Your Dental Hygienist Cleans like a Girl. (Because chances are, she is.)

A February 2024 Wall Street Journal headline read like this: 40% of Lawyers Are Women. 7% Are Black. America’s Workforce in Charts. The article analyzed The most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which each year looks at the gender and racial composition of hundreds of occupations, offering a snapshot of how workers sort themselves into many of the most important jobs in the country.

It’s fascinating to see how occupations skew toward one gender or race than another, and even more interesting to speculate about why they do. (More on that later.) But here are some of the data points from 2023 I found most interesting (but not surprising.)

• 96.7% of preschool and kindergarten teachers are women; 93% of childcare workers are women
• 96% of legal secretaries are women
• 95% of Dental Hygienists are women
• Two-thirds of manicurists and pedicurists are Asian
• 48% of all postal workers are black, as are 38% of nursing assistants and 35% of security guards
• 62% of Marketing Managers are women; 84% are white (it’s a bit more pronounced in Public Relations; 66% of PR managers are women)
• 76% of HR Managers are women
• Women make up only 17% of Architectural and Engineering professionals
• 70% of Chief Executives are male; 85% are white
• Almost 77% of computer and Information Systems managers are male; 72% are white

Visit the full database of gender, race, and other employment data here.

What’s so interesting about the data is that workers choose their own occupations, based on availability of jobs, accessibility of training, and the likelihood of getting hired. Once an occupation has proven to be open and welcoming to a group, other members of a group start exploring the industry or the occupation. Once someone has family members or role models in that job, they believe it’s a viable option for them. (That’s why recruiting diverse employees is such an important issue for many industries.)

On the other hand, once an occupation becomes dominated by one gender or another, it becomes harder to recruit the other gender. Nursing, daycare, and those performing personal services like hair and makeup are so dominated by females that they’ve become “girl” jobs. So much so that we use the term “male nurse” without thinking how sexist it sounds. (Saying “lady doctor” would be unforgivable.) Men make up more and more of the nursing workforce (12% in 2023) but some men may still feel like they’d be doing “women’s work.”

I’ve been saying for years that we should change the occupation to “medical tech” or something that feels more gender neutral as a way to make men feel more welcome. But there’s a (mostly) unspoken bias in health and personal care: men and women seem to be comfortable with care and touch from females, but both can be uncomfortable with men performing the same duties. (I’m basing my opinion on many informal talks with health care professionals.) There’s also a strong history and culture that makes nurses proud to be called nurses.

On the other hand, occupations that skew heavily male (finance, construction, and IT) can develop a “bro” culture that makes many women feel uncomfortable and unwelcome.

Here’s an issue I hope education, workforce training, and policy organizations are working on: when a group that has been traditionally marginalized (previously, women in general, and now, women of color, among others) dominates an occupation, wages are suppressed and economic advancement becomes challenging. For instance, before 1963, employers could still legally pay women less than men, and before 1978, employers could legally terminate women on the grounds of pregnancy or marriage—meaning that for many women, their careers were often short-lived, intermittent, or viewed as secondary to that of their husbands. And most women had a choice of nurse, teacher, secretary, or domestic help as a career.

Today for example, according to the Center for American Progress report on occupational segregation, Black women constitute 6 percent of employed workers but make up 32 percent of home health aides, where they earn on average $23,803 per year.

We can work on encouraging industries to recruit more women and minorities into careers that offer true growth. The science and tech industries have made efforts in this direction, and I hope they continue to make it a priority for decades to come.