Pink Collar Jobs: What They Are And Examples

The color white is a reference to the white dress shirts male office workers wore during the 19th and 20th centuries while laborers had to wear blue. During the 1930s, the trend of wearing white dress shirts became so evident in the workforce that “white collar” came to mean a person who worked in the office and received a fixed salary. A blue-collared job is defined by the manual labor required, meaning it focuses more on the worker’s physical capability than their mind, so the educational requirement of a blue-collared worker is relatively low. Often, employers would look for employees with high school diplomas or GEDs. To adhere to certain building or infrastructure regulations, some positions may require people with certification. Because
pink-collar workers are employed in jobs traditionally dominated by women, there’s another
name to describe this category, which is The Pink Collar Ghetto.

• To overcome the pink ghetto, companies have to become conscious of the gender issues.
• Some of the most common blue-collar jobs include welders, mechanics, electricians, and construction workers.
• Manual laborers were often required to wear blue denim or chambray shirts, which was the typical laborer uniform at the time.
• White-collar jobs are often more well-paid than blue-collar jobs because white-collar jobs require skills that cannot be easily trained.
• Likewise, there may be insecurity about the stability of the blue-collar worker’s job, whether it be dependent on a contractual agreement with a third party or temporary.

Two-thirds of the American Geographical Society (AGS)’s employees were women, who served as librarians, editorial personnel in the publishing programs, secretaries, research editors, copy editors, proofreaders, research assistants and sales staff. These women came with credentials from well-known colleges and universities and many were overqualified for their positions, but later were promoted to more prestigious positions. Create pre-employment pink collar jobs meaning assessments in minutes to screen candidates, save time, and hire the best talent. To create a diverse team that nonetheless operates in a psychologically safe way, you need to ensure they share common ground when it comes to the purpose of their work. For instance, when observing a male teacher with a class, a hiring manager might unconsciously look out for moments of impatience or anger and not notice the patience he shows to students.

The obscure Pink Collar Workers and Androgynous behavior

White-collar workers, on the other hand, can be found in office settings in clerical, administrative, or management roles. Further analysis finds the hardest hit to be those occupying pink collar jobs defined to mean someone working in the care-oriented career fields historically considered to be “women’s work.” There are now many professional roles considered pink collar jobs, often because they are related to gender stereotypes of “feminine” pursuits like caregiving rather than more “masculine” ones like mechanics or robotics. The worker is cultured or skilled in the relevant field through training workshops or classes and they have to persist for development in their careers. The other major issue facing the pink-collar worker is of sexual harassment. She may or may not be able to identify it and if she even manages to identify harassment, it is difficult for her to be in a position to voice it.

Unions also became a major outlet for women to fight against the unfair treatment they experienced. Women who joined these types of unions stayed before and after work to talk about the benefits of the union, collect dues, obtain charters, and form bargaining committees.

Hiring Science: Enhancing the quality of hire

However, the large-scale shift toward services provision and away from goods production is leading to more millennial men getting the pink collar jobs. The question in front of them is more often than not about the job security. Even though, the pink collars jobs are said to be underpaid, they are at least secure. Thus, the machines deliberated by men, are now displacing them and forcing them into feminized pink-collar work. It can be frustrating to be defined by a demographic and labeled with a collar color, particularly as people of all genders, ages and ethnicities work across a wide range of occupations as contributing members of society.

They need to introduce coaching and mentoring programs and break the ice between the employees irrespective of the gender. Clearly, despite shifting expectations of women allowing for their greater participation in the workforce, more needs to be done to attract people of diverse gender identities to pink collar jobs. The term was coined in 1983 to describe the limits women have in furthering their careers since the jobs are often dead-end, stressful and underpaid.

Are There Other Collar Colors?

The “pink collar job” definition is generally used to describe jobs held primarily by women. The terminology joins the ranks of “blue collar” jobs, which are typically labor- and service-oriented, and “white collar jobs,” which describes work often related to management roles or professional occupations. The definition of a blue-collared worker is someone – most commonly from the working class – who performs skilled or unskilled manual labor. Grey collar refers to the balance of employed people not classified as white or blue. They are principally White Collar Workers either working part-time or are under employed.

The largest and most prestigious of these organizations was the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC), whose members were conservative middle-class housewives. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was formed after women shirtwaist makers went on strike in New York City in 1909. It started as a small walkout, with a handful of members from one shop and grew to a force of ten of thousands, changing the course of the labor movement forever. In 1910 women allied themselves with the Progressive Party who sought to reform social issues.

Men in pink-collar jobs

White-collar workers were named as such because of the white shirts they wore under their suits. The highest-paying blue-collar jobs require workers to be skilled and often certified worker. An elevator technician, for example, earns $87,518 a year or an hourly wage of around $42. Following this would be an electronics repairer ($32.75), a power plant operator ($31.50), a gas plant operator ($30.70), and a train engineer ($28.30).

These expectations may influence not only a woman’s likelihood of encountering bias or discrimination, but also her skills and preferences. In the UK, women over 30 were given the right to vote in 1918, a move widely read as a “reward” for women’s work during the war effort, and it was a similar story in the US after the war. There is a common misconception that working women are a 20th-century phenomenon. In fact, women have always existed in the world of work, albeit restricted to certain roles. Other scholars, such as Kim Golombisky, acknowledge the inequalities of women, and especially certain minority groups and different classes, as part of the cause of this phenomenon.