Breaking Into the Blue-Collar Boys’ Club: Male-Dominated, Low- and Middle-Wage Sectors

Sexual harassment in fields traditionally dominated by men is widespread and common. Although sexual harassment is pervasive across sectors, studies have found that organizational—rather than individual—factors, such as male-dominated workplaces, job duties that have been seen as historically masculine, indifferent management, and a climate that tolerates offensive behavior, powerfully predict harassment. Harassment flourishes because of a climate of tolerance and a culture of silence in the face of it.

Researchers estimate that 40 to 80 percent of women workers experience sexual harassment by men in the workplace, with higher incidences found in traditionally male, hierarchical organizations where men wield the majority of positions of power. About 12 percent of all sexual harassment charges filed with the EEOC between 2005 and 2015 were in the male-dominated manufacturing sector, representing the third highest incidence of those sectors identified in complaints, according to analysis by the Center for American Progress. Recent surveys by the RAND Corporation for the Department of Defense found that one in five active duty women had experienced sexual harassment or gender discrimination in the previous year, typically a sexually hostile work environment, as had 7 percent of active duty men. One study found that in one year, 88 percent of female construction workers reported sexual harassment, and another found that one-third of women and 37 percent of LGBTQ workers in construction trades reported frequent harassment. 88 percent of women firefighters experience harassment during their careers, and 69 percent were currently being harassed when surveyed.

As in other sectors, sexual harassment is often not about sex at all. One study found that nine out of 10 women in male-dominated settings, including the military and law, for example, who have experienced gender harassment—put downs, sexist or vulgar comments—had virtually no unwanted sexual advances. That, researchers say, is a clear indication that the harassment in these settings is designed to ensure women feel unwelcome, unfit, and unable to do the job.

Harassment flourishes because of a climate of tolerance and a culture of silence in the face of it.

A 2017 report by the Pew Research Center found that 62 percent of women employed in male-dominated workplaces–a plurality of women in the workforce–said sexual harassment was a problem in their industry. Nearly half said it was an issue in their own workplace, and 28 percent said they’d personally experienced it. The relatively little attention paid to sexual harassment in blue-collar settings in the wake of #MeToo media coverage sparked a #Whataboutus? Movement in an effort to shine a spotlight on its pervasiveness in traditionally male work environments.

Within low and middle-wage, male-dominated jobs, there are several themes that cross multiple job types and predict or contribute to the likelihood of sexual harassment in these spaces.

Masculine-Identity Threat

Research by Lilia Cortina, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, and her colleagues, suggests that harassment of women in male-dominated settings is an attempt to insult and drive women out of workplaces traditionally seen as belonging to men only, rather than a sexual overture, as was previously theorized. Legal scholar Katherine Franke says in such environments sexual harassment can be a tool “used both to police and discipline the gender outlaw: the woman who dares to do a man’s job is made to pay.” The deck is already stacked against women in traditionally male occupations. Research has found that not only are women more likely to be disliked in such settings, but that their mistakes are judged much more harshly than male colleagues, leading to questions of competence and heightened job vulnerability.

The U.S. military, the largest employer in the country, has one of the highest rates of sexual harassment of any profession. In attempting to understand why gender and sexual harassment is so prevalent, researchers have identified several potential factors, one of which is that the traditional macho “warrior culture” can be hostile to women, casting them as interlopers and outsiders. Women make up just 16 percent of the active duty enlisted forces and 18 percent of the officer corps. Other factors may include a demographic of largely young, single men in lower-ranking positions, a demanding and intensive lifestyle of combat deployments, mobility, heavy drinking, an organizational climate that tolerates sexual and other forms of aggression (as aggression, in a combat setting, is key to successfully performing the job), and a hierarchical structure that makes reporting difficult.

Harassment of women in male-dominated settings is an attempt to insult and drive women out of workplaces traditionally seen as belonging to men only.

One study of women in male-dominated, masculine cultures, found that “men use the subjugation of women as a way to relate to other men and prove their masculinity while reinforcing women’s lower status,” and that women downplay, “play along” or joke about sexually harassing behavior in order to be “one of the guys” and accepted by the higher-status male group.

Isolation and Exclusion

Some male-dominated work environments are characterized by “hyper-masculine” or “locker room” cultures that are competitive and aggressive, and hidden from the surveilling eyes of the public or superiors. Such environments, where women are outliers and make up only a fraction of the workforce, are also often remote or isolated, as are military bases or ships, and some construction, manufacturing or agricultural sites, which can enable harassment to take root and thrive.

