To think this is a poor excuse for men not wanting to enter these jobs?

[PrincessSophieFrederike]

I came across this interesting Substack post the other day from a US feminist. She was talking about the lack of men entering professions like veterinary medicine, teaching, library science, etc which are now female-dominated, despite the fact that these were all originally male-only professions. She argues that men are put off female dominated jobs for fear of being seen as less masculine. She had a similar argument for why men are enrolling less in college there.

I also think a factor is that female-dominated workplaces may have on average communication styles which rely more on indirect messaging & ways of expressing conflict, whereas male-dominated workplaces tend to resolve conflict & compete more overtly. Ofc this is a stereotype & not true for many people, but I has some accuracy.

Overall, I do find it a bit of a frustrating excuse. I can understand men who prefer stereotypical male communication styles feeling less comfortable in a female-dominated workplace. Another factor is that women are more likely to promote woke stuff like TRA stuff which many, maybe most, men dislike. (Obvs many women do too, but unluckily women also promote it more). I can also understand concerns about making friends in a female-dominated workplace. (Ofc men & women can be friends, but they might understandably want more men around. Plus a lot of women might be suspicious of a man's female friends- sometimes with good reason.)

I have a lot of sympathy for things like the decline of traditional manual labour & spaces to meet & , the resultant rise in poor male mental health & suicide. But on this issue I'm more sceptical.

Women had to enter plenty of workplaces where until recently they had been legally banned. Sexual harassment is still a big problem in quite a few jobs. Generally women were told to toughen up, for a long time.
Whereas looking up other articles, we're told how men are 'intimidated' by going into a 60% female veterinary class. As I said above, I sympathise with some concerns they might have, but 'intimidated' seems a bit much. Ofc women can be bullies, but I doubt men who enter such jobs will be sexually harassed or seen as less competent due to their sex. Anecdotally, my gran always told me that the few male teachers at the school she taught at were very popular with the female staff. Surely it's similar for other jobs sometimes?

TLDR : AIBU to think it's a bit much for articles to talk about men being intimidated by female-dominated colleges & workplaces, whereas until recently (and some still say this) women were told to toughen up & adapt to male-dominated (and often sexist) ones?

I'd love to believe you. Do you have any research to read?

I gave two examples of medical specialisms that are relatively higher paid than others that are female dominated: dermatology and aesthetic medicine. I’m sure there are more. City Law firms (highest paying areas of Law) have experienced a phenomenal increase in female representation in the last couple of decades and pay has not been adversely affected by it (the exact opposite, in fact - the associates’ pay has more than doubled since I graduated 12 years ago).

I work in a male dominated industry and in general women are allowed a space if they don’t threaten the men’s views of themselves as being ‘better’ than women. For a woman to be judged as equally good as a man she has to be doing a lot more than they do and will still be resented for it.

When I’ve worked in female dominated professions men generally got more senior roles more quickly and women were expected to support them in a way that we weren’t expected to support other women. Standards for those men in general were lower than what was expected of women at the same level.

So ime, either way men get it easier than women and will earn more as they will be promoted faster and with less effort required. This will of course be turned round into the women having imposter syndrome and waiting til they meet 100% of the criteria to apply for roles so only having themselves to blame.

If you’re not putting yourself forward for promotion or you’re not asking for a pay rise, that’s on you. There is no great conspiracy to purposely pay women less. Indeed, it’s never been easier to research pay and benchmark yourself against the market. Advocate for yourself - it’s no one else’s responsibility but yours.

It's also never been so easy to Google "is there a reason women get paid less" and get an answer.

Remember, a lot of jobs don't even have salaries on the job descriptions, so the companies can get away with paying whatever they think they can.

Companies have always tried to optimise their labour costs and maximise profits. Whose responsibility is it to make sure you are being paid in line with the market? I’m not going to passively sit back and put my trust in senior management and boards of directors, you can if you want to.

Also, I wouldn’t bother googling. Pay is very opaque in some industries. You need to be speaking to recruiters on a semi-regular basis. They will have recent, first hand experience of placing people with your skill set in roles and the most up to date information on pay.

Dermatology/aesthetics are of course going to pay better than sectors dominated by the
NHS

It works both ways. There are plenty of jobs you could apply this to in reverse… In those, employers are generally expected to make them more female-friendly.

Men, in general, don’t want to do some types of job.

Women, in general, don’t want to do some types of job.

Horses for courses!

We shouldn’t get antsy about this for men unless we also do for women.

So? That’s always been the case, even when men were the majority.

If PP’s theory is correct that increased female representation brings pay down, then these specialisms would have experienced a relative drop in pay. But they haven’t. They’re both very lucrative still.

Exactly, what manager ever thinks…

“I’m going to hire this man. He’s worth £x, and that’s all I’d pay for a women, but because I love the patriarchy, I’m going to pay him more! Who cares if my profits are lower as a result, so long as a patriarchy continues!”

People get paid their market worth - period.

This was my first thought, rather than the pay aspect (which probably is a result of fewer men in the professions.)

Correlation is not causation and all that nonsense.

What if you ask for payrises - just to make equal pay, for doing (more than) the same work as your male peers, you ask for promotions, you do advocate for yourself, and it still doesn't happen?

