Blog #12: Women in Non-Traditional Jobs

Segregation in the workplace happens on a daily basis, and most people aren't even aware of it. There are so many laws protecting the privacy of every one's salary and personal situations that many times you can be taken advantage of for being a women and have no idea. It can easily be covered up as something else such as poor work quality, late to work too many times, etc. I personally have experienced this working for a very large corporation, where I found out that I was making a significantly less salary than the other MALE supervisor in my position. We did the same amount of work, ran the same number of employees, and had the same knowledge, but I was being paid less because I was a young girl and he was an older man. I am not one to make myself and other women the victim constantly, but sometimes it is too real to pretend that it is not happening.

Gender socialization has a big effect on occupational segregation in the sense that children grow up with the idea that women do not do "non-traditional" jobs such as auto mechanics, aviation mechanics, mechanical engineering, etc. They grow up with the idea that they shouldn't be doing a job like that, so they in a sense, segregate themselves from an early age. In the video, it talks about how only 1 and 2% of these fields have women in them, and I think it's because of the gender socialization. I think that many times, women in these non traditional positions are looked down upon, as if they couldn't do something they were supposed to so they had to be a car mechanic, even though that is their dream and what they enjoy doing. They loose credibility in these fields because of the lack of women that have any knowledge, it's hard to believe that if 99% of the women in the world wouldn't be able to work on a car, that 1% would be good enough to make it their career, so they aren't given the full chance they deserve.

Women have a great advantage by breaking into these male dominated fields, not only do they receive more money than in traditional jobs, but they also can bring new and refreshing ideas to the table that have never been brought before. I truly think men gain by women entering these male dominated fields, because working with men all day every day becomes a routine, men and women have different values and different ideas on things, and adding new ideas could mean wonders for the men in these occupations.