Since 1950, the amount of sex-segregation in white-collar occupations has plummeted. Yet, for their blue-collar counterparts, the needle has barely moved: It’s been reported that males outnumbered females 12 to 1 in 2023. Thus, more needs to be done to encourage gender equity across professions. However, breaking a “concrete ceiling” that is over a century old is far from easy, and near impossible if antiquated and outdated training practices are allowed to perpetuate a cycle of gender discrimination. Solving the gender gap in blue-collar work begins with improved learning and development (L&D) training.
Inadequate Training Is Enabling Injury
L&D, defined by the Association of Talent Development as “a function within an organization responsible for empowering workers’ growth and developing their knowledge, skills, and capabilities to drive better business performance,” is at the heart of employee development. Unfortunately, workers in blue-collar occupations often encounter gender bias in training. Since older onboarding courses educate employees using gender-specific industrial safety benchmarks, female workers are left to translate training instructions to suit their differing physiology. Inclusive training never includes language such as: “this weight is suitable for 75% of males,” yet many warehouses and manufacturing facilities still rely on these benchmarks to inform workers on what is safe to lift. Unfortunately, this discriminatory training is enabling poorer safety outcomes. Women ages 25-64 in blue-collar professions have a 20-40% higher rate of injury than men at a similar experience level, according to a NIH study. Due to inadequate training, shattering the “concrete ceiling” in blue-collar work isn’t only challenging, but also dangerous.
Inadequate Training Is Encouraging Attrition
Compounding the threat of inadequate training to gender equity in blue-collar work, women injured at work are far less likely to remain in the industry. Unfortunately, these workers are already at a major disadvantage and they’re more apt to hide injuries for fear of job consequences. Since feeling “overlooked or ignored” are two of the top 10 reasons employees leave, according to a Forbes article, employee attrition is certain to follow. This toxic silence is far from uncommon. 63% of women feel their employer has ignored their voice, while 75% do not feel heard on critical issues, such as safety, benefits and time-off requests, according to a report by UKG Workforce Institute, “The Heard and the Heard-Nots.” These sobering stats are worth bearing in mind when pondering why the blue-collar gender gap has remained stagnate for over a half century and fixing the toxic cycle with improved L&D is key to reversing the trend.
The Connection Between L&D and Equality
Improving employee L&D is the best way for blue-collar jobs to close a decades-old gap in gender equality. Reversing the trend begins with adopting evolved workplace safety benchmarks sufficient for training all workers now in blue-collar professions, rather than expecting all employees to fall into one standard category. By eliminating one-size-fits-all measurements in lieu of personal safety insights that account for movements made by men and women of varying ages, body types, stress levels and injury histories, employees can be kept safer on the job site.
While adopting this new model is a necessary first step, more must be done to protect workers. Employers must also look into extending training beyond the onboarding process. Currently, some warehouse jobs only train their employees for 2-3 days before sending them, unsupervised, onto the factory floor. Training needs to be far more comprehensive than this and involve monthly and yearly training refreshers for current employees.
Finally, while monthly or yearly training refreshers are a fantastic tool to keep workers safe, they are not enough to guarantee a safe workplace. Rather, a culture of regardless of employee physiology needs to be baked into everyday life at a company. Thankfully, technologies like workplace wearables enable an unprecedented ability to automate customized safety insights for each worker. Real-time safety insights have never been as readily accessible for workers of both genders, as long as employers are willing to implement these new tools on the factory floor.
Starting during onboarding and throughout an employee’s entire tenure, companies must seek to modernize training and safety practices to accommodate for every gender’s physiology, in addition to encouraging employees to be vocal about safety issues. Only then will the “concrete ceiling” preventing gender equity in blue-collar jobs begin to break.
