THE WORKPLACE GENDER DIVIDE
Women are still shunning stereotypically ‘male’ jobs
MECHANICS are still largely men and midwives are still largely women, according to exclusive analysis of job data in the UK.
The figures reveal a persistent gender gap despite women seeking equality in the workplace for decades.
In 1968, female sewing machinists for the Ford motoring company took strike action after discrepancies in pay between men and women. The strike helped trigger the landmark Equal Pay Act 1970, which meant that men and women had to be treated the same in terms of pay and employment conditions. But while record numbers of women are in employment - 70.9 per cent of working-age women at the end of 2017 - stereotypically masculine jobs remain disproportionately filled by male employees.
Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that just 10 per cent of jobs in the skilled trades sector are filled by women.
The remaining 90 per cent of jobs in this industry are filled by men.
The sector includes jobs like car mechanics, electricians, farmers, and bricklayers.
The gender gap in the skilled trades sector is the widest of all.
The second widest gap is seen among workers classified as “process, plant and machine operatives”.
Jobs in this industry include construction workers, large goods vehicle drivers, and crane drivers.
Only 11.5 per cent of positions in this sector are filled by women.
Women, however, dominate jobs in the caring and leisure industry, filling 81.6 per cent of posts.
The sector includes nursery nurses, hairdressers, and care workers.
Andrea Kelmanson from Women on the Tools, a group campaigning to get more women in to trade jobs, said: “There is lots to be done and it starts at a school level.
“We need to be showing girls that firstly they don’t have to go to university to get a valuable job, that they don’t just have to do hairdressing or beauty, and that they are just as capable as any man to do a more manual job. “It’s an ongoing problem within this industry specifically, and it’s a circular problem because if more women were working in these jobs then other women would consider doing it, too. “There has got to be a real commitment and drive to get women in these jobs.”