earner in a family is insufficient less jobs are available for men. It's a simple equation, not requiring great research, academic, or mathematical skills. This is one of the primary results of the feminist movement, for better or for worse and it iis going to require more than wishful thinking to resolve....
8
@Leon Joffe
Retiring police and firemen are going into nursing. They've been in helping professions and are now interested in doing more in specific caring work. Its got lots to do w gender/manly work as well as physically demanding work/male oriented work. It definitely is related to gender bias, upbringing, etc. The feminist mvt made people more aware of what they were capable of, physically and emotionally, men and women. But pay is still female or male in lots of jobs.
7
@Leon Joffe It still has everything to do with the fact that if a woman traditionally does work/a job, then it is LESS VALUED by business, government and society. It's a problem that business, government and society COULD fix; there is simply no will to fix it because business profits too much from underpaying for these jobs. Your statement "men and women are just plain different. Men on the whole dont go for jobs like nursing and physiotherapy because that's not what most men are or do. It has nothing to do with upbringing, gender bias, notions of masculinity, etc. Its just that men do different things to women, on the whole."
demonstrates the very thing that the study authors were aiming to prove: if a woman traditionally does a job it is inherently worth less. You've just made demonstrated their case....again.
18
@Donna M I disagree sharply with Leon Joffe, across the board. But I’ve been a clinical social worker for 26 years, doing psychotherapy fulltime first in clinics and now, for the past 17 years, in private practice. It’s been clear for a long time that I earn more than many peers because I see more patients—so many more, at times in past, that it’s compensated for the fact that I continue to accept commercial insurance and Medicaid, with their relatively low contractually-set fees. These fees are precisely the same for all providers, but I work harder than the many women and few men in my lane.
3
It works the other way, too. Software development is an interesting example of what happens to pay and prestige as men enter a field in large numbers. In the early days of computers, women made up a large percentage of programmers. Their pay was modest, the field in general was prestigious, and there was nothing like the tech-bro culture that exists today.
The number of women majoring in computer science peaked around 1984, at about 37%. It's down to 18% now. What happened? The rise of the personal computer started in the late 70's and accelerated during the 80's. Demand for software developers soared. Pay increased. Fortunes were made, and the public noticed. Colleges were forced to put up entry barriers to computer science programs because they couldn't cope with the sudden demand. Software started to attract the kind of men who in earlier years would have gone into finance, and the industry's culture changed with them, becoming a lot more macho, and, in some cases, misogynistic. Men see "tech", as a well paid, prestigious career now, and careers like that are reserved for them.
47
@Kaleberg, I'm mostly with you on your comments, except on "Colleges were forced to put up entry barriers to computer science programs because they couldn't cope with the sudden demand." Where does that come from? I don't think that's true at all.
That said, I'm dismayed that the article SPECIFICALLY excludes the IT sector that has gained jobs. Although as you've mentioned, the tech sector has gone through its own transformation, from its early days when women gravitated toward the "computing & programming" jobs that men had largely overlooked. The tech sector has now completely its transformation, with emphasizes on "software development," with pay that is generally higher than other sectors, overtaking even the erstwhile evil sector in finance. With that transformation also comes the gender shift, from female- to now male-dominated.
I work in this sector and I know the culture, often the only (or maybe one of a small handful) of woman in the room full of men. That said, maybe I'm lucky, but I've never encountered pay disparity, harrassment or discrimination. I don't want to use the term "lean in" but I do believe that women have to learn to position themselves. If you wear too much makeup or frivolous clothes, no one will take you seriously. Personally I like jeans and t-shirts, and I'm in my element.
The ultimate test comes when workers age, actually. Men shave their heads when they go bald, and they look cool. Women? Good luck with that.
3
"“The wages that nursing assistants and home health aides get, and child care workers and teachers get, communicate to society that these jobs are not valued compared to male-dominated jobs, so of course men don’t want to do that,” Ms. Dill said"
That's not how wages are determined, no one snaps their fingers and decides that's how much someone's work is valued. It's based on a number of factors ranging from the productivity of the position to the scarcity of labour that can fill said position. It's not a flaming conspiracy, its far more mundane and explainable than that.
18
@Mark F Not so sure. What exactly is productivity? The way it is defined influences the standard. How do you measure the productivity of a teacher or a nurse, or a doctor, for that matter? It seems there are more factors at work, and some of them have to do with who does the job.
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@Mark F
If you dont know exactly what goes into teaching children, its easy to say low wages are related to job productivity. You clearly have no idea what good teachers do, the enormous amount of creative thinking, ability to manage student behavior so kids learn to pay attention, calm down and possibly enjoy what they're learning. The U.S. is definitely not 1st on the list of best education systems (K-12) in the world bec of many factors including low wages (not living wages in many parts of the country)...people have to quit, HAVE to quit to survive. Its not all about numbers, productivity. Lots to do w lack of understanding of the field of education, lack of interest in thinking more than babysitting is going on, esp for younger kids. Look a little deeper please.
