Finding a Financial Foothold: “Pink Collar” Female-Dominated, Middle Wage Sectors

Given that much of sexual harassment is perpetrated by men upon women, middle and high-wage “pink collar” work, where the majority of employees are women, but workers have more financial power than low-wage workers, has been seen as potentially immune to the pervasive sexual harassment that afflicts other sectors. Even though these women enjoy relatively more economic security, and work in positions that are covered by most labors laws that give them legal recourse in the case of harassment, there are a series of critical factors that complicate and mask even the relatively lower levels of sexual harassment reported in these sectors. These dimensions include vertical segregation, or the subtleties of what kinds of jobs (and with how much power) men and women occupy, the challenges of navigating harassment from both internal and third-party sources, unique legal and contractual regimes, and destructive myths about who harasses and why.

There are a number of job categories in America that are dominated by women—meaning more than 60 percent of the people in the job category identify as female—and a few that have relatively higher wages like education and medicine. Notably, there are almost no truly “high-wage” professions that are dominated by women in the top 20 highest earning professions—with the exception of physician assistants, where women make up 63 percent of the profession, and nurse practitioners, who are more than 80 percent women. Both groups earned just over $100,000 for median annual wages in 2016, though men working in these exact jobs earned an average of $10,000 more per year. (Similarly, male registered nurses (RNs) out-earn female RNs across settings, specialties, and positions, with no narrowing of the pay gap over time.) Jobs that fall into the higher-wage, female-dominated category include education and library occupations (71 percent female), medical and health services managers (71 percent), lab technicians (72 percent), and professions like nurses (87 percent), and physical therapists (63 percent). Other middle and higher-wage so-called “pink collar” professions include human resources (72 percent women), social workers (81 percent), and office and administrative support personnel (75 percent).

There are almost no truly “high wage” professions that are dominated by women in the top 20 highest earning professions.

According to EEOC data collected between 2005 and 2015, two female-dominated sectors accounted for a substantial percentage of sexual harassment reports to the agency: one, a low-wage sector (accommodation and food service work) accounted for 14 percent of the complaints, and a second in the higher wage realm (health care and social assistance) accounted for 11 percent of reports to the agency. Other equally female-heavy middle to high income sectors had far fewer reports of sexual harassment, with education accounting for 4 percent of reports to the agency. However, as discussed earlier, lack of reporting does not necessarily mean lack of harassment.

These data show that being surrounded by mostly female coworkers isn’t entirely protective. The EEOC, in its guidance and definitions, is clear that victims and harassers can be of any gender. A Buzzfeed analysis of 20 years of EEOC data shows that of those sexual harassment claims that specified gender of the person filing, 15 percent of claims are filed by men. In 2016, U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board data showed 6 percent of male federal government employees indicated that they had experienced sexual harassment in the last two years, including a range of reports from invasion of personal space (3 percent) and unwelcome sexual comments (3 percent) to pressure for sexual favors (1 percent) and attempted or actual rape or assault (1 percent). Women can be perpetrators, too, though data on who exactly perpetrates sexual harassment is extremely limited. Data from 2014 collected with 18-34 year old employed women reported that 10 percent of those surveyed said their harasser was a woman. Recent court cases have highlighted women sexually harassing other women and men. For instance, in a recent EEOC-prosecuted case in Nevada, four female bank tellers said they were sexually harassed through the creation of a hostile work environment by another female teller and their female supervisor.

While Title VII of the Civil Rights Act applies to sexual harassment across workplaces, the education-specific Title IX also regulates sexual harassment in education. Title IX is a 1972 law that requires any educational institution receiving federal funds to eliminate unequal treatment or discrimination on the basis of sex on their campuses, a law that has been interpreted as requiring schools to address complaints of sexual assault and harassment on campus. While student-on-student sexual harassment (which nearly eight in 10 students report experiencing in their school years) and campus sexual assault are vitally important issues to tackle, this report focuses on drivers of sexual harassment in the workplace, as covered by Title VII.

While workers in higher-wage, female-dominated sectors appear to be somewhat less subject to sexual harassment than other sectors, there are a number of specific characteristics and factors that underpin and facilitate the harassment that occurs.

Vertical Sex Segregation and Power Imbalance

Given that women predominantly make up these workplaces and that much of sexual harassment is perpetrated by men upon women, “pink collar” workplaces have often been thought to be a potential refuge from the pervasive sexual harassment that afflicts other sectors. However, this ignores several important dimensions of workplace harassment in these spheres. In many of these otherwise female-dominated sectors, supervisors are still predominantly male. This is known as vertical sex segregation, where men are more likely to hold high status, higher paying, and more senior, supervisory jobs and women are more likely to occupy the jobs in the sector with lower wages, status, and power.

Vertical sex segregation is often a side effect of the impact that motherhood, and the lack of family-supportive policies in the U.S., has on women’s (but not father’s) careers, as well as assumptions favoring men’s leadership abilities. In medicine, doctors—65 percent of whom are male—are often required to provide guidance to Registered and Licensed Practical Nurses, less than 10 percent of whom are male. In primary and secondary education, while K–12 teachers are predominately female, superintendents and other high-level roles are most often filled by men. And as noted earlier in this analysis, structural power imbalances between men and women in the workplace enable and worsen sexual harassment, providing opportunities for men to coerce or harass women and offering women fewer opportunities to respond. The legal standard required to pursue a sexual harassment claim support and reinforce these dynamics, by requiring that a person have hiring or firing power over a victim. That requirement misses the power inherent in a person or manager who may not be able to hire or fire, but can control what shifts an employee gets, or which and how many classes someone teaches, or other modes of control over jobs.

