The ‘Manly’ Jobs Problem

Insults, groping — even assault. That kind of sexual harassment came along with being one of the very few women on a construction site, in a mine, or in a shipyard. Those professions remain male-dominated and the harassment can seem, for countless women, to be intractable.

But what if the problem isn’t simply how their male co-workers behave? What if the problem is the very way society has come to see the jobs themselves? Some jobs are “male” — not just men’s work, but also a core definition of masculinity itself. Threatening that status quo is not just uppity — it can be dangerous.

This dynamic plays out in workplaces of all classes and crosses partisan political lines. But it is particularly stark in the blue-collar jobs that once scored a kind of manly trifecta: They paid a breadwinner’s wage, embodied strength and formed the backbone of the American economy.

As Christine Williams, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, pungently put it, women in so-called men’s jobs are labeled either “sluts or dykes,” each abused in their own ways. Although statistics are spotty, some studies have concluded that sexual harassment is more regular and severe in traditionally male occupations.

Women are so scarce in these trades that some men refuse to see them as women. The only woman in a repair crew at wind-farm sites charged in a lawsuit that her co-workers called her by male nicknames, from common to obscene, because they thought only a man could handle the job. Men suggested she must have a penis or be a lesbian.

Women who try to go along with the sexual banter, or who act feminine, are seen as either coming on to men or less competent in a workplace culture where proficiency is defined in masculine terms. “Sexual harassment is often a way in which the men reaffirm women’s femininity, say this is who you are, back in your place,” Professor Saguy said. “At the same time, women will play up their femininity and flirt a little bit, and play along with some of the stereotypes of femininity to be accepted.”

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