Why Don’t More Men Pursue Female-Dominated Professions?

I have a cousin who was an elementary school teacher because he loved it. It's all he ever wanted to do. He has a bunch of kids of his own because he enjoys being a dad. He's that "really great with kids" guy.

In school, all he ever got was suspicion. All of the teachers and administrators and parents in schools treat male primary school teachers as if they're child molesters or think that men are totally unsuited to the job. There is _blatant_ sexism.

He lasted two years and now runs his own construction/carpentry business where he's a lot happier.

A 'lot' of these jobs have contact with children and the news organisations have done enough damage to societies perception that a man wanting to work with children is probably a pedophile to wreck that career path.

'Something must be wrong with you'

I think it's generally the same reasons that more women don't pursue male-dominated professions. I think this is typically that there's an established culture, and not fitting in with that culture makes you seem like an oddity or that you've got ulterior motives.

Is that man teaching because he needs a job, or because he enjoys teaching? Or does he just want to prey on the girls?

Is that woman developing video games because she's a good programmer, or is she just desperate for male attention?

The biggest difference is that fewer people see this as a problem when it's affecting men. Culturally men are expected to bear their problems instead of lament them.

I suspect there are two reasons why men would push for more women in IT:

- lower wages because of higher competition (the employer's incentive)

- more "attractive" workplace wink wink (the employee's perspective)

I know it's not politically correct to say that, but don't shoot the messenger.

I don't think men feel the need for more "female perspectives" in programming. Especially as they wouldn't even know what those would suppose to be.

Women (feminists) push for more women in tech because they have seen some people become rich via tech jobs and feel left out. They don't push for more garbage women and so on.

This is more bias against men than we are ready to admit.

I was somewhat blind to this until the wife opened a daycare in our home. When we interviewed with a new parent, she would very tactfully advise the parents that I might be in charge some days/times. The most common response was 'just let us know what days.' Which was code for: we aren't comfortable with that but we are too polite to say that while he's here. Less than half of the kids showed up the first time she took a day off. My paper airplane tournament was missing a number of contestants.

Then I had a few candid conversations with friends who had children. Almost universally wouldn't consider a male daycare provider. Or any daycare situation where a male would be even temporarily unsupervised with children.

It was disappointing to see that level of bigotry. While there aren't going to be men manning the barricades over daycare and teaching, it is something that should change. If you want your daughters to learn STEM, it might be a man teaching them. Try not to panic.

I am currently going to school to study occupational therapy--which is predominately a female dominated profession. Why did I do it? Frankly, I was getting burned out on tech, and I've always wanted to try health care out without having to over commit in terms of time and money. My program is about 3+ years including the pre-reqs, and the total cost will be only about $25000. I also didn't want to do anything really stressful like nursing. But, now that I'm actually surrounded by women, I am starting to pine for my old tech days of having guy co-workers, which often led to guy friends, talking about guy stuff.

Women are weird. They're exceptionally passive aggressive, and they love gossiping like there was a fire sale on it. It doesn't help that the few female OT's that I've had to shadow were not my cup of tea. I didn't think they were nice at all, and I could see them being overtly political or passive aggressive. Also, as others have mentioned in this thread, there is a very real bias I may have to contend with as a male in a female dominated profession.

Currently, I want to work in pediatrics. I like the idea of working in the schools and with kids. However, I DO see that others, especially women, may view that with a wary eye. It sucks.

There is a bright side though. If you're a single guy, damn, the women... Lots of pretty women. That's something that I don't miss about tech.

There are organizations devoted to getting men into traditionally-female occupations. We don't hear about it as much, because it's not tech oriented?

http://aamn.org/ http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/working-groups/men/

The assumption is that men are generally doing well under the current system, so nobody needs to encourage men to pursue careers dominated by women. I am sure there is a notion that nursing is a feminine career, but that is beside the point; the real issue is that nobody is trying to dispel that notion. The effort is focused on dispelling the notion that engineering and science are "manly" disciplines.

It also does not help that here in the USA we are trained to be automatically suspicious of men who pursue two common and traditionally female lines of work: elementary school education and childcare. A male kindergarten teacher is always at risk of being branded a pedophile by some paranoid parent, and must watch his every step in his personal life (what if he is into S&M? what if he is gay?).

Because there are never "not enough men" in some field, it's always "not enough women."

