Giving Compass' Take:

• Despite the banning of sex discrimination laws, there is still an alarming absence of women in vocational professions. 

• Getting women in nontraditional certification programs for vocational occupations could help. What are the first steps? How do we first tackle the gender stereotype divide?

• On a positive note, girls-only trade classes are spreading. 


During the last academic year, U.S. colleges and trade schools awarded nearly a million certificates, almost 60 percent of them of them to women. Yet just 6 percent of those in welding — the most popular program among men — went to women.

So where are all the female students? They’re in the salon next door, learning about cosmetology, and in the nursing classroom nearby, administering “rag baths” to mannequins. And when they graduate, they’ll earn barely two-thirds of what Hinely stands to make, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At a time when there is an acute shortage of welders and other tradespeople, hardly any women are being trained for these and other well-paying jobs. This more than 40 years after Congress banned sex discrimination in American education.

Experts offer several reasons for this split, including gender stereotypes and the threat of workplace harassment in male-dominated jobs.

Getting more women into nontraditional certificate programs could help lift more families into the middle class and ease a labor shortage that is expected to only grow worse as more baby boomers retire. Yet not much is being done to change the enrollment pattern.

Read the full article about women in vocational training by Kelly Field at The Hechinger Report