Main Street

Green Jobs for Women, Too

In December 2008, the New York Times ran an opinion piece by Linda Hirshman questioning how economic stimulus would benefit women, given their low concentrations in the construction industries where significant amounts of the stimulus would be spent.

Back before the feminist revolution brought women into the workplace in unprecedented numbers, this would have been more understandable. But today, women constitute about 46 percent of the labor force. And as the current downturn has worsened, their traditionally lower unemployment rate has actually risen just as fast as men’s. A just economic stimulus plan must include jobs in fields like social work and teaching, where large numbers of women work.

The bulk of the stimulus program will provide jobs for men, because building projects generate jobs in construction, where women make up only 9 percent of the work force.

She pointed specifically to green jobs, as well, as predominantly male, and argued that “jobs for women can be created by concentrating on professions that build the most important infrastructure — human capital,” and funding should be allocated there, to teachers and social workers and librarians.

Teachers and social workers and librarians are incredibly important, of course, and should be funded. But writing off construction jobs and green jobs as automatically male is not the way to make that argument.

Jeannette Wicks-Lim of the Political Economy Research Institute demonstrates some of the flaws in Hirshman’s case. Rather than saying “these are men’s jobs and these are women’s jobs and that’s that,” Wicks-Lim begins by asking “How do we get women into these new jobs?” She also points out the benefits to women of moving into traditionally male-dominated fields, which often pay better than traditionally female-dominated fields—in her example, carpenters make an average wage of $18.72 while preschool teachers make an average wage of $11.42. One of these jobs is 99% male, the other is 98% female. Guess which is which.

We can’t just take it as a given that men are going to get the better-paying jobs. And government money going to green jobs can bring about real change:

First, the billions of dollars being injected into the construction industry through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) can come with strings attached. Currently, construction contracts involving more than $10,000 in federal funds are covered by Executive Order 11246, which requires that contractors adopt affirmative-action goals to reduce the under-representation of women and minorities in their workforce. In other words, the ARRA dollars can be used to coax employers into adopting affirmative-action policies—the only policies that attack workplace segregation head-on.

Second, the federal government’s deep pockets can support the very type of construction projects that are most successful at meeting affirmative action goals: large, long-term projects. Large construction projects have the capacity to absorb new workers while keeping adequate numbers of journey-level workers on a construction site. Long-term projects better accommodate the training needs of new workers who need time to develop their skills. An excellent example is the government’s funding of high-speed rail corridors; over $8 billion have been committed to creating hundreds of miles of new rail service over the next several years.

This is a chance not only to improve the nation’s infrastructure and create green jobs that will improve our environment and energy use, but to improve gender equity as well. Wicks-Lim is right: The federal government can help bring women into new fields. I saw this myself, on a small scale, a few years ago. In 2005, I published a study of a small independent construction contractor in rural Alabama. In the course of doing the research for that article, I met many of the people he worked with—contractors, delivery men, health and building inspectors, mechanics. I met only one woman who worked in that general line: She worked for the federal government, as one of two maintenance employees at a nature preserve.

That’s an isolated example, but the point is, it doesn’t need to be. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Create new rail service, getting people where they need to go with less energy use and less traffic, and help working women get jobs that pay enough to support their families.

Tags: green jobs