Training for Blue-Collar Jobs in Blue-Collar Communities: Leaving Girls Behind?

• In Event: 052 - Regular Session. Education and Gender: Gendered Transitions out of High School

Abstract

The tension between the demands of an increasingly knowledge-based economy and pockets of good, sub-baccalaureate blue-collar occupations underlie current debates centered on whether high schools should promote vocational skills or a rigorous academic curriculum. Increasing training for blue-collar jobs may have highly gendered consequences given severe gender inequality in employment and earnings in these occupations. Using ELS (2002), we take advantage of the local nature of some blue-collar labor markets and investigate whether an emphasis on blue-collar high school training in communities with existing blue-collar jobs benefits men and women. Results indicate that young men in blue-collar communities are more likely to enter blue-collar jobs over attending a four-year college compared to their male peers, in part because of differences in blue-collar related and college-preparatory course offerings and course-taking. Young women in blue-collar communities appear to face greater penalties than men from the tight coupling between high school course offerings and local jobs; they are more likely to be unemployed, working in a blue-collar job or other job, and attending a two-year college relative to attending a four-year college. Gendered labor market penalties persist eight years after high school graduation, and these are partially or entirely explained by school course offerings in blue-collar communities. More broadly, our study suggests a spatial dimension of gendered opportunities for educational and occupational success, and we highlight schools—as gatekeepers of skills and embedded within communities—as an importance force in this stratification process.

Authors

• April Sutton, University of Texas-Austin

• Amanda Bosky, University of Texas-Austin

• Chandra Muller, University of Texas