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@Mark F
I’ve got a job I need done. I’m going to pay just enough to get someone to do the job. Nothing - nothing else matters.
7
Reverse of the coin. Men are often discriminated against while attempting to enter female-dominated professions. Even if a male were willing and qualified to accept a position as say a kindergarten teacher or library aid, they are routinely dismissed out of hand. Nurse practitioners are another source of reverse gender bias. You have to work much harder to become a male nurse unless the job expectation requires regular physical labor. Lifting people onto gurneys and so forth.
Female-dominated industries in the pink class are just as reserved and suspicious as male-dominated ones. Accounting provides a useful crossover for anyone interested in a case study. Both genders can perform the basic functions equally well. There's no particular gender advantage one way or the other. However, offices wall themselves off in both directions. Women are critical of men and vice versa.
Views of masculinity or femininity influence skill development. Ultimately though, some industries are more bias than others. Have you ever been asked in a job interview whether you're good at holding children? Conversely, have you ever been asked whether you're capable of lifting 50+ pounds?
You can see what the hiring manager is really asking regardless of gender.
24
There is indeed a bias against men in traditionally female-dominated workplaces, just as there is a bias against women in jobs that require physical strength and manual labor.
I'm conjecturing here, but I think there is an important difference. Women can prove that they have the strength and ability to enter male-dominated jobs over time. These jobs also don't require as much direct interaction with other people and their kids. However, I think it is harder for men to prove themselves in education, healthcare, and childcare etc. in large part due to concerns about the possibility of sexual assault and violence. Even if men get over the traditional definition of masculinity and femininity, there will probably be a barrier until a larger societal shift takes place and the statistics improve.
8
In 30 years of nursing I have seen the opposite of what you describe: nursing schools think twice about giving male students low grades because they would like more men in the profession. Men of equal skill, education and experience are more likely to be promoted to superior on any unit except mother-child / GYN. Men are more likely to rise to upper management of a hospital. This is what I have seen continually in my long nursing career.
44
Most well paying jobs can be done by either gender. Hiring preference and compensation are another story. Working in healthcare, I clearly notice an uptick in male health care providers. The number of male nurses, physical therapists, etc. is on the rise. I guess people have realized that these are solid careers with a decent salary.
10
Or it could be that the manufacturing jobs used for comparison were paid too well for the skills employed. Those manufacturing jobs now disappear as software and robots or movements offshore remove that difference. I would expect that women that assume the new manufacturing jobs, working complex tasks on robotic assembly lines, do not have any pay discrepancy.
7
Many studies have confirmed that as societies become richer and more gender neutral (i.e. an absence of bias against women in schools and professions), the divergence in preference for choice of profession increases, rather than decreases. On a spectrum where one end is people-oriented work, and the other is device-oriented work, the distribution of women is one full standard deviation more towards people-oriented than the distribution of men (these are overlapping distributions; there are lots of exceptions).
In Scandinavian societies, which are demonstrably the most gender-friendly and open in terms of a lack of bias or exclusions blocking women from traditional male work, campaigners for women's rights were surprised to find that engineering is still 85% male, and nursing is still 90%+ female. Those numbers went up as women were given more freedom to choose the profession they wanted. Some of those people-oriented professions would be better paid if more women did not choose to pursue them, that is true; the labor market responds to supply and demand. But freedom to choose isn't going to move women from nursing to engineering. The data shows that the opposite is true. A free economy with equal opportunity for all will still see professions dominated by men and by women, because across the whole population women and men make significantly different choices. Altering that outcome will require coercion, which seems counter to the original goal.
38
@Tom Meadowcroft I read somewhere about research into secondary STEM education that found engineering was more attractive to young women when it was presented and studied as a means for solving social and human problems rather than as simply creating and tinkering with devices. In other words, for girls, potential social impact was an important criteria for whether they became invested in engineering. This made a lot of sense to me on an intuitive level.
21
@Beck
That's possible, and more women are involved in chemical engineering, which involves processes (some biological and environmental) than electrical or mechanical engineering, which involve devices. But this is a limited effect. People take up a profession largely because they enjoy and are engaged by the work, not because of some sense of higher calling. As a chemical engineer (I teach now, but was once Principal Process Engineer for a chemical company) I have had much more of an impact on the environment (mostly net positive) than any 50 environmental activists, but people don't take up chemical engineering because of their desire to safeguard the environment. They do it because designing, building and operating chemical plants is cool.
9
@Tom Meadowcroft
"They do it because designing, building and operating chemical plants is cool."
