Two-thirds of the American Geographical Society (AGS)’s employees were women, who served as librarians, editorial personnel in the publishing programs, secretaries, research editors, copy editors, proofreaders, research assistants and sales staff. These women came with credentials from well-known colleges and universities and many were overqualified for their positions, but later were promoted to more prestigious positions. The analysis presented in this blog is based on data now available in the Worker and Sector Profiles (PROFILES) database. The database focuses on groups of workers for which there is high interest but no internationally agreed statistical definitions.

Moreover, career development ensures they advance their skills to occupy higher positions and increase their earning potential. Factory workers providing manual labor in production facilities were described as “blue collar” employees because their dress code was predominantly blue work shirts and jumpsuits. Companies required laborers to wear blue work outfits because the color veils grease and dirt spots on jobs that have been feminized, such as teaching or secretarial work, are also referred to as the clothes and uniforms.

The Feminization of Teaching

In 1917, Louisa Lee Schuyler opened the Bellevue Hospital School of Nursing, which was the first to train women as professional nurses.21 After completing training, female nurses worked in hospitals or more predominantly in field tents. Teachers, from kindergarten to high school, play a significant role in educating and nurturing the next generation. They develop lesson plans, assess students’ progress, and provide guidance in academic and personal growth.

Receptionists and customer service representatives, on the other hand, may need training in customer service or conflict resolution techniques. It is not uncommon for individuals pursuing pink collar careers to seek out vocational schools, community colleges, or online programs to help them attain the education and training necessary for their chosen profession. Secretarial work and administrative roles, such as receptionists and administrative assistants, also fall under the pink collar category. They ensure the smooth operation of an office by managing schedules, coordinating meetings, and handling paperwork. Some pink collar jobs involve customer service, like retail clerks, bank tellers, and travel agents.

Use gender-neutral language in job ads

1. New women’s organizations sprouted up working to reform and protect women in the workplace.
2. Historical disparities have resulted in pink-collar jobs paying less and offering limited career advancement, necessitating the establishment and enforcement of pay equity policies accompanied by regular pay audits to address wage disparities.
3. Sociologists use the dual labor market theory to explain how the primary and secondary sectors of the labor market are upheld and based on discrimination, poverty, and power dynamics.
4. By 1885, new methods of note-taking and the expanding scope of businesses led office-clerk positions to be in high demand.19 Having a secretary became a status symbol, and these new types of positions were relatively well paid.

Women and society saw teaching as an appropriate career for them outside the home. While some young men providing tutoring would become professionals, most teachers were not destined for high status. In some areas, teaching positions and other jobs such as bell-ringing were set aside for people at risk of becoming social dependents, such as young single women. It was thought that when a woman married, her husband would provide for her and she would focus on raising children, so her job would not then be necessary or appropriate. Even in the colonial period, teaching was a relatively low-status occupation, performed only by young people or those with few other opportunities.

Male teachers tended to come from lower-middle class backgrounds, attaining higher social status than their parents due to teachers’ higher educational achievements. Today’s teachers are predominantly women; they come from all class backgrounds; and they commonly teaching positions throughout their lives. Teaching is still a relatively low-paid occupation that brings little respect to teachers. Like pink collar jobs, blue and white collar jobs also possess distinct characteristics.

Personal care and service

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, an infamously male-dominated field, was awarded to Professor Claudia Goldin. This is not simply a nod towards women’s contribution in this field, but also an acknowledgment of the importance of her research which “advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”. Though teachers have always had an important role in creating new generations of educated, active citizens, they have received little respect for it.

2.5 Biological Fallacies of Role Performance

While women have made some strides in STEM employment, challenges remain for their career advancement. Furthermore, women predominantly hold management roles in areas traditionally viewed as female centric. For example, 89 per cent of childcare service managers and 78 per cent of aged care service managers are women. Conversely, a mere 1 per cent of mining managers are women, unsurprisingly given the mining sector is male dominated. Meanwhile, there is a more balanced gender representation for managers in public relations, human resources, finance, and business services, where women hold almost half of these managerial positions.

Women occupy nearly all of the elementary teaching positions, while high school teaching jobs are split about equally between men and women. Women still hold few jobs with administrative power, and are overrepresented in early education. «By the early 1970s, less than 1 percent of school superintendents were women; women were only 13 percent of elementary school principals, 3 percent of junior high school principals and a mere 1.4 percent of high school principals» (Sadker and Sadker, p. 66). There are still many social barriers that prevent women from gaining positions of power in the educational system, including lack of mentorship and informal communication with others in power. Women must have higher credentials than their male counterparts to be hired into positions of administrative power in schools. Women are often channeled into non-leadership administrative positions such as counselors and personnel managers (Sadker and Sadker, p. 67).