Women at work

WASHINGTON—The Department of Labor addressed for the first time this week the difficulty women face in becoming part of a greener U.S. economy.

While President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package allocated $4.2 billion for green job creation some worry that women will not have equal access to positions in traditionally male-dominated construction and manufacturing industries.

“Getting women into nontraditional skills training has been around since the early 1980s and there hasn’t been much progress,” said Ariane Hegewisch, senior research associate at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “On some level, maybe it’s that policymakers think it’s done, that we have equality.”

But the numbers tell a different story. According to Wider Opportunities for Women, a Washington, DC-based economic advocacy organization, women constitute less than 3 percent of many labor-intensive occupations such as construction workers, electricians and HVAC installers.

“Investment in our nation’s clean energy future will not only secure America’ energy supply, but will do so in ways that promote economic stability and the advancement of all communities,” Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said Tuesday while testifyingbefore the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Solis, who authored the Green Jobs Act, has made women a target group for the green jobs training efforts that will be funded with federal stimulus dollars.

The hearing examined how the Labor Department will use stimulus money to support, create and train workers for jobs in solar and wind power, biofuel development, environmental cleanup, public transportation, weatherization, and retrofitting.

The challenges for women

Advocates agree education, awareness and a local focus will be essential to women advancing in the green workforce.

Hegewisch said that since many girls grow up believing they should work in certain professions and avoid construction-related jobs because of the physical element, they never realize the large pay differentials that exist between a job in a hair salon, for example, and one as a skilled laborer.

Since construction and extraction occupations pay a median hourly rate of $17.57, as opposed to $15.10 for all occupations, green jobs could pay 10 to 30 percent more than other jobs, Secretary Solis said. And according to WOW, holding a non-traditional occupation increased a non-college woman’s chances of attaining higher wages by 49 percent.

While Hegewisch explained that there appears to be an assumption among career advisers that women are not interested in these jobs, college administers are working to fix that.

Kathryn Mannes, director of the Center for Workforce and Economic Development at the American Association of Community Colleges, said that colleges are examining existing sustainability programs to see how they could accommodate women. They are also making women more aware of nontraditional vocations.

Recruiters are “finding they have to go as far back as middle schools, and certainly high schools, to start trying to recruit women into [green] jobs,” Mannes said.

“This is an access issue,” she continued. “We are trying to link colleges more closely with the workforce and job placement for women.” Training programs are in turn adding elements to their curriculums in order to prepare women for nontraditional job opportunities.

What’s being done

Kate Atkins, a panelist at an Urban Institute discussion on green jobs for low-wage workers Tuesday, directs the Garden State Alliance for a New Economy. The organization is working with Newark, NJ, residents on a weatherization initiative that will teach low-wage and minority workers that green jobs can be good jobs—with living wages, benefits, and access to training.

While childcare and discrimination top the list of concerns for women who wish to play a greater role in the nation’s infrastructure jobs, GANE pays attention to the special needs of women by dedicating a half-day of training to issues of workplace harassment.

Hegewisch said she believes that organizing women into groups when placed in nontraditional industries can remedy harassment.

Assistance in childcare for working women may also have to come at the local level.

“I’m not at all going to try to tell you that that’s all paid for now in the Recovery Act. I suspect it is not,” said Department of Labor Regional Administrator Byron Zuidema during the Urban Institute’s green jobs panel. “Those are the kinds of things that we think are around board room collaboration solutions.”

Women’s labor advocates urge women to remember that there are diverse alternatives in the green jobs industry to labor-intensive construction positions. These include information technology, purchasing and administrative areas.

Sometimes, employers “prefer to use women because they are more aware, mature and precise in their work,” Hegewisch said.