The author gives "P.R. Officer" as an example of one profession typically dominated by women. When I studied public relations in college, I was one of the few guys in my classes, and I began to pose this question to others in the field.

I think part of the reason is that many guys mistakenly associate PR with publicity and event planning — activities which they view as being "for women." In reality, modern public relations is deeply intertwined with management. It's about managing a company's relationships and persuading important audiences to take action.

Publicity and event planning are tools in modern PR. To say that they're the substance of the field is like saying that computer science is about keyboards and typing.

So, what's interesting here is that the field of public relations has evolved to encompass some things that are perceived as traditionally male, including business management, strategy and law. However, many men perceive the field as it was decades ago.

To answer the OP's question, maybe men don't push for men to break into traditionally female fields because, once those fields are branded as being "for women," they cease trying to understand how the fields evolve over time.

To understand conversations about gender bias in professions, you have to understand that the American academy (and by extension, America's educated class) operates from a Marxist ideology. This casts the world in light of class conflict. In the branch of this ideology which deals with sex relations (called "feminism"), men are the oppressor class and women are the oppressed. Thus, male overrepresentation in the suicide or prison population is not a problem (men cannot be oppressed, they are the over-class). But male overrepresentation in tech is a problem, or at least it has become a problem as tech work has gained in prestige.

Male underrepresentation in traditionally female fields is not considered a problem, again because males cannot be oppressed as a class. It is true that men have fared worse than women in the recession[1], and that men have fallen behind women in educational attainment, so that an influx of men into these fields might have strong, positive effects for society. But as long as the "patriarchy" remains, it will not be a concern.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm

Oh, this post is gold. Albert asks:

>Why are women fighting for more women to do STEM while men are not fighting for more men to be therapists?

...and Freakonomics hears: "Why don't more men pursue female-dominated professions?" Not once, but twice. Alfred writes back to clarify his meaning, yet Dubner, again, simply lifts keywords out of his sentences and writes his own question to answer. Literally failing to think outside the bounds of political tropes.

Nurse might be cool, you get to help save people's lives and make a real difference without as many barriers as becoming a doctor. Googling the average salary, though, it's 1/4 what I earn as a developer. So no way.

A meta-comment, which I'm separating from my main reply: Rather a lot of the comments here seem to be reacting to this in ways that boil down to "Feminism is unfair to men!" For anyone out there who hasn't studied much of this stuff, let me warn you to be cautious buying in to those arguments. They can sound persuasively like justice; I used to nod and mutter "Yeah!" to them myself. But I have eventually recognized that if we want to achieve that goal of true equality that we all want, women have one heck of a lot more catching up to do than men.

There's a notion of "Prestige" in language (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_(sociolinguistics) ).

So, languages and dialects have some sort of (nebulously defined) level of prestige relative to any particular population, and the prestige of a particular language/dialect is one of those factors for a bunch of cultural phenomena, such as where and whether it's appropriate to use a particular language/dialect in a particular social setting, and whether a language is taught to children, etc, etc, etc.

Anyway, point being, prestige is also one of those things you see in careers too. It may be that there aren't more men banging down the doors to get into dietetics and nursing because those jobs aren't perceived to be as prestigious as being a doctor.

People aspire to being the President of the United States, or a doctor, or lawyer or whatever. They don't aspire to being middle management, or nursing home attendants, or city clerks.

(p.s. I think that gender imbalance in any field is questionable/problematic. But on a pragmatic basis there's actual material harm when all of the prestigious and high earning fields are particularly biased.)

Recently we (my wife and I) were on the search for a replacement nanny as our nanny of 2 years was going back to school. During the process, my wife posted to Facebook asking her friends what they thought about a "manny" she found. I was shocked at the whole situation.

First, even just the fact that it seems perfectly legit to call him a "manny" was enough. I can't even imagine how much the internet would explode if someone questioned hiring "womengineers."

Second, the fact that the question is even asked. Like there is something EXTRA we need to look at when hiring a man as a nanny that we would not look at for a woman. Skills are skills. A background check is a background check.

Lastly, I was appalled by the women that spoke up about how sketchy it was and that they would advise against it. Thankfully, there were people that spoke up about it being no different. That it would be great to have our boys see a man in such a role.

Ultimately, he didn't make the cut. But this was not a male/female reason. But seeing what I saw, I do feel a bit sorry for the guy as I'm sure this happens more than he knows. I'm sure he has missed out on great jobs because too many of people's friends thought it was too sketchy.

