Why are so many minimum wage/low paid jobs done by women?

[LorlieS]

Why is this still "the norm?"

We see it so much of the time here on MN. Women that put up with all sorts of abysmal behaviour and disrespect from their partners. Women that turn a blind eye to affairs and neglect. When they are asked the questions "Why put up with this?" "Why not leave?"... How often does it then come out that partner is the only/main wealthy breadwinner?

@ChateauMargaux It is the age old Nature vs Nurture argument. The reality is it is a mixture of both, however, the majority of studies into the behavioural differences between the sexes conclude that biology is mainly responsible.

I grew up poor in the 80s and played with cap guns and plastic swords (I thought I was She Ra) I also liked Barbies. My brother only played with guns and cars. My sister only played with dolls and My Little Pony.
The options to play with traditionally 'opposite sex toys' were there for us all, but my brother didn't want to walk around with a doll and my sister didn't see the appeal in battering each other with swords. I believe there have been experiments on this, observation of toddlers in a room full of toys and the boys naturally gravitate towards the trucks without prompting, the girls would play with both dolls and trucks.

This horribly unethical experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Identical_Strangers
found that these triplets all exhibited the same behaviours and mental health issues despite growing up in different households and social classes. This proves that 'nature' was a greater driving force. However, it is significant that the triplet who went on to commit suicide had been the boy who grew up in the less supportive home, supporting the 'nurture' aspect of the study.

@LorlieS No problem. Chemical Engineering.

I have a bit to add if you don't mind about care work and women.
It's not going to be as articulate as I'd like but I'm extremely inarticulate and struggle with getting my point down, but hopefully you'll see my wee theory here. And I'm so sorry it's so long.

For the last 20+ years I've earned NMW doing care work in all its varieties.
I've done work with dementia, end of life care, worked in nurseries with children and spent most of my working life supporting people with autism, mental health issues, extremely challenging behaviour, learning and physical disability. I've been beaten up, spat on, shat on, I've been threatened with a knife. Had to have a tentus for a bite. You get the picture.

So from home help roles to secure units, caring for ex prisoners and child sex offenders, nursing homes etc and my single nvq in health and social care was enough of a qualification to ensure I was able to get those jobs and even if I'd have progressed in any of those jobs there was no further path I could have gone down after the nvq. A bit of in house training every blue moon but FA else.
So anything from holding a persons hand and keeping them comfortable during their transition from life to death which is mentally devastating, from having a lovely day at the cinema with a person who just needs addiontal support in the public, you'd get paid the same. (Pittance) now men who work with in traditional working class jobs (like caring is) such as builders as example, well like a care worker a builder is often able to do tons of jobs under one umbrella, such as joinery, tiling, plastering and will be able to quote you on the hour for what the job entails, so fitting laminate costs less than plastering etc as where women in a predominantly female environment won't be able to say, "Oh you want me to wash 28 stone Dennis who covers himself in shit and has been known to jizz himself during a body wash? That'll be an extra fiver for that pervert, please". (Dennis you'll be thrilled to hear was also an ex headmaster. No dementia, just a horrid fucker who would request the 16 year old apprentices to clean him)

Now why is it women who get paid less in these kinds of jobs?

Care is shit pay and ten a penny jobs and the women I've met in care often fall under the following.

Can't read or write or do basic maths.
Have no qualifications at all.
Need certain hours, such as nights or 8-2 for childcare.
Haven't the confidence when their children are older to retrain unless it's as a nurse - which is also why I believe male nurses seem to get ahead quicker with promotions, women train later in life or they have families that takes priority over promotion.
Controlling husbands and partners don't want them working with men or in public facing roles.
Their mothers did it is a huge reason, especially in nursing homes, I've worked places where a mother and daughter have cared for a mother and daughter resident, decades later.
You can get away with fucking murder in most places and unless you're caught literally commiting abuse, which is rare tbh, but unless you're swindling cash or stealing valuables, there are 100s of ways to abuse people financially, care does attract wronguns as well as the absolute angels.
Women who just love caring for people and just want to do that, they enjoy the job and make the sacrifice of a proper career to be a hands on carer.

Now back to builders, if you're a builder you can have little or no literacy skills.
Math needs to be basic, so measuring is essential and working out quantities, but nothing that is incredibly taxing.
You work school hours and rarely do weekends.
You can progress your career and whatever your specialist skill, so say joinery, you can 100% continue qualifications in that field and become an expert in your craft, which if your skill is palative care, you cannot.

