The Problem With Mostly Male (and Mostly Female) Workplaces

[Starry Messenger]

Last edited Thu Mar 21, 2013, 04:09 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: