Occupational Inequality Among Men And Women Essay

Occupational Inequality Among Men and Women
Imagine being a woman in 1972 and trying to enter the workforce. In those days, women were (stereo) typically secretaries, nurses, teachers, and in other such jobs where the primary focus was taking care of sick children and injured adults. According to the data given on table 11.1, very few women worked in what were considered “men’s fields.” These fields consisted of civil engineers, auto mobile and mechanical, and dentistry field. In contrast, women tended to work as registered nurses, kindergarten and preschool teachers. Over the past 30 years, more women have migrated into what were once considered men’s jobs, but for most fields, these numbers are still statistically low.
According to the U.S. …show more content…
Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1972 only 1.9% of women worked in the dentistry field compared to 98.1% of men. Women working in this field increased 21.8% from 1972 to 2003. However, the men within the dentistry field continue to significantly outweigh the female counterparts. For example, when comparing the dentistry and engineering field to nursing and teaching fields, nursing and teaching has always been a common job for women. The amount of women pursuing a job as a nurse has only decreased by 5.5% from 1972 to 2003, by this change; females are gradually leaving behind the traditional female careers and moving into traditional male careers. As for women having a job as a kindergarten teacher, in 1972 96.8% of women were teachers, however this job did fluctuate. For example, from 1972 to 1983, Women pursuing a career in the teaching field went up 1.4%. 10 years later, some women moved from this job to a different field and resulted in losing .5% of females in the teaching field. However, the teaching career did slightly increase again in 2003 but with only .1% of females. When looking at civil engineering, in 1972 to 2003 the increase in women pursing this field only went up by 8.1%, with that said, over the course of 31 years there was 91.9% of men that dominated over women in this field. It is apparent that women have only had slight growth in this higher paying field leaving the majority of women working in fields that were, and …show more content…
Bureau of Labor Statistics in table 11.1, it shows that very few jobs have made progress with women pursing further careers in them. For example, in the field consisting of medical physicians and osteopathic, women have made an improvement with pursuing in this field throughout the years. In 1972, the total amount of people that had chosen this field was a total of 332,000 people. Out of 332,000 people 10.1% were female meaning 298,468 of those people were male. Females increased 5.7% in the medical physicians and osteopathic occupation over the course of 10 years. This leaves the population of men at 279,544 in this occupation, with 15.8% of the total population of female. Another 10 years pass, and its 1993, there was another 6% increase in females joining this profession. The results consisted of total of 19,920 men that were knocked out by the total population of females that potentially replaced the men in this field. By 2003, the female population pursuing in the medical physicians and osteopathic job reached 29.9%, the male population was then at 70.1%. As figure 3 shows, females pursuing in the occupation of medical physicians and osteopathic field has increased a great amount from 1972 to 2003 by 19.8% of women taking over the field. But still as shown, doesn’t meet the vast majority of men working in this field. Figure 3 shows that women are striving to reach equality with men but have yet to achieve such a