Men can continue career progression with their skills, in a way a women can't and even though society isn't kind about builders (look at the threads here, people hate them) they're far more valued and given more opportunities than carers ever will be, purely because one is a male dominated industry and the other is female.

Women can't progress in industries they dominate because we don't give them the opportunity. We're expected to stay low level plebs in poor people jobs with no genuine teaching of skill etc when people dealing with death regularly should be rewarded financially and trained with very specific ways to make the person dying feel as relaxed and at ease as they could be. If we can (and rightfully so btw!) Give a time served tiler more credit for his skills and pay him well for his experience and well delivered service, why the fuck can't women get that also? Our skills matter, our experience matters and what women do should be recognised with a merited qualification.

@Lwrenagain You speak from the heart and I couldn't have said it better myself. My husband works (also on a crap wage) with adults with mental health problems and nothing makes me prouder.
I would rather a "poor" man with a kind and caring soul than a rich man who thinks of nobody but himself.
Thank you for everything you do. You make a difference ❤️

@LorlieS my dp has the same job as yours! Funnily enough he was a builder but hated the toxic masculinity and also he's really shit at DIY! 😂 Great thread my friend ❤

If men were the same size and strength as women then things would be designed differently. It's not like we wouldn't have houses, bridges aeroplanes and oil rigs.

Bricks would be smaller, and bags of cement would be 10kg not 20kg. Nuts and bolts would be easier to turn, tyres would be easier to replace and the machines we use to drill oil would be smaller.

But they're bigger and stronger than we are, so we can't do those jobs. And whilst those jobs are accessible to them and not to us, and their work is basically a boys club where they can earn more and have a laugh together, why would they ever want to be nurses or cleaners?

@VoodooQualities You will most likely get hung, drawn and quartered for this.

I think that is a really good point

@Lwrenagain you are articulate. That is a wonderful piece of writing.

There is so much overlap in the size and strength of women and men

these arguments just upset me so much - do you think there is no strength needed to lift a man/woman when caring for them??

Last year I watched as my husband over several weekends single handedly resurfaced our drive. I literally couldn't lift the bags of cement, and when I helped one day I had to use two hands to lift the bricks for the retaining wall, which he could lift with one hand, meaning he was twice as fast as me.

My point isn't that women can't do this stuff, it's that everything required to do these jobs is designed for men.

If men were the same size as women, the bricks and cement bags would have been the right size for both our hands, and I could have done the job as fast and as well as him. In this world, I can't.

Littlepinkstarsbyradish - I helped my stepmother care for my father who died of dementia. I know that a woman can lift a man out of bed and into a wheelchair, because I have done it. A man would find that task easier though.

Sorry let me be clear what my main point actually is here, I do sometimes have a bit of a habit of telling stories and hoping people get my point!

Women are often told this: bricklayers and drive resurfacers and bin men get paid more than cleaners and dinner ladies and shelf stackers because the work they do is harder and more physically demanding and 'women don't want to do those jobs anyway'

But it's only harder and more demanding, and we only 'don't want to do those jobs', because the bricks are too big for our hands, the pickaxes are too heavy for us to swing and the bins are 5ft high instead of 4ft high.

It's always struck me as commercially a bit mad that garden products like compost and mulch come only in 60 litre bags - I can just about lift one but they're often located far from the checkouts and parking and are frequently wet and the bags have nowhere you can grip on.

I can't be the only female gardener who buys much less of that stuff than I actually want?

I was in a painting and decorating shop yesterday aimed at the trade and they had a display of painters' bibs and coveralls with a cheerful middle aged white man on the front (and no doubt typical male sizes).

After reading Invisible Women, I asked my (petite) surgeon friend if her surgery tools fit her hands. She said no....

Sexist design is all around!

I think women get paid less because the employers can. Women are often over a barrel after children. They have to find paid roles which are flexible. With women always being the ones to have to find these jobs to fit in around their partners role. I remember clearly in the pandemic, we had a consultant who had to go part time as her solicitor husband was not being viewed as an essential worker and so their children didn't get a school place. No question of her husband cutting his hours, despite his job not being essential, quite frankly, or definitely more home based. So it came down to a medic working in a worldwide pandemic to cut their hours.

No question from who? Husband’s employer or this couple? