Research

Women in Male-Dominated Industries and Occupations (Quick Take)

Oct 29, 2021
Male-Dominated Occupations Are Those Comprised of 25% or Fewer Women1

Male-dominated industries and occupations are particularly vulnerable to reinforcing harmful stereotypes and creating unfavorable environments that make it even more difficult for women to excel.2

In the United States, only 6.5% of women worked full-time in male-dominated occupations in 2020.3

  • However, the youngest Millennials in the US are less segregated by sex in occupations compared to previous generations.4

Some job growth for women is driven by employment in male-dominated fields.

  • Between 2016 and 2018, women’s employment increased by 5.0% in industries consisting of two-thirds men.5
  • In Australia, women’s employment in civil engineering and software programming has grown steadily over the past decade, outpacing men. 6

But challenges remain: 

  • Despite growth in information and communications technology, since 2010 women’s share of jobs in the sector in the European Union dropped to only 18% in 2019.7
  • Emerging jobs in the Future of Work already show gender gaps globally, especially in growing fields like data and AI (32% women) or cloud computing (14% women) that require disruptive technical skills.8
Women Face Challenges Working in Male-Dominated Workplace Cultures9

Women working in male-dominated industries face a variety of challenges, including:

  • Societal expectations and beliefs about women’s leadership abilities.10
  • Pervasive stereotypes, such as that of the “caring mother”11 or office housekeeper.12
  • Higher stress and anxiety compared to women working in other fields.13
  • Lack of mentoring and career development opportunities.14
  • Sexual harassment.15

Unfortunately, reports of sexual harassment are more prevalent in male-dominated industries.16

  • In a 2017 survey, 28% of women working in male-dominated industries stated they had personally experienced sexual harassment, compared to 20% of women in female-dominated industries.17
  • This heightened level of harassment is a problem even before women enter the workforce. One study found that women pursuing male-dominated university majors experience higher levels of harassment than women earning degrees in gender-equivalent (no more than 60% of a single gender) majors.18

Women use various mechanisms to cope with working in male-dominated work environments, such as:19

  • Distancing themselves from colleagues, especially other women.
  • Accepting masculine cultural norms and acting like “one of the boys,” which exacerbates the problem by contributing to the normalization of this culture.
  • Leaving the industry.
    • Women sexually harassed at work are 6.5 times as likely to change jobs, often to one with lower pay.20
Occupational Segregation Contributes to the Gender Gap21

Women and men remain concentrated in different jobs and fields, a trend known as occupational segregation.22 One research study shows this difference in job types is the primary cause behind the gender pay gap, accounting for more than half of it.23 In the United States, male-dominated occupations generally pay more than female-dominated occupations, even at similar skill levels.24

  • But male-dominated industries aren’t the only sectors with a pay gap: whether an industry is predominantly male or female, or more of an even mix, women still earn less than men in almost all occupations.25
  • Some jobs, such as electricians and construction laborers, have too few women employed to even compare earnings.26

In addition to other Catalyst resources on the pay gap, see Women’s Earnings: The Pay Gap (Quick Take) and The Gender Pay Gap (Ask Catalyst Express).

SELECTED INDUSTRIES AND OCCUPATIONS

Canada27
Industry Total Employed—Percent Women (2019)
Construction 13.3%
Manufacturing, Durables 21.3%
Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction 19.0%
Transportation and Warehousing 22.9%
Utilities 27.5%
Europe28
Total Employed—Percent Women by Industry (2021) EU-27 France Germany Italy Netherlands Spain Sweden Switzerland UK(2020)
Construction 10.0% 12.5% 15.0% 7.2% 9.9% 8.5% 11.3% 12.5% 13.0%
Manufacturing 29.6% 29.9% 26.4% 24.9% 22.9% 26.9% 25.9% 28.3% 25.8%
Transportation and Storage 21.7% 25.4% 26.3% 19.2% 24.1% 21.2% 19.5% 26.3% 20.4%
United States—Occupations29
Total Employed—Percent Women (2020) All Women White Women Black Women Asian Women Latinas
Civil Engineers 16.0% 11.8% 0.5% 3.6% 1.2%
Computer Programmers 21.1% 11.3% 2.6% 7.2% 0.7%
Construction Managers 8.4% 6.9% 0.4% 0.5% 1.8%
Driver/Sales Workers and Truck Drivers 7.8% 5.7% 1.5% 0.1% 1.8%
First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers 3.5% 3.1% 0.3% 0.1% 0.5%
Mechanical Engineers 8.7% 5.9% 0.8% 1.7% 0.8%
Software Developers, Applications and Systems Software 19.4% 8.3% 1.4% 8.9% 1.0%
United States—Industries30
Total Employed—Percent Women (2020) All Women White Women Black Women Asian Women Latinas
Construction 10.9% 9.5% 0.5% 0.4% 2.1%
Manufacturing 29.5% 9.5% 0.5% 0.4% 2.1%
Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction 14.5% 11.5% 0.1% 2.0% 2.2%
Transportation and Utilities 24.1% 16.4% 5.4% 1.3% 4.4%

LEARN MORE

How to cite this product: Women in male-dominated industries and occupations: Quick take. (2021). Catalyst.