In the traditionally masculine trucking industry, where women make up 6 percent of the workforce, to obtain a commercial driver’s license, some trucking firms require trainees to spend a minimum of 28 days with a more experienced driver alone on the road. In such an instance, Karen Shank, a trainee driver, was awarded $1.5 million in damages after she sued CRST Trucking for enduring constant sexual harassment and assault on the road with her trainer. The handful of women in these environments are also often excluded from information networks that determine who finds out about jobs, who is tapped for the most desirable shifts, and who gets promoted.

An investigation by Frontline documented how agricultural, food plant, and janitorial workers often operate in isolated and remote conditions, often at night, on large, dispersed farms, processing plants, or empty buildings. A 2010 study of California farm-working women found 80 percent had experienced some form of sexual harassment, and investigations of the agriculture industry by Bernice Yeung and Frontline’s Rape in the Fields and Reveal News suggests endemic mass rape, assault, and harassment with few prosecutions.

Normalized Harassment Cultures

Women make up just 14 percent of police and sheriff’s patrol officers, and one study, Survival in an All Boys Club, found sexual harassment continues to be pervasive and common. Yet very few female law enforcement officers report harassment, likely because they are more concerned about fitting in, and whether their male colleagues think they can “do the job.” Many don’t perceive the harassing behavior as negative, because it is so common. When victims of harassment do make a formal complaint, retaliation is common and “often severe.”

Similarly, the Center for American Progress' Jocelyn Frye found of other traditionally male-dominated work: “Because many manufacturing jobs—such as machinists and craft workers—have long been male-dominated, women who enter the field may lack power or be seen as outsiders, thus making them targets for harassment.” Black women in blue collar jobs, research has found, are more likely to be subjected to severe harassment than others in male-dominated blue collar workplaces as they’re seen as both sexual and racial outsiders.

Judith Vollmar, a machine operator, was one of a handful of women who worked manufacturing performance fasteners at a plant in Pennsylvania. In court documents, she complained of a workplace riddled with sexually explicit images, degrading signs, co-workers who would leer at her, make lewd, sexist comments, and call her a bitch “several times a week.” She was also frequently told she didn’t know what she was doing when it came to the work. After complaining to her supervisor, she was suspended on a separate issue. In seeking to dismiss her case, the company argued that such behavior was typical in blue-collar environments. A federal district court judge disagreed, writing, “That a particular workplace is considered ‘blue collar’—whatever that is supposed to mean—does not absolve an employer of fostering a workplace hostile for female employees.”

Many don’t perceive the harassing behavior as negative, because it is so common.

Although the U.S. military has been under intense scrutiny for sexual harassment and sexual assault since the Navy’s Tailhook scandal in 1991, when more than 100 officers were accused of sexual assault, and other high-profile incidents, recent surveys by the RAND Corporation for the Department of Defense found that sexual harassment or gender discrimination that created a a sexually hostile work environment was common. More than half of all men and women who reported being sexually harassed said the violations were ongoing, from a few months to one year or more. Three-fourths of all women surveyed, as well as 45 percent of the men, said such work environments were “common” or “very common” in the military. The survey estimated that between 18,200 and 22,400 active duty service members were sexually assaulted in the previous year—about five in 100 women and one in 100 men—with a “significantly higher proportion” of incidents in the Marine Corps and Navy.

By law, the U.S. military now tracks both sexual harassment and sexual assault in the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response annual report, because military leaders have made the connection that sexual harassment and tolerating a harassing culture are often precursors to sexual assault and violence. Those who experience sexual harassment or gender discrimination in the previous year show far higher likelihood of experiencing sexual assault, the RAND report found—14 percent for women and 49 percent for men. About one-third of those assaulted say the alleged perpetrator had sexually harassed them before the assault.

In male-dominated cultures where sexually harassing behavior is condoned and normalized, researchers have documented what they call the “deaf ear” phenomenon—complaints that are ignored or go unanswered, which enables the behavior to persist and thrive.

Vertical Sex Segregation and Power Imbalance

Similar to the low-wage female-dominated sector, power imbalances are a key factor driving sexual harassment in male-dominated fields and work environments. The RAND study of the U.S. military found that the perpetrators of sexual assault were supervisors or unit leaders in nearly 60 percent of the cases. Similarly, a 2018 Department of Defense report found that the majority of perpetrators are males at the sergeant non-commissioned officer grade, and the majority of victims are privates and lower-ranking service members. Prevalence rates are higher for LGBTQ active duty members (22 percent), than for those not identifying as LGBTQ (6 percent). RAND also found that women in the Army, Navy, and Marines are 1.7 times more likely to be assaulted than women in the Air Force. Though power imbalances clearly exist in the Air Force, they are not as pronounced as in the other services. Women make up 20 percent of the Air Force, higher than the other service branches. More importantly, women make up 20 percent of the officer corps in the Air Force, compared to 7 percent in the Marines, 17 percent in the Army and 18 percent in the Navy.

