(S)He Works Hard for the Money

By Megan | Published: June 6, 2012
Share on TumblrSubmit to StumbleUponDigg ThisShare via email

Originally posted at carlsonsalon.blogspot.com

Men are increasingly entering traditionally female-dominated professions, according to recent analysis. Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff reveal that

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.

Dewan and Gebeloff offer a variety of plausible explanations for this trend, including “financial concerns, quality-of-life issues, and a gradual erosion of stereotypes.” They hypothesize that the stigma of entering female-dominated professions is lessoning, while, at the same time, the stability of female dominated professions compared to male-dominated professions is increasingly attractive in the current economy.

Whatever the reason, I believe this trend has interesting implications for not only the gender segregation of labor, but the value of such labor.

Since the rise of wage-labor during the Industrial Revolution, women’s labor has consistently been devalued relative to men’s labor.* This was

Share on TumblrSubmit to StumbleUponDigg ThisShare via email
and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.
168 queries. 0.643 seconds