A while ago I watched a Norwegian documentary questioning various aspects of Norwegian society. One segment dealt with gender equality. One thing the stats found is that as gender opportunities in employment reached parity women largely abandoned traditional male jobs are returned to traditional female jobs. Having enough of a safety net not to worry about going hungry, homeless or without healthcare may be a contributing factor. But it seems as if when people really go by their preferences they gravitate toward professions that match the traditional gender stereotypes. An interesting bit was when they interviewed psychologists and social scientists, and they discounted the idea that there could be a preference difference between genders. They thought that if society were perfect that there would be a 50/50 split in any profession. Phooey.

In the US I think it's likely that men just don't want to be nurses. Some men do want that and there are male nurses, but it's rare. It doesn't have to be because they're afraid of perceptions. It can be because they don't desire to do that job.

For this particular question, it's hard for me to see that there's any real mystery involved. The push for more gender equality in traditionally male professions only shows up for professions associated with high status and/or high income (hence, STEM fields and upper management get lots of attention).

I have seen no similarly strong push to get women involved in (say) garbage collection, which is also traditionally male. Yes, equality there would be great, too, but that inequality isn't as big a factor in preventing women from an equal share of power and influence in society.

Meanwhile, there are efforts to get men involved in higher-status traditionally female jobs like nursing. But there simply aren't many high-status/high-paying jobs that are traditionally female... which is pretty much the point. (Looking at the article, I'm surprised to see psychologists/therapists presented as predominantly female. When I hear "psychologist", the first image that comes to mind is Freud.)

I've always found this to be an amusing counter-narrative: "if you're so concerned about the lack of women in finance, business, and technology, why aren't you concerned about the lack of men in teaching or secretarial work?" How is this not a self-answering question?

It should also be noted that the percentage of male nurses, while still small (10%) has tripled in four decades, and male nurses earn more than female one: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/25/men-nur....

Let me put on my armchair psychologist hat and say:

I think it's due to the fact that in our society, men aren't socialized to think about feelings, and in fact, men are socialized to not have them. So it's not a surprise that these professions that require some form of feeling caring for one another lack men. For example teaching (sympathizing and empathizing with students and caring about their future), nursing (caring about patients well being and health), and PR (caring about the success of your customers) all require feeling.

[citation needed]

I think this is the appropriate answer to these guys talking about this kind of a topic.

They pay less. Which may be a result of gneder imbalance initially.

My wife would kill me.

People make assumptions (snap judgments) based upon "externalities".

People bully and exhibit prejudice (both effective strategies, by the way; why do you think they persist?) in order to secure their own advantage.

Choose a role that fosters negative outcomes in the former and fosters and facilitates the latter, and you can be in for a lot of grief.

Flower up the language about this however you like; at base, this is a substantial reason.

Is it "fair"? No. Is it reality? In my opinion and experience, yes.

Because they're paid shit in comparison to the labor and education involved.

There's nothing keeping men from joining female professions, such as teaching, nursing, cooking, or library science, and when they do, they're usually paid more and promoted to management earlier. Look at the sex ratios of the foot soldiers of any of those professions, and compare them to the sex ratios of middle management and upper management. Based on nothing but anecdote, I think you'd find 90-100% women at the bottom, 40-50% women at the middle, and 5-10% women at the top.

edit: Anything like this for the US?

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/01/14/men-outnumber-...

edit: It's informally called the "Glass Escalator."

http://www.librarystudentjournal.org/index.php/lsj/article/v...

"A common complaint expressed by some men and women librarians is the idea of a glass escalator for males in the field. Women expressed frustration at men promoted rapidly into management or administrative positions (Williams, 1992; Greer, 2001). Men are just as frustrated that they are often pushed up the career ladder when they are perfectly content in their present position. One male who desired to work as a children’s librarian was encouraged to move into administration after only six months on the job. He has stayed in his original position for 10 years but only by resisting promotion (Williams, 1992).

"The concern expressed by Suzanne Hildenbrand that men would continue to dominate administrative and director positions has been questioned and contradicted by Paul Piper & Barbara Collamer. They point out that female library directors now outnumber males by nearly a 3 to 1 margin (Hildenbrand, 1999; Piper & Collamer, 2001)."