In many of these otherwise female-dominated sectors, supervisors are still predominantly male.

The women who do occupy positions in the higher-wage, male-dominated slice of the sector—like female physicians—are more likely than men in those positions to experience harassment. As of 2016, about 30 percent of female physicians who teach in medical schools have experienced sexual harassment, compared with just 4 percent of similar male medical faculty. Among these physician-educators who have experienced harassment, 92 percent have experienced sexist remarks or behavior, 41 percent unwanted sexual advances, nine percent coercive advances, 6 percent subtle bribery to engage in sexual behavior, and one percent threats to engage in sexual behavior. In an earlier 1995 cross-sectional survey, 52 percent of U.S. academic medical faculty women reported harassment in their careers compared with 5 percent of men.

Third-Party Harassment

As in other sectors, sexual harassment in this sector doesn’t just come from coworkers and supervisors, but also from patients, customers, clients, vendors, and suppliers in what is known as “third party” harassment. Many female-dominated professional sectors are client- or patient-facing and provide opportunities for women to be harassed by patients or customers. Medicine is one sector in which many workers have a complex web of professional relationships that can result in sexual harassment—including third party harassment. Medical professionals can be subject to harassment from their coworkers or supervisors, but also from the patients they serve, as well as the patient’s family members, who are often deeply involved in a family member’s care.

Though much of the research on sexual harassment in K–12 and post-secondary education has been focused on students being harassed by other students or teachers—especially sexual coercion of younger, female students by older, usually male teachers—teachers are also subject to third party harassment from a surprising source: students. Increasingly, attention is being paid to sexual harassment of teachers by their supervisors, by coworkers, and by students, though little data is currently available to quantify the problem. An American Association of University Women study suggests that 36 percent of students say that students sexually harass teachers and 29 percent say teachers sexually harass other teachers. Even where data exists, underreporting is a huge problem, particularly in the K–12 sector.

While there is little research on the scope of third-party harassment, there is data that suggests it is a major component of how harassment occurs in this sector. Older research suggests that for female social workers who had experienced harassment (sometimes from multiple people or multiple times across their work lives), about half had been victimized at some point by a supervisor, about 50 percent reported victimization from a coworker and 46 percent said the harassment was from a client. Other research suggests that the key factors in predicting harassment in client-focused sectors are employees having a higher percentage of clients or customers who are male, clients having a substantial amount of economic power over the employee (such as loss of business and bad reviews), and environments in which there is a low likelihood of the harasser being condemned or reprimanded by others.

Sexual harassment in this sector doesn’t just come from coworkers and supervisors, but also from patients, customers, clients, vendors, and suppliers.

Isolation and Intimate Interactions in Private Spaces

In some female-dominated sectors, especially arenas where the work is about caring for, tending to, or healing the body, workers must do their jobs in private spaces—doctor’s examination rooms, for example. Similar to other sectors where isolation is a component that contributes to sexual harassment, these more isolated spaces of work and interaction—particularly around the intimacies of the human body—also provide opportunities for sexual harassment, coercion, and assault.

Many in medical professions are at risk for sexual harassment and assault because of the isolation they experience, when meeting with or caring for patients in confidential settings or at the patient’s home. In many cases, institutions are required to have policies in place to protect staff members. In Turnbull vs. Topeka State Hospital, a state psychiatric hospital psychologist was sexually assaulted by an adolescent male patient after complaining about the dangers of under-staffing and lack of safety and support at the hospital. The ruling in the case requires that healthcare providers have protocols and training in place to help staff manage sexual harassment and sexually aggressive patients, or risk prosecution under hostile work environment claims.

Professions that center on the body—medicine, but also fitness, fashion, health, theater and acting, and care work—where touching, commenting, looking at and generally managing, dealing with, modifying, or clothing bodies are commonplace pose a particular challenge. These types of interactions can create a sense of intimacy, where normal boundaries are already being crossed, which can make policing sexual interactions more challenging.

Tenure and Economic Insecurity

Within the education sector, structural challenges may make it difficult for teachers to leave positions or leave the profession of teaching, which can bind victims and perpetrators of harassment to jobs and schools. Higher education is unique in that it has a system of tenure, or the expectation of protected, lifelong employment after certain hurdles are crossed. Although colleges and universities are replacing many of those tenured positions with lower-paid, precarious adjunct professors, tenure policies can protect senior harassers and make it difficult to fire them.

Some primary and secondary teachers may have a more difficult time leaving their jobs because of economic insecurity. In addition to stagnating wages, about 1 million teachers across 15 states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas) do not pay into social security and instead have a state-provided (and often underfunded) pension. If they leave the profession before the pension accrues benefits (in some states that can take up to a decade), they lose the funds, and have effectively not paid into retirement for as many years as they taught. The lack of portable social security benefits may make it more difficult for teachers to leave a job, for sexual harassment or any other reason.

Despite assumptions that these sectors offer a respite from the sexual harassment prevalent in male-dominated and the low-wage, female-dominated sector, gender and power imbalances remain salient, and female-dominated fields and workplaces are a reminder that sexual harassment can be perpetrated by a person of any gender. Even when most coworkers are women, harassment can come not only from male supervisors and managers above, but also from coworkers or the clients, patients, and students all around. And even “higher”-wage jobs, like nursing, aren’t immune from these risks of isolation and economic insecurity.