Jamie Reidy shares a report showing a gender shift in the workplace: men moving into traditionally female-centric jobs.
The New York Times Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff report from Houston:
Over the last decade, men have begun flocking to fields long the province of women…
The trend began well before the crash, and appears to be driven by a variety of factors, including financial concerns, quality-of-life issues and a gradual erosion of gender stereotypes. An analysis of census data by The New York Times shows that from 2000 to 2010, occupations that are more than 70 percent female accounted for almost a third of all job growth for men, double the share of the previous decade.
Have you seen this phenomenon at work?
Photo by: cjmartin
This is apparently a problem for women: ht tp://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/05/21/a-new-obstacle-for-professional-women-the-glass-escalator/ In Norway there was a study about this glass-escalator where they interviewed male nurses and former male nurses who had gone into a supervising or administrative position. Many of them quoted an unwelcoming working environment (from female co-workers) as one reason for moving upwards. Another important reason was that more female than male nurses wanted to work part-time. It is also interesting to note that Norway with it’s top spot on the Gender Equity Index only have about 10% male nurses while Italy (widely considered to be a macho culture) with… Read more »
Has there been a similar shift of women into trad.male jobs? I know quite a few are going out to the mines in Australia now for the big cash.
I guess we have have an anomaly where I live. 20-30 years ago here men populated the teaching positions and women were the anomaly, especially in elementary. I’ve seen a slow shift here toward more female elementary and high school teachers but there is still a healthy dose of men.
I’m curious where you live, is it in the U.S? All I know is it wasn’t until I got to high school that there was more than one male teacher in the school
I live and grew up in the US. My understanding is a bunch of the male teachers were teachers as they were in college during the draft and at that point in time elementary ed was one of the easier degrees to get. I think in my elementary school we had 2 teachers per grade level except kindergarten where we only had one teacher (female). One of those two teachers in 1 of those 2 teachers in grades 1, 3, and 4 were male and in grades 2,5 and 6 both teachers per grade were male. In high school I… Read more »
I have definitely seen the number of male nurses increase, and with excellent results. I am curious with this move into ‘traditional women’s roles’ what your opinion is of men moving away from traditional male occupations. I work within the veterinary industry where male graduates used to make up the majority of veterinarians before the 80’s. Fast forward to 2012 and we are seeing less than 20% male graduates. The job is the same. We still stick our arms up cows to deliver calves and wrestle exuberant newfoundlands to the ground. I am curious, and perhaps you can offer an… Read more »
More money – presumably
I have seen some awesome male nurses, especially in the ICU setting, who were phenomenal with my dad and BFF…if you saw them in action, you would not be thinking of Ben Stiller in “Meet The Parents”….
Perhaps that would be a good idea for a story….you follow them around for their shift and see what they actually do! Very intense stuff!
Where I work 90% of the vice presidents are women. About 66% of the director level jobs are held by women. About 60% of the employees are women and about 70% of the customers are women. I’ve seen no shifts at my job. The economy is moving from manufacturing based to service based so you’ll probably see the shift.
The claim that more men are moving into teaching at the elementary and kindergarten level is not accurate.
“The economic downturn seems to have worsened an already-vast gap between the numbers of men and women teachers, particularly in the early grades.”
ht tp://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/09/30maleteacher_ep.h31.html