Thanks for inviting me to participate in this dialogue regarding school to
careers. I'm the Director of Girls' Programs at Chicago Women in Trades
(CWIT), a membership-based organization dedicated to increasing women's
economic equity through greater access to traditionally male-dominated
high-skill, high-wage careers in the construction, manufacturing, and
transportation fields. Construction, manufacturing, and transportation
employees make up 30% of the total workforce in Illinois. Individuals
employed in these areas earn on average $18.17/hour. Only 3% of these
workers are women. This compares to the $13.17/hour wage in traditionally
female dominated careers.
As we most know, practices that help channel females into low-wage
occupations permeate education. Although most of these practices are
unintentional, their impact on girls' economic futures is profound. These
include failure to provide complete and accurate career information,
inadequate counseling on nontraditional career options, inequitable
treatment by teachers and administrators of nontraditional enrollees and
most importantly the lack of female role models in high-wage, high-skilled
blue-collar occupations. Often even young women who are successful in
nontraditional vocational courses do not consider these fields as viable
career options for themselves. Nor do they receive encouragement from
parents, counselors or teachers to take the necessary steps to pursue
careers in related fields.
CWIT currently has three direct service programs in the Chicago Public
Schools geared at 7th - 12th grade girls and young women. As part of our
girls programs, CWIT has surveyed over 1400 elementary school girls and 600
high school females and they have consistently told us they are not
receiving information about nontraditional careers. Lacking that
information, they often choose career programs that feel familiar and
unthreatening to them, such as cosmetology, nurses' assistant, and clerical
fields.
Why am I not surprised? I've done numerous trainings for counselors and
teachers, and for the most part, they have never heard about the "wage
gap". I start each training with a short ten question quiz that is mostly
about the wage gap and occupational segregation to get a feel for where my
audience is. At every training I find myself starting from the very
beginning. Counselors, teachers, and administrators need to know these
basics in order to actively encourage girls to consider all their career
options. I find it important to always mention to students of all ages
about the major differences between traditionally male jobs compared to
traditionally female jobs. You can see it click for females in the class
on why you are there talking to them about nontraditional careers. I even
like to talk to students about the wage gap even during the most ideal
situations which includes having tradeswomen role models and hands-on
activities.
I hope this week we can share with each other our struggles and successes
that go hand in hand with this topic. I look forward to your comments.
Melissa Barbier
Director of Girls' Programs
Chicago Women in Trades
1657 W. Adams, Suite 401
Chicago, IL 60612
312-942-1444 x203
mbarbier@cwit2.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Apr 12 2002 - 15:16:53 EDT