Pay Gap 1
Cornell Study Shows Women Behind on Skill Training
In working-class towns, men find it easy to join the workforce as manual laborers and machinists. Cornell university research shows that the wide pay gap and lack of work pushes women out of blue-collar jobs.
Vocational education schools versus prep courses for college showed a male preference for vocational training, and therefore, a greater likelihood to find better-paid blue-collar jobs upon graduation, shows the Cornell study published in the American Sociological Review.
Touching upon the pay gap for women in blue-collar jobs – it can be as high as 22% less than their male counterparts. This is a significantly wider gap than that in white-collar jobs or service-industry positions shows the same study. The gender gap in employment and wages was more prominently visible in young people from blue-collar communities who completed high school.
In many ways, blue-collar jobs are still just as biased towards men as they were in the 50s. The condition of the female workforce in towns where jobs are mostly concentrated on construction and manufacturing is sharply distinguished from that of women over the U.S. generally, where women have a greater likelihood for going to college than men.
These communities are struggling to fill in the large amount of production jobs that need to be filled. More than 3.5 million vacancies across the U.S. have been estimated over the next 10 years. The present lack of skilled labor could cause a deficit in filling 2 million of those positions, as was predicted by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute.
This shows the need for educators to actively address these gender issues in discussions about vocational training while paving the way for college. Today, statistics show a preference for skilled jobs over advanced math. While men can definitely benefit from college prep classes, encouraging women to opt for vocational courses can do much for the economy in the future.
