Gender Segregation and Discrimination in CTE

Gender Segregation and Discrimination in CTE

The Traditional Reality

The CTE system before Title IX has been characterized as traditionally dominated by gender segregation and discrimination (National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education 2002). In many cases, females were denied entry into training programs for higher-wage, traditionally male, industry and technical occupations. Gender stereotyping in guidance and counseling practices and materials, bias in teacher practices, and harassment by other students discouraged nontraditional enrollment by females and in practice restricted CTE opportunities for females to lower-wage, traditionally female, health and cosmetology occupations. In short, systematic practices and expectations steered females into home economics and away from shop or auto mechanics. In the long run, the most damaging consequence of such gender bias was to limit females' access to the benefits of CTE—the living wage that provides females the same economic self-sufficiency that males have long enjoyed.

The Continuing Reality

Unfortunately, CTE is still characterized by pervasive gender segregation and discrimination (National Women's Law Center 2002). Thirty years later, there are still striking gender disparities in guidance and counseling practices, in CTE program enrollment, in the level and quality of classes available in traditionally male and traditionally female CTE programs, and in the wages earned by female and male CTE graduates. An interesting comparison of two surveys (reported in Gloeckner and Knowlton 1995-96), one in Montana in 1980 and another in Virginia in 1995, illustrates a large, enduring gender gap in a critical CTE program area:

. In Montana in 1980, females accounted for half of enrollment in only one high school

technical education course—51 percent of Graphic Arts students were female. Female

enrollment was less than 10 percent in all other high school technical education

courses.

. In Virginia in 1995, only one high school technical education course, Communications

Technology, had about 50 percent female enrollment. In the 32 remaining high school

technical education courses, female enrollment was less than 15 percent in 27 course

and less than 10 percent in 17 courses.

. In 1995, Virginia students explained gender differences in terms that could be

considered classic for CTE. Females and males both perceived technology education

classes as "guy" classes; females perceived technology education classrooms are

dirty, hence unfeminine.