In other male-dominated professions, women are rarely in charge. In the agriculture sector, women tend to be farm workers, and men, foremen—only 25 percent of farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers are women. In the janitorial services, women tend to be the contract laborers and men the managers. Similar power dynamics define the manufacturing, construction, mining, and law enforcement professions.

Gender Pay Gap

Many of the jobs in blue collar and male-dominated fields pay much more than the average job in more female-dominated sectors like retail and caregiving, and are often a pathway to a stable middle-class life. This can induce women to stay silent for fear of being labeled troublemakers, being retaliated against, or losing these good jobs. Blue collar jobs have some of the smallest gender wage gaps, according to the BLS. On average, across all jobs, women earn 81 cents to every dollar a man earns. Female construction laborers—just 3 percent of that industry’s workforce in 2016—earn 94 cents to every male construction laborer’s dollar. And the 2 percent of women who operate heavy construction equipment actually earn more than men in the same job. One woman worker on a temporary contract told the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety that blue collar temp workers put up with sexual harassment and unwanted sexual contact because they want to be chosen for permanent jobs.

Unions, which in male-dominated sectors tend to be male-dominated as well, are often divided between victims’ pleas for help and alleged harassers’ needs to keep their jobs. Men are traditionally seen as breadwinners, and their wages as needed to support their families, particularly in blue collar jobs, while women are traditionally seen as caregivers first. So male-dominated unions, many of which initially fought against having women in these jobs and unions for fear they’d depress wages, have tended to favor men. Women subjected to sexual harassment at Ford Motor Company, for instance, have charged their union leaders with meeting their complaints with “hostility, resistance, or inaction.”

Blue collar temp workers put up with sexual harassment and unwanted sexual contact because they want to be chosen for permanent jobs.

Women in highly male-dominated jobs may also be more likely to be pushed out of apprenticeship programs through a hostile environment, and thus denied access to one key mode of economic betterment within these sectors. In construction, one of the most male-dominated private-sector industries, where women make up less than 3 percent of construction workers, and barely 2 percent of the participants in federally-administered construction apprenticeship programs, apprenticeships are often a vital stepping stone to a construction career. Yet women are also less likely to complete apprenticeship programs, leaving because of hostile work environments, harassment, and lack of child care, according to a report by the National Women’s Law Center, which dubbed construction “the industry that time forgot.”

Taxing Physical Demands and Danger

Harassment, hazing, bullying, and subsequent retaliation for anyone who speaks up about sexual harassment can be dangerous, and particularly so in work environments that are isolated and physically dangerous. Some policies and practices in male-dominated sectors like law enforcement are designed to keep women out in the first place. For example rigorous—and controversial—“physical agility” entrance exams that emphasize upper body strength are part of what keeps the numbers of women in law enforcement roles low. Some departments require recruits to scale six-foot walls, bench press the equivalent of their body weight, or require motorcycle escorts to be able to physically lift an overturned motorcycle.

A 1999 OSHA review of construction workplaces found that sexual harassment, hostile work environments, and other factors such as the lack of sanitary toilets, equipment, protective clothing in proper women’s sizes, and poor training were all significant workplace hazards that inhibited the ability of women to perform their jobs safely.

Female construction workers told the New York Times that they’ve had tools dropped on them, electrical power turned on unexpectedly, and one woman reported being stranded atop a 200-foot wind turbine by her male colleagues. A woman told the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health that when she rejected the advances of her supervisor at a manufacturing plant, he assigned her to a more dangerous machine without training, and she burned her hands.

Legal Status

Women make up about 23 percent of the workforce in agriculture, forestry, hunting, and poultry and animal production. This sector accounts for approximately 1 percent of EEOC sexual harassment claims. There is, however, great reason to suspect particularly gross underreporting of harassment due to prevalence of undocumented workers, who are vulnerable legally and economically—as well as physically isolated on rural, large farms, or food processing plants where they may have to work through the night. Of the approximately 2 million agricultural workers in the U.S., an estimated half (DOL) to 70 percent don’t have legal immigration papers.

Since workers often live in labor camps provided by the employer, who may also provide their transportation, workers, especially undocumented workers, depend on their employer and are more vulnerable to abuse and retaliation. And because often individuals from the same family work with the same employer, complaints about sexual harassment or assault can result in family unemployment, homelessness, additional rape and/or assault, deportation, or other forms of retaliation.

Updated at 2:58pm on Oct. 10, 2018: A previous version of this report misspelled Judith Vollmar's last name, we have corrected the error.