As I say to my engineer offspring, "If you say so." lol
1
Here's what needs to happen: Women need to reaffirm the economic and social value of the work they have traditionally done, and they need to insist on higher wages for themselves.
It is not just a truism that wages/salaries decline when women enter a field. Women too often agree to work for less than their work is worth. A classic case is nursing: Typically considered a low-paying, unimportant profession, a substantial gender wage gap appeared when men began entering the profession. According to RegisteredNurse.org, male nurses represent only 12% of the overall profession, but they earn around $6,000 more each year than their female colleagues.
Studies in behavioral economics have found that both men and women make lower offers to women than to men. They also found that women negotiated harder when they were working on behalf of others rather than for themselves, which implies a reluctance to push their own interests.
Rather than rushing to traditionally male professions to shore up our status and our income levels, perhaps we need to reject the implicit belief that men and whatever men are doing must be important and valuable, and whatever women are doing must be the career dregs that men fobbed off on us.
59
I am a male and have been a nurse for over 40 years. I have never regretted my decision to be a nurse. Helping others during some of the most difficult times in their lives is incredibly rewarding. That being said, my experience is that nurses who are men are more likely to work full time and more likely to pick up overtime when available. They are also more likely to want to advance in their careers. This is likely the reason for the pay difference. Hospitals have policies on how much they pay nurses based on years of experience and tenure. They don’t pay men more per hour because they are men.
50
@JPF, these stereotypes that you described are exactly what keep women from earning more. I am a woman in a male-dominated profession and I take more overtime and am more focused on career advancement than most of my male colleagues. Women in my organization systematically advance faster because they work harder and take more overtime - despite the fact that they also have families. This incorrect stereotype that women 'don't work as hard and don't want to advance' is precisely what drives wage inequality. Though perhaps women who feel their primary role is at home and work only on the side are more likely to take traditional female jobs?
15
@Denise
Women choose to be in the professions that they are in, as do men. When men enter nursing, they gravitate to the higher paying branches, higher stress work with more machines and training, like operating room work. Women could do so; they are 88% of all nurses, but they don't. They have other priorities that they regard more highly, like schedule and family. They choose branches of nursing with more interaction, less hierarchy and stress, and more regular schedules. The higher paying branches of nursing would pay lower if more nurses (mostly women) were clamoring to be in them, but nurses have to be paid more to take those jobs, because female nurses don't want them.
It's all about choice. Men define their worth based on their earning power, because society (including women) do as well. Women define their worth based on a much more complicated mix of priorities, in part because society does as well. Men and women are different, and are likely to remain so, because we are not built the same, and have evolved to play different roles. This is not opinion, it has been measured. Go read some psychometric research about male vs. female personalities and job preferences.
10
Service sector jobs suffer from the fundamental economic flaw that they struggle to improve worker productivity. A childcare worker can take care of 10 children, usually by law, so no matter how much MORE you want to pay that worker, those costs simply mean higher fees to the parents of the children under care (inflation).
Same for teaching; same for health care, retail, etc.
It is the complete opposite in manufacturing where automation means one worker can make more stuff to sell and then be paid more.
At root is not a male/female dynamic between the service jobs and the industrial jobs, but a simple matter of economics that wishful thinking isn't going to make go away.
18
When and if that happens, you will see many fewer people employed in that business. Those that remain will likely then have higher salaries.
1
'Men apply for higher-paying female-dominated jobs as a stop-gap, but are less likely than women to be called back, and, if hired, to move on as soon as possible.' So, the solution is "improving the quality" of female-dominated jobs "in terms of wages..."
This would seem to be a solution guaranteed not to solve. And it is the point of the Upshot.
3
changing mindsets - I'm thinking of when supermarket checkout staff were all female - and then gradually males started - hmm - still mostly female I think ...
I saw something about the Industrial Revolution in England - where some tasks required smaller nimble fingers - females were typically better - and I think those jobs were only open to females (maybe children subject to laws) - until technology replaced the need for human nimbleness - as in cotton mills or such.
I suspect the nature of free enterprise capitalism - always seeking the lowest cost - tends to cleave out the workers willing to accept the lowest pay, e.g. used to be China – now they demand higher pay we see factories in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Mexico, etc.
funny tho' about the World Wars - before then women were not accepted in many workplaces - during the war they were actively recruited - then afterwards when they were 'encouraged' to go home and make babies, they were 'wait a minute - I've DONE THAT JOB - I'd rather keep doing it !'
7
There you have it, misogyny in a nutshell. Maintaining this world acutely demonstrates Trump's appeal to white men, no secrets here.
16
@Eero And what was the appeal to white women, 53% of whom voted for Trump.
4
Men entering the field may also not help raise wages- many times men in a majority-female field are simply paid more anyway. And teaching/caregiving jobs tend to be very low paid compared to the work required.
