Men's Behavior and Women's Interest in Blue-Collar Jobs

Abstract

Several factors have limited women's inroads into skilled blue-collar jobs. With questionnaire and interview data from employees at a large utility firm, this paper examines whether men's reactions to women who worked temporarily in plant jobs discouraged women from permanently returning to such jobs. Women who held male blue-collar plant jobs during a strike of unionized male workers experienced hostility, sexual harassment, paternalism, and functional differentiation from their male coworkers and supervisors. Although none of our measures of these male behaviors directly discouraged women against transferring to plant jobs, they did have a minor indirect effect on how much they liked their strike job, which in turn influenced their interest in transferring to plant jobs. These results suggest that male coworkers' reactions and the quality of women's relationships with male coworkers—while they affect women's daily work experiences in blue-collar jobs—are less a barrier to women's interest in male blue-collar jobs than is often presumed.