As I was getting ready for work this morning, I was listening to Good Morning America. And, as with most mornings, I was running through the day’s events, pulling together materials for meetings, and trying to listen to the day’s news. As I was catching the end of the weather, I heard a brief chat about an interesting organization – Nontraditional Employment for Women (www.new-nyc.org).
NEW was founded in 1978 via a Department of Labor initiative with the training women for skilled jobs in construction and other blue-collar industries. As I was listening to this, my first thought was “what a great program! More women should have the opportunity to work in fields traditionally dominated by men.” I was really feeling good about the whole thing.
As this bounced around in my head further, I had a second thought. It occurred to me that I’ve never heard of a similar organization for men. For example, if men want to enter the traditionally female-dominated industries of nursing, education or child care, there aren’t special training programs specifially for men.
Don’t mistake my comment – I’m not saying men and women shouldn’t have equal access to opportunites. In fact, that’s just my point. Why is there a training program specifically for women? It is great that the program is there to encourage women to enter this area of the workforce. But, isn’t is sad that they aren’t welcomed with open arms to begin with? What does it say about our society that there are still barriers to women who want to follow these “nontraditional” career paths?
It’s been nearly 90 years since women were given right to vote. And women were huge contributors in the success of World War II when the government focused the war effort on women, luring them into the workforce. How did we end up back here?