19
For the women in my immediate and extended family, healthcare jobs have allowed them to have relatively stable middle class family lives. I worry that one unintended consequence of healthcare reform is to supress wages for healthcare workers, most of whom are women.
9
A lot of the pink jobs there is resistance to wage growth because there is more direct pressure to keep costs down. People do not want to pay higher premiums to pay for higher wages for nurses or nurses aides, want to keep property taxes down so cannot pay teachers more or to pay child care workers more would lead to people reduce their child care needs.
34
@Sarah : it is especially hard for frail seniors who need home health aides -- they bill around $24 a hour (!) which means it can run up to $15,000 a month for round the clock care. And that's with aides getting only about $10 an hour (the rest goes to the booking agency)! Bring them up to $15 an hour and all costs go up 35% -- so the senior is now billed $22,500 a month!
4
It seems like more men must be self-employed in blue-collar work. While you would make a low wage cutting grass, chopping wood, and plowing snow for an employer, if you contract directly with the customer, you can charge a much higher price. Furthermore, if the customer pays cash to get a better deal, the IRS won't be hearing about the transaction.
Such men typically live outside cities, and rely on their wives for health insurance and an official income.
30
This is a useful article, as far as it goes. At the college level, what I see is too much traditional 'tracking' by/of women in the lower paid professional fields: biology, communications, psychology some liberal arts, and too little majoring in computer sciences, math, engineering of all sorts.
Until we see more women across the nation entering these more lucrative majors/fields, the pay disparity will continue.
18
@UNHBill
Or we could just pay the poets what we pay the computer scientists. One after all has brought us glory and beauty and the other, well, this comment box but also the invasion of privacy.
10
@UNHBill Or we could recognize the value in the lower paid professional fields. Everyone deserves to be paid fairly even if they don't want to work with math or computers. And if everyone suddenly wants those high paying jobs, who is left to do the rest?
6
If there were no more people to do the rest, then the salaries of the rest would be higher. If people value what you do, they will pay enough to get you or somebody else to do it.
3
A major challenge when it comes to pay rates for jobs like child or elder care is the fact that they are often borne by families who have limited resources to pay. So I’ve seen daycare owners and health aide providers struggle to raise rates because they understand the impact. Especially in elder care, people will find ways to reduce hours of home care if the cost goes up.
Care work has been the family’s province for so long in the U.S., or it’s a social service with highly restricted funding — and that likely needs to change to help wages rise.
63
@ams Another issue is that labor efficiency in a lot of pink collar fields is heavily regulated by the government with very limited flexibility. For example in child care facilities staff are required to maintain a certain staff to child room ratio, based upon the age of the kids. This limits the facilities ability to increase productivity, so they can pay staff more. In this day and age, where there are so many new tech solutions, it might make sense to review the current requirements and see if technology can be used to allow for greater staff productivity. For example, during daily naps daycare could use wearables (ie fitbits, etc) to track their napping kids, and monitor their activity level, breathing, heart rates, and any movements so that one staff is monitor 20-30 kids from a central kiosk, freeing up other staff during that time to accomplish other daily tasks such as cleaning, staff meetings, health and safety retraining's, program planning, etc. Even a small increase in salary from a minor productivity increase can have a big impact on a lower income persons lifestyle.
2
@ams
Work with technology is scaleable; a new device or piece of software can be sold to millions or billions of people; the same is true for pop music, for instance. Almost all work with people is not scaleable. A care worker can care for 3-4 infants or Alzheimer's patients, no matter how good she is at her job. The difference in productivity of those jobs will inevitably drive the pay rates apart until there is a shortage of day care workers because they have gone to higher paying work. Economics can be cruel, but it is wise not to ignore it. Highly productive technology work produces the wealth that we can then spend on things like caring for people. Technologists are highly paid because we need to encourage people to go into and work hard at wealth producing professions, so we have that wealth to spend. We can tax some of that wealth to spend on healthcare, but not enough to come close to equalizing pay; if we did the wealth creation would stop, and we'd all be equal, and hungry, like the people of Venezuela.
7
@ams The challenge applies to healthcare - yet doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies don't seem to mind charging exhorbitant prices that many can't afford.
3
Given the immense economy, protective laws, sample sizes measured in the millions, one wonders why the price determining laws of supply and demand don’t work in this situation. Or do they?
3
Nobody in 2019 pays Y for male dominated jobs and Y -x for female dominated jobs because of gender preference. Outside the decreasing number of manufacturing jobs protected by 20th Century labor agreements, jobs get paid just enough to get people to fill them. Not a dollar more. If women did not fill those Y - x jobs, either the job moves away, gets replaced by robot or salaries increase. That fundamental group of actions has not ever changed, even if government enters the picture.
5