Women in IT are often better qualified than their male peers, and often with very solid experience. And yet they don't get allocated to the high-profile projects, they don't get the promotions and payrises as easily. Often it's the only woman in the department who gets made redundant. It gets very tiring, it's why there's a "leaky pipeline".

It takes a determined mindset to stick with it.

Surely in most historic professions (i.e. not something new like IT) there's only one way for male percentages to go, and that is down. A hundred years ago women couldn't go into veterinary, now they can, as that happens of course it will affect the male %

Women in my current industry fall off a cliff when it gets to senior roles. This doesn’t mean women aren’t capable of those roles or don’t self promote, the roles just aren’t there because they are filled by mediocre men who aren’t going anywhere. If anyone has any ideas as to how to prise plum jobs out of the hands of mediocre beige men I’m all ears 😁

If you want to believe there’s a gang of - presumably - old white men plotting to keep women down in IT or whatever profession (over a glass of scotch on a golf course?) then you’re free to believe that. How far can you really take the “the patriarchy is holding me down 😭” excuse in 2025, really?

People are made redundant based on performance. There is zero benefit to a business of sacking a woman, especially if she’s working harder than the men AND she’s costing you less (which is every woman in IT, it would appear from this thread). It makes no sense whatsoever.

And plenty of men have been unsuccessful when they’ve asked for a pay rise or put themselves forward for a promotion or applied for a job - these things are not unique to women.

There. Is. No. Conspiracy.

You can see this within tech subfields too. There are quite a lot of women in frontend web dev, UX design etc but relatively fewer in say electronics design, machine learning etc. The latter are much more respected and seen as "harder" in the STEM sense i.e. more real, higher status, implies higher IQ etc.

I've often found it a bit of an interesting paradox as someone who works at the intersection of 2-3 quite male dominated fields. I'm always being asked to speak at "Women in X" events and I sometimes do, but I'm always like - hmm, is it in my long-term financial interest to encourage more women into this field? ;)

Anyway OP I agree - I think men don't enter this fields almost entirely due to status reasons - possibly pay as a secondary. There are some social reasons for sure but I'd say it's more a preference. Maybe there's something to the "woke" thing but again idk if I'd say that's intimidation so much as rational self-preservation...

Just as an anecdote to the above. When I was in undergrad I found a list of the sex breakdowns in all the engineering classes and sorted them from lowest female % to highest.

It was essentially like reading a list of "most intense/hardcore" classes by reputation. Inevitably if I asked people "should I do elective X or Y", where X had a higher male %, they would say that X was a "legendary" course or something, or if they said that I should do Y it was because it'll be "a total doss" or something along those lines.

I can't think of a single exception. I was very curious at the time so I tested it quite a bit. I am not sure which way around any causation may have gone, though...

How do subjects get a reputation as “intense” though? Do you think it has anything to do with the time commitment, abstract concepts that are difficult to understand, creative problem solving etc.? Or is just what percentage of men study the subject?

I have never, in all my life, heard anyone refer to a Medicine degree or a Biochemistry degree as easy, a “doss” degree, etc. despite those being dominated by female students year after year.

It's not about believing in a conspiracy. It's much subtler and more insidious than that.

I really don't know the direction of causation. I am very certain about the correlation though. I suppose there might be a vicious/virtuous cycle aspect to it which makes it hard to pin down.

But some further facts about this example. The classes covered various engineering and IT disciplines. The highest female % was about 40% and the lowest around 7% so the overall perception of value, status, prestige etc within the cohort would be quite influenced by what men find prestigious.

The high-status courses were either very abstract, e.g. very theoretical maths, computer science internals like compiler design etc, or they were "weed out" style classes with high failure rates e.g. advanced fluid dynamics or electrical engineering classes where you needed six different types of transforms before the maths became manageable etc. I would say that they were all heavily g-loaded if I can say that - it wasn't about having lots of repetitive homework etc.

I took some of these courses, not all and really struggled with some, as in truly hit the limits of my intelligence and I'm not stupid overall. FWIW this group also included some of the most esoteric and useless courses I took at uni, so there's that!

I think it is a combination of women being less interested in very abstract and impersonal systems design/analysis (but men valuing this skill and rating it high in status), and something about the OMG WEED-OUT positioning being a status attractor for men but a turn-off for women (also a concrete threat to grades which I think women care more about).

A class on the same topic run by a different instructor might have quite a different "profile" though. Similarly a corporate department, say "the data team" might be a cutting-edge research lab or a glorified data entry typing pool and this will influence status and M/F dynamics.

There. Is. No. Conspiracy.

No, there isn't. But there is a lot of unconscious bias and discrimination going on.

I hadn’t really thought about it , but yes all the veterinarians at the practice I take my pet to regularly are women ..and the vets at my previous practice were mostly women .
My female cousin married a male nurse and he has many male colleagues in his department.
Another male relative is a primary school teacher .
Nursing and teaching within a primary school would have been traditionally mainly female

1 in 20 vs. 1 in 5 is still not a feminised industry.

It is still overwhelmingly male.

The data on the trend is quite clear.

The data shows the opposite though.

Or rather the data shows as it becomes female dominated (as opposed merely to women entering the field) average pay falls.

The opposite is true for fields that become male dominated (and the shift in status follows that too.)