Career Tip 007: Women Working in Male-Dominated Fields are The Trail Blazers for Future Generations.
Nothing in this post is a recommendation.
When I was a little girl, I wondered why legos were not pink and purple. It bothered me. I also wondered why the special edition were always camouflage or the theme of some kind of male superhero. I loved to play with them and build, but my loyalty to the pastel rainbow and girlie things over primary colors and weapons did not serve me. I outgrew the more STEM directed toys of my childhood, which was a shame. If those legos were pink and purple, I never would have let them go. Today, female directed STEM toys are the focus for a few brands like GoldieBlox, STEM Girls Books, and The Pinxies. I’m happy to report that Lego now has a set devoted to Women of Nasa. Wow! We have come a long way. But have we reeeeally? These brands are nice but you still have to really search hard for them and they are still few and far between. Kind of like roles within male dominated fields..for women. Maybe that’s because instead of trying to focus on selling ideas to girls, we should focus on the opportunities growing for young women to partake in the world as we know it. Maybe as women we need to be exploring all the things in the world, no matter how they are packaged, including professions.
When we look at data reported on women in the workplace, and there sure is a lot of that data to sort though, it is clear that we are divided into a patriarchal system and we are still at the beginning of trying to bend that matrix. Even the very word we use to describe our female anatomy is designed around a man. Vagina means a sheath to which you put your sword into. What the literal F*ck. Stop using that word. Right now. We are not here to hold a man’s sword. We are here to flourish and create. Here in the goddess culture, seeking to balance the patriarchal systems with some feminine energy infused in common language, we choose to call our sacred anatomy a: Yoni. Yoni means sacred temple. Wewh. Much better, I already like myself so much more after just changing this word in my vocabulary… to empower myself. Sorry, I digressed. But this matters. Words and data matter! When we work in male dominated fields like banking, technology, mathematics, and sciences, we are starting out on an up male dominated fields, I wonder, how far have we actually come since women won the right to vote in the US (1920). Well we are now 2 years past the 100 years of liberation to be a voting part of this culture and yet women have slowed down on investing and creating and taking a stride in the patriarchy… I wonder why.
If you don’t think your ideas matter, just think about the fact that we are the majority of the economy and over half of the college degrees. Women do most of the spending, caretaking, cooking, consuming of brands, and raising the next generation.
Women matter. We should act like it and build what we need to thrive.
Women drive 83% of all U.S. consumption, through both buying power and influence, African Americans spend $1.2 trillion annually in the U.S. , Latinx consumers’ buying power is expected to reach , $1.7 trillion by 2020
For women, we lag in inventing in general. This PDF is incredible and will make you want to go back to the drawing boards for your ideas like ASAP.
We need to know what we don’t know. It’s in our own belief system that we aren’t good enough or educated enough to create. The real issue besides our belief in ourselves is that we just don’t do it. In this incredible survey - Progress and Potential; A profile of women inventors on US Patents, surveys show that “between 1978 and 1997, the share of patents with at least one female inventor nearly tripled from 5% to 14%. Such a rapid increase is reasonable considering the share was quite low in the mid-1970s, making it easier to achieve high growth rates. Likewise, women’s opportunities to invent expanded rapidly as more women entered the labor force over the period. Since 1998, however, the share of patents with at least one female inventor has only increased from 15% to 21%, suggesting the pace of entry into patenting by women has slowed.”
“Second, even though more patent inventor teams include women, the gender composition among all inventors has
not changed significantly. As shown by the women inventor rate (middle line in Figure 1), through the mid-1980s women comprised less than 5% of all patent inventors. The women inventor rate only reached 10% in 2000. And in 2016, more than a decade and a half later, only 12% of patent inventors were women.” It is widely recognized that many factors shape the opportunities for women to become patent inventors. Educational and occupational choices are two important influences. Historically, science and engineering fields produce the most patentable inventions (Marco et al., 2015). Naturally, when fewer women pursue careers in science and engineering fields, they will make up a smaller share of patent inventors.”
“ In 2015, women made up about 28% of the total science and engineering work-force but only 12% of inventors on granted patents. Across nearly all science occupations, women participate at a much higher rate than they invent patented technology. It is only in engineering that women’s workforce participation rate resembles the overall women inventor rate.”
“Observed gender differences among patent inventors reflect a wide variety of influences that ultimately shape the opportunities for men and women to become inventors. One such factor is educational background. Women make up 31% of science, engineering, technology, and mathematics (STEM) college graduates, even though they account for 60% of graduates across all degree fields (Munoz-Boudet, 2017). Within STEM fields, women comprise 18% of graduates in computer science and engineering versus 40% in life science.”
This matters because women are smart enough to be inventors, scientists, engineers, supply chain officers, CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CMOs, etc. But we aren’t penetrating these industries for some reason. Could it be that the demand of being a mother and career person is too much for us. Or could it be that these jobs are not branded right to us in our adolescences. Regardless of the reason, we need to work harder at helping women get into STEM field and C-Suites and boards sooner in their life path.
In an excerpt from Forbes 2021 article Women’s Status And Pay in the C-Suite; New Study, they quote
“In the highest ranks of corporate America, there are seven times as many male executive officers as female executive officers; and, at the CEO level, men outnumber women by almost 17 to one, according to a new report from Morningstar authored by Jackie Cook. More than half of companies studied did not have even a single female named executive officer, according to Morningstar, which drew on its Executive Insight Database*. Cook noted that, as of 2020, Amazon did not have any women on its list of top-paid executives. (In Amazon’s 2020 proxy statement, its five named executive officers are men.)
The report suggests there may be two reasons for the gap in pay and the gap in representation. First, women are less likely to be promoted than men. Indeed, reports from McKinsey/Lean In document how the management pipeline is broken: for every 100 men who are promoted to the position of manager, only 85 women are promoted, and the gap is even more pronounced for African-American women and Latinas. So, women held 38% of entry-level management positions in 2020, while men held the remaining 62%.
Cathy Hwang, a law professor who teaches corporate law at the University of Virginia, explained that the “report just underscores how under-represented women (and people of color) continue to be in corporate America. Many companies have focused on hiring a diverse workforce, but there’s still a ton of work to be in retention and promotion.” Second, the Morningstar report notes that “women and men advance upward through different channels,” with women more likely to “occupy support roles like human resources and administration compared with the higher-paid roles that engender a fast track to the top, with higher pay—typically operations, profit and loss, and R&D roles.” This is the “glass wall” phenomenon, in which women are boxed into certain roles. According to another study (reported in the Wall Street Journal), women were one-third as likely as men “to have been encouraged to consider a P&L role,” and men were “twice as likely to have been promoted or selected for leadership training in the past two years. Nearly half the men reported getting detailed advice at work on how to chart their path to a P&L job, compared with 15% of women surveyed.”
So when we read these articles and understand that the way we work, the fields we work in, how we are promoted, and how we are brainwashed all plays a part in how we get paid, then we have to ask the question: At what age do we have to start the dialog. I would say at the very beginning. The issue is that when women enter into “male-dominated industry and occupations” to try to affect change, it sometimes really does feel pointless. But it’s not. As I always say, we must just be more knowledgable than the rest to effect change.
In an global study reported in an article on Catalyst.org, they discuss this sector of Male Dominated Industry and the issues we still face because of keeping the sexes segregated with professions.
“Male-Dominated Occupations Are Those Comprised of 25% or Fewer Women1
Male-dominated industries and occupations are particularly vulnerable to reinforcing harmful stereotypes and creating unfavorable environments that make it even more difficult for women to excel.2
In the United States, only 6.5% of women worked full-time in male-dominated occupations in 2020.3
Between 2016 and 2018, women’s employment increased by 5.0% in industries consisting of two-thirds men.5
Despite growth in information and communications technology, since 2010 women’s share of jobs in the sector in the European Union dropped to only 18% in 2019.7”
The reasons women maybe don’t want to be in those industries is also explained:
“Women Face Challenges Working in Male-Dominated Workplace Cultures9
Women working in male-dominated industries face a variety of challenges, including:
Societal expectations and beliefs about women’s leadership abilities.10
Pervasive stereotypes, such as that of the “caring mother”11 or office housekeeper.12
Higher stress and anxiety compared to women working in other fields.13
Lack of mentoring and career development opportunities.14
Sexual harassment.15”
One interesting graph was the following:
When we look at these numbers, to be honest, it’s depressing. Not because we want and need those jobs. But because those jobs need us. These industries need us and our ideas.
In the article called Research-Based Advice for Women Working in Male-Dominated Fields by Harvard, we are given some advice from all the science around this topic.
“ Highly skilled women succumb to stereotype-driven expectations. It begins early when girls as young as six stop believing that girls are the smart ones, while boys continue to believe their gender is gifted. As women get older, these stereotypes discourage them from pursuing careers thought to be typically reserved for men. And, with fewer women in a field, subsequent generations of women are deterred from pursuing them.
It’s a vicious cycle, but it can be broken.
Certainly, employers can take steps to encourage women to overcome anxiety and self-doubt in the workplace. For example, research shows that when women are exposed to powerful female role models, they are more likely to endorse the notion that women are well suited for leadership roles. So regular meetings — say monthly check-ins or weekly lunches — between less experienced and more senior women give younger women the opportunity to not only develop professionally but also understand that women have what it takes to succeed in an organization’s most prestigious roles. And when mentorship programs are de rigueur, those who face feelings of otherness will not feel deficient for having to proactively seek out career guidance.”
She goes on to suggest journaling, resetting, and reframing. I think when we are lost in our jobs because of a lack of female energy around us, it’s important to know that we are the Trail Blazers for the next generation as well.
We not only can do this, but we are doing it. And slowly, but surely, we will win a centuries long race to balance out the male and female energy in the workplace, and this alone can make this world a better place with way less problems than we see today. I’m hopeful. Are you?
We have to see and use our feminine energy as a super power in the workplace. I urge you to build up allies, and to stay strong in this path. The work we are doing in these fields, matters. And I for one know that if it isn’t working where you are at, there are other companies that you can go to in the same field that have more supportive female energy to align with. If you’re at a company that abuses you for being female, you can be sure that those companies, no matter what their size, are not sustainable in the long run. Diversity is proven to increase value, and women in an equal amount of roles, is part of that. Don’t give up on your dreams, but don't be afraid to search for safer spaces to grow. You got this! Stay true to your female traits and know that all male dominated industries needs your nature, your heart and your mind, to become the best versions of themselves possible.
https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Progress-and-Potential.pdf
https://www.forbes.com/sites/naomicahn/2021/02/19/womens-status-and-pay-in-the-c-suite--new-study/?sh=c1953ae37621
https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-male-dominated-industries-and-occupations/
https://hbr.org/2019/02/research-based-advice-for-women-working-in-male-dominated-fields