  1. Examples of male-dominated occupations include electricians, computer network architects, and mechanical engineers. Occupations with the smallest share of women workers. (2019) U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau.; Campuzano, M. V. (2019). Force and inertia: A systematic review of women’s leadership in male-dominated organizational cultures in the United States,” Human Resource Development Review, 18(4).
  2. Campuzano (2019).
  3. Hegewisch, A. & Mefferd, E. (2021). The gender wage gap by occupation, race, and ethnicity 2020. Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
  4. Weeden, K. A. (2019). State of the union: Occupational segregation. Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.
  5. Kolko, J. & Miller, C. C. (2018, December 14). As labor market tightens, women are moving into male-dominated jobs. The New York Times.
  6. Wright, S. (2021, July 5). Women move into male-dominated jobs as COVID upends employment. The Sydney Morning Herald.
  7. Gender equality index 2020: Digitalisation and the future of work. (2020). European Institute for Gender Equality.
  8. Global gender gap report 2021 (2021). World Economic Forum.
  9. García Johnson, C. P. & Otto, K. (2019). Better together: A model for women and LGBTQ equality in the workplace. Frontiers in Psychology, 10(272).
  10. Campuzano (2019).
  11. Sarathchandra, D., Haltinner, K., Lichtenberg, N., & Tracy, H. (2018). ‘It’s broader than just my work here’: Gender variations in accounts of success among engineers in U.S. academia,” Social Sciences, 7(3).
  12. Berdahl, J. L., Cooper, M., Glick, P., Livingston, R. W., & Williams, J. C. Work as a masculinity contest. Journal of Social Issues, 74(3).
  13. Qian, Y. & Fan, W. (2019). Men and women at work: Occupational gender composition and affective well-being in the United States,” Journal of Happiness Studies, 20, 2077-2099.
  14. Campuzano (2019).
  15. Daley, L. P., Travis, D. J.,  & Shaffer, E. S. (2018). Sexual harassment in the workplace: How companies can prepare, prevent, respond, and transform their culture. Catalyst.
  16. Gender matters. (2018, August 6). The Women’s Initiative, Center for American Progress.
  17. Parker, K. (2018, March 7). Women in majority-male workplaces report higher rates of gender discrimination. Pew Research Center.
  18. Dresden, B. E., Dresden, A. Y., Ridge, R. D., & Yamawaki, N. (2017). No girls allowed: Women in male-dominated majors experience increased gender harassment and bias. Psychological Reports, 121(3).
  19. Sarathchandra et al. (2018).
  20. Sexual harassment and the gender wage gap. (2021). National Partnership for Women & Families.
  21. The simple truth about the gender pay gap: 2021 update. (2021). American Association of University Women.
  22. The simple truth about the gender pay gap: 2021 update. (2021). American Association of University Women.
  23. Miller, C. C. (2020, January 21). Women’s gains in the work force conceal a problem. The New York Times.
  24. Hegewisch & Mefferd (2021).
  25. Hegewisch & Mefferd (2021).
  26. Hegewisch & Mefferd (2021).
  27. Statistics Canada. (2021). Table 14-10-0023-01: Labour force characteristics by industry, annual (x 1,000) [Data set]. (2021). Labour force survey.
  28. Employment by sex, age and economic activity (from 2008 onwards, NACE rev. 2) – 1 000, 2021Q1 [Data set]. (2021). Eurostat.; Employment by sex, age and economic activity (from 2008 onwards, NACE rev. 2) – 1 000, 2020Q3 [Data set]. (2020). Eurostat. Due to the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, the most recent UK data from 2020 is used for comparative purposes.
  29. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2021). Table 11: Employed persons by detailed occupation, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, 2020 [Data set]. Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey.; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table 1: Employed and experienced unemployed persons by detailed occupation, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, Annual Average 2020 [Unpublished data set]. (2021). Current Population Survey.
  30. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2021). Table 14: Employed persons in nonagricultural industries by age, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, 2020 [Data set]. Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey.