Essay On Gender In The Workplace

Gender and the Workplace “According to the Education Department data, more than three quarters of teachers in kindergarten through high school are women” (Rich). Teaching was once a career for men, but when women entered the work force 1960s, they did not have many careers open to them. According to Philip N. Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, “a job primarily done by women, people tend to believe it has less value” (Rich), could play a role in why fewer and fewer men are applying for teaching jobs. There are more jobs in education than just being a teacher, for example a paraprofessional (para-pro). A para-pro is an educator who is not licensed to teach, but can work with students individually. But this is also a career dominated by women. Is this because men do not feel powerful enough, is it because of the pay, or could it be because the job is stereotyped for only women? Para-pros working in the field today and parents believe that men can be a paraprofessional yet they choose not to. A …show more content…
If a female student had a male para-pro both parents and other female para-pros said they would not be comfortable with it. It makes everyone think, why is he doing this job? Having a young female student and a male para-pro brings up issues that people think about. While it is not right to assume these things, parents and the schools don’t want to take the chance. Parents said they would give a male para-pro a chance if they felt like they knew him well enough. They also said that they would see how their student would act around him (Anonymous One). Some people don’t think twice about a male student and a female para-pro, but why do we think twice with men? We start to stereotype men again; we need to give them a chance at this job. School boards aren’t discouraging men to apply for this, but they could do more to change people’s mind on whom this job is really