Gender Disparities In Career Technical Education

Career Technical Education Discrimination
In 2014 there are still striking gender disparities in fields such as, guidance and counseling practices, career technical education programs, in the level and quality of classes available in traditionally male and female career technical education programs, and in the wages earned by female and male career technical education graduates. An interesting comparison of two surveys, one in Montana in 1980 and another in Virginia in 1995, illustrates a large, enduring gender gap in a critical career technical education program area. In Montana in 1980, females accounted for half of enrollment in only one high school technical education course. Female enrollment was less than 10 percent in all other high
Females and males both perceived technology education classes as "guy" classes and females perceived technology education classrooms as dirty, hence “unfeminine”. Remote locations away from the core of the school building, sexist and dehumanizing comments from male students were all reasons stated by female students as reasons to not enroll. Other accounts portray similar situations in other areas of career technical education and in other places. For example, the number of female technology education students, teachers and teacher educators remain low in British Columbia. This disproportion is explained by continued recruiting inequities, a history of gendering in the field, and resistance to gender-specific interventions (Braundy, O 'Riley, Petrina, Dalley, & Paxton, 2000). In computer-related courses, males continue to dominate in such areas as graphic arts and computer-aided design, whereas females enroll in clerical and data-entry courses, females also lag behind males in taking the advanced placement computer science exam and in recreational and elective use of computers in school (Weinman & Haag, 1999), while undergraduate family and consumer sciences programs, as a whole, remain predominantly female. (Firebaugh & Miller, 2000) A number of states report continuing gender imbalances, reflecting traditional occupational gendering, in
Females accounted for less than 10 percent of 1980 Montana enrollments in every course except one, 15 years later in Virginia, females enrollments were less than 10 percent in only 17 of 32 courses. Likewise, some individual state reports show a certain amount of movement toward gender balance in career technical education enrollments. Between 1992 and 1995, enrollment in New Jersey secondary occupational programs became more gender balanced in business management and administrative services, computer information sciences, marketing operations and distribution, and vocational home economics. Enrollments in adult programs became more gender-balanced in business management and administrative services, computer information sciences, health professions related sciences, and marketing operations and distribution (Wonacott,