Green jobs are great -- if you're a dude, says a recent New York Times op-ed by Linda Hirshman:
It turns out that green jobs are almost entirely male ... especially in the alternative energy area. A broad study by the United States Conference of Mayors found that half the projected new jobs in any green area are in engineering, a field that is only 12 percent female, or in the heavily male professions of law and consulting; the rest are in such traditional male areas as manufacturing, agriculture, and forestry. And like companies that build roads, alternative energy firms also employ construction workers and engineers.
And green or not, most of the 2.5 million jobs Obama has promised to create in the next two years will also go to men, writes Hirshman. She notes that building projects necessarily entail construction workers, only 9 percent of whom are female.
Funding for school repair and transportation infrastructure is all well and good, but what about support for "professions that build the most important infrastructure -- human capital"? What about all the teachers and social workers and child-care providers and hipster librarians? Hirshman notes that some of Obama's campaign promises would boost funding for these predominantly female positions, but they're not getting attention as part of his economic-stimulus plan. Continues Hirshman:
Maybe it would be a better world if more women became engineers and construction workers, but programs encouraging women to pursue engineering have existed for decades without having much success.
Ouch. In 2005, only 26 percent of college-degree-holding workers in nonacademic science and engineering positions were female, according to the National Science Foundation. And recent research found 35 percent of women scientists who planned on pursuing a university career in the first year of their PhDs abandoned that plan by the third year, compared to a measly 2 percent of men. How much do the slim numbers of women in science and engineering contribute to the under-representation of women in high-profile green positions?
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Delay And Deny Posted 8:07 am
14 Dec 2008
I suggest we pay moms (or dads) to stay at home with their kid for the first 10 years of life.
I would pay them $35K per year to do so...a reverse income tax based on a credit.
I would only pay for the first child and put penalties for more than one to discourage overpopulation.
They would get an extra credit of $10K if they contribute significantly to education, either through home schooling, or by volunteering at the public school that their child attends.
Texeme.Construct.Questioner
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liberalnun Posted 10:07 am
14 Dec 2008
No one doubts that our educational and social work systems need a lot of help - Linda's right that any stimulus package needs to include improvements in education and social mobility in general. But we also need to work harder to break down gender barriers in these high-demand, male-dominated fields that are going to be so essential to the country's future. I think that a lot of female-dominated fields are extremely valuable and deserve more attention, but we should not support them simply because they currently give jobs to women. To do otherwise - to try to find more "traditional" roles for women under a green jobs program, preserving the status quo - would be sexist.
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Pangolin Posted 10:30 am
14 Dec 2008
The fact that great portions of people manage to avoid the dangerous work involved in procuring food & shelter on the physical level doesn't mean that we can ignore it.
Any women willing to join the boys on roofing crews, insulation crews, window installers and sheet metal workers are welcome to sign up. Hot, dirty and dangerous; what's not to like? All the equality you want with none of the benefits of lawyering.
If the green jobs go to men I'm sure that women will somehow benefit due to the "invisible hand of the free market." Or possibly due to the not-so-invisible hand of their wives on the checkbook. The work still has to get done.
Put the Carbon Back
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Lisa Hymas Posted 2:42 pm
14 Dec 2008
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Gar Lipow Posted 3:42 pm
14 Dec 2008
Jezebel also points out that Hirshman is also wrong about some of her key facts.
To put Hirshman in context, her schitct is to find feminist reasons for being anti-feminist and liberal reasons for supporting far right positions. She is one of those conservatives who always pretends that she is a liberal at heart,but she just has so much more common sense and intellectual rigor than liberals that she just ends up taking extreme right positions (for solid liberal reasons). It is not her fault that she isn't dumber than dirt the way most liberals are.
She is absolutely shameless in this pose: for example she often claims to speak as a housewife against heartless working women who just don't understand the the viewpoint of a homemaker, in spite of the fact that she has a full time maid and nanny, and by her own admission never does housework. And she earns more from her writing than your 90% of people out there. And the point is not that she is wrong to earn money or avoid housework, but to do that and then criticize other people for working, or to claim special insight into the circumstances of full-time unpaid homemakers is a bit much.
In this case I'd say she has half a point, and one that really is important. While there is nothing inherent in green infrastructure that would require discrimination against women, it is true that a lot of the investment will be jobs that are traditionally male-dominated. So if a large green investment is made without paying attention to feminist issues, it probably will result in discrimination against women. The proper solution is not to fail make that green investment, but to make sure that very strong efforts are made to preclude gender discrimination in recruiting, training hiring and promotion. I would add something Hirshman does not notice. Many of these same professions and trades are traditionally white dominated, often with a strong history of deliberate discrimination and racial exclusion. So we need to make sure than any public investment has strong racial anti-discrimination policies in place as well. In short if we public fund green investment, we want to make sure appropriate diversity programs are built into that investment from the start.
So while I have zero respect for the messenger, I would take Hirshman's warning as a heads-up. It is not true that green investment is inherently discriminatory. It is very true that if fund green investment, we have to put real effort into making sure it is not discriminatory.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:08 am
15 Dec 2008
National service job programs should highlight childcare so that more mothers can work outside the home. Any sort of promise of financial aid tends to make teen pregnancy more fashionable, a disturbing trend lead by celebrities like Palin and family.
With employment opportunites waning, look for a higher teen birthrate. It has become a problematic way for unskilled, educationally challenged teenagers to establish some kind of self-esteem. National service employment might turn some of these young lives headed for tragedy around.
Student grant and loan programs need to be bolstered with investment and quality control, too many colleges and technical schools are full the first two weeks of class until young students take their loan and grant money and run. It's a disturbing trend.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Zephaniah Posted 2:31 am
15 Dec 2008
In trainings for carbon reducing jobs we can mindfully avoid bias.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:02 am
15 Dec 2008
The Aramco compound, offices and a suburban-like lasdscaped piece of desert, is a coporate area with different non-theocratic rules.
Weird.
The Saudis want to become solar power entrpeneurs too. in order to export electricty even wghen oil runs low. They should consider desalination and water export too. Desert sun can provide PV and solar furnace electric power as well as heat to desaliinate water.
With water shortahe due to glaciers melting and drought spreading, water really is, as has been widely stated, "the oil of this century".
I think US companies should team up with the saudis on renewables in exchange for capital investment in solar industries here. It's a win/win green economic cooperation that could get us all working to save oil, stabilize prices, and use it wisely as we convert to a green economy.
Our companies have the products they need. Business is a good basis for cooperation on other issues. Like womens' rights! The most important issue in our overpopulation problem, our most impotant eco-issue, longterm.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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