Challenges Faced by Men Working in Female Dominated Occupations

MEN IN FEMALE DOMINATED OCCUPATIONS
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Challenges Faced by Men Working in Female Dominated Occupations
As gender lines are becoming blurrier, a third of males seeking jobs in this decade will find employment in industries 70 percent of the workforce is female CITATION Kra17 \l 1033 (Krause & Sawhill, 2017). In the recent past, there has been an increase in men getting into female dominated fields. These men get into these careers for varied reasons though they face challenges. Notably, pink collar jobs are not the most paying jobs and are associated with stigma for the men who take them up. However, there are motivating factors that encourage men to consider these careers. Glass escalation leads to higher wages and career mobility as compared to their female counterparts CITATION Dil16 \l 1033 (Dill, Price-Glynn, & Rakovski, 2016). Men in pink collar jobs have more job security than their counterparts in blue collar careers though they are less pad and stigmatized. It is likely to assume that with these benefits would encourage more men would take up pink collar jobs, however, pink collar jobs come will their set of problems. Thus, the purpose of this essay is to discuss the challenges men face in these fields in relation to their motivations, socio cultural factors and job satisfaction.
Those men who eye the opportunities presented by glass escalator maneuver their careers in these fields fast. Glass escalation is supported by structural and inherent factors pertinent to patriarchal societies CITATION Dil16 \l 1033 (Dill, Price-Glynn, & Rakovski, 2016). Men who hold administrative positions promote males for intentional or unintentional biases albeit being in female dominated industries. Thus, despite having more women in representative positions, the most powerful individuals in the hierarchy of management are men who favor their gender. To venture into these fields is also contributed by the receding stigma associated with these jobs. Thus, those who go for them are comfortable and not socially objectified as ‘diluting’ masculinity. The men willing to overcome the stigma stand a better chance of having more secure careers with good work-life balance and fairer remunerations. The disappearing manual factory jobs and other disappearing manual jobs have softened the societal position on the expectations of the boy-child and it has led to their increase in pink collar jobs. In some cases, men have quit their careers and delved into pink collar jobs citing economic benefits, passion, better prospects of career growth, job security, etc. which have been proven to be reasonable. With the aforementioned motivating factors, men do not enter into these jobs for the glass escalator experience only, but for other factors they consider worthwhile.
Men face various challenges in pink collars jobs. Among them, is the social stigma issue CITATION Dou08 \l 1033 (Gosse, Parr, & Allison, 2008). Most men in these fields are criticized for their career choice and often perceived as weak, lazy and womanlike. The central issue in the men shifting to pink collar jobs is masculinity since women are assumed to be empathetic and caring while men are supposed to be strong, tough and able to support a family. Thus, traditional masculinity is standing in the way off working class men’s employment. The stigma in these jobs is still present and they are often judged unfairly and subjectively within and without the workforce. Stigma affects their self-esteem and make them easy targets for various unintentional mistakes in their jobs. They are often seen through the lens of stereotypic society as losers and lazy individuals. A number of those men who venture into these careers cite that the training institutions come with their own set of challenges they have to endure. Expressing manhood in these training centers amidst episodes of ridicule and contempt affect their training and competency at workplace.
It is a little complicated to ascertain if there is job satisfaction experienced by men in female dominated fields thus it is largely a subjective concept. As for job satisfaction, there are no significant differences between male and female nurses, and this reaffirms and suggests that the difficulties and obstacles that male nurses find in this professional context are not directly related to the characteristics of their professional roleCITATION LIM13 \l 1033 (Limiñana-Gras, Sánchez-López, Román, & Corbalán-Berná, 2013). Most of these men go into these careers because of the non-monetary benefits though some do not have a choice. Jobs dominated by women relatively pay less compared to those dominated by men CITATION Dil16 \l 1033 (Dill, Price-Glynn, & Rakovski, 2016). Thus the opportunity sought by these enthusiastic men in pink collar jobs must go beyond the remuneration offered. Most of these women dominated fields deal with human interactions like teaching, caregiving, cleaning etc and they require a certain level of temperament which is not easy to come by if you hate the job. For those men with passion for teaching will always find it good to become a teacher than pursue any other male dominated field that may offer relatively better remuneration but it is not consistent with...