Green Jobs | December 11, 2008 |
A Gender Bias in Green Jobs? Think Again
With economic hiccups striking across the developed world, people everywhere are looking for a refuge from the storm. Job-seekers looking for places to work in growth industries with good job security, investors are looking for places put their assets that will protect and hopefully grow their wealth, and local communities are looking for businesses that will bring in income without harmful consequences. And for all three demands, the clean energy industry seems to be an ideal supplier.
But a recent op-ed in The New York Times by notable feminist author Linda Hirshman has decried the prognosticated boom of environmentally-friendly employment as distinctly biased toward men. Hirshman writes, "Mr. Obama compared his infrastructure plan to the Eisenhower-era construction of the Interstate System of highways. It brings back the Eisenhower era in a less appealing way as well: there are almost no women on this road to recovery."
Talk about hearkening back to the Eisenhower days—it's difficult to even know where to begin to dismantle this generalization. Overlooking the outdated notion that construction jobs are a purely male pursuit, it's important to note that green jobs are more than just construction workers. Engineers, investors, designers, lawyers, consultants, accountants, human resources staff and all the other jobs supported by conventional business are still part-and-parcel with the green collar work-force, and these careers include millions of women.
Furthermore, women will be holding two of the highest-level green jobs around. Barack Obama nominated Lisa P. Jackson (pictured) to head the EPA, while Carol Browner will advise the president-elect on energy and environment.
At any rate, the negative impacts of the current economic downturn have fallen disproportionately on workers in the fields Hirshman stereotypes as being traditionally male. The Boston Globe provides a damning set of statistics to back this up: in past year, 1.1 million male workers have lost their jobs, while over the same time period, the number of employed women jumped by some 12,000.
Green collar jobs certainly aren't meant to be slot-for-slot replacements of present day employment, but the fact remains, these layoffs have left the the current pool of available labor overwhelmingly male.
But what is perhaps the most irritating aspect of assigning a gender bias to the new green economy is that it seems to deny that the contributions to the economy will be good for all prospective hires, regardless of gender. In the boom years before the recent recession, the currently suffering construction and financial services sector brought income into the pockets of American consumers, which was then spent on good and services produced at least in part by American workers across a wide swath of industries. Regardless of who cashes the checks, the restoration of that income will be what reinvigorates our flagging economy.
So while gender equality should remain a serious consideration of any wide-based job creation package, ghettoizing the green sector as a purely male enterprise not only reinforces outmoded stereotypes, but also has the potential to severely hinder an enterprise that will likely form the linchpin of the forthcoming economic recovery.
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Comments By Readers
Another myth being floated by people opposed to changing to clean energy is that it will decrease jobs. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122886086448792609.html
While some people who work in fossil fuels will have to be retrained, there will be a net job increase. http://apolloalliance.org/news/clean-energy/stabenow-outlines-clean-energy-path-to-1-million-new-jobs/
I hope your future educational endeavors will include a course in basic statistics.
1.During the retroactively named recession, from November of 2007 to November of 2008 the female unemployment rate went from 4.6 to 6.0. The numbers you cite are absolute numbers, not the generally accepted rates economists use to analyze employment. I can only assume you just copied this off a right wing website, and did not read either the data or my article directly.
Although male unemployment in that period rose faster than female, during the period covered by my article -- the last three months when the jobs tanked and the jobs program was devised, the female unemployment rate rose as fast as the male rate did. So your numbers are wrong and your cut and paste methodology amateurish.
2.The appointment of two females to high posts in the administration does not change the overall numbers: 9% of construction, 12% of engineers. In what mathematical world would two appointments offset hundreds of thousands if not millions of other data points? I hope the environmental movement does not rest on science like that.
3.I have no idea when the idea of male dominance of construction jobs became an "outdated notion," but as of last week, women held 9% of jobs in the entire construction business (which includes your trickle down secretaries and the like) and were 3% of the actual plumbers, pipefitters, and the like. Did something happen last night to make this outdated?
4. Not only did the mayors' conference data completely support my conclusion, but if you go on line you will find that green jobs are almost entirely male as well, especially in the alternative energy area Obama highlighted. Checking out the job listings at the internet information site About.com, the five current “renewable energy jobs” – Construction administrator, Product Planning Coordinator, Training and Operations Manager, Semiconductor Product Marketing and Product Engineer -- require degrees in engineering or strong computer application skills, experience in the solar electric installation field or a similar construction related field, or a BA or BS degree in Architecture, Engineering or Construction Management/Science.
I don't think you benefit your cause by promoting such easily refutable contentions. With people all around ready to contest even unassailable findings like global warming, I'd be really careful about actually saying things that are not true.
Linda,
Thank you for reading my article. While I agree there's room for more in-depth statistical analysis, the only hard statistic I used was taken—with citation—from a Boston Globe article published last week. While the Herald may be a different story, most Bostonians regard the Globe as a fairly balanced publication.
That having been said, I find that your statistical criticisms largely sidestep the major point of my article; namely, that an economic recovery brought on by green collar jobs is universally beneficial, regardless of what field a given employee may work in, or what gender they may be. The whole rationale behind channeling public funds into the green sector is not to create employment for green workers, but to create prosperity across the wider economy.
For example, tax subsidies on zero-emissions vehicles decrease ozone pollution and road noise, leading to cleaner neighborhoods and higher property values. Higher property values in turn increase the tax bases that fund local school systems, increasing the salaries of teachers, and the quality of available public education. Additionally, the reduction in global warming emissions brought on my the same clean cars subisidy reduces the number of floods and droughts to which the government needs to dedicate public funding, freeing up cash for social programs.
I wrote that I find your "male dominated" characterization of certain fields—anything but social work and teaching, it seems—as outdated because it misuses statistics to reinforce widely-lampooned notions that specific jobs exist for specific genders. At Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering, 600 of the 1,500 enrolled students are female, several times the 12% figure you cite in your reply; at the nearby Vermont School of Law, females comprise a full 53% of the student body. Maybe I was just lucky to go to college in such an enlightened part of the world, or maybe the programs that encourage women to pursue traditionally male fields are not so ineffective as you suggest.
In closing, I reject your allegation that anything I present as fact in my article is simply "not true". The fields I listed as directly benefitting from green jobs do employ millions of women, and rejecting that not only impedes the economic recovery, it sets the cause of feminism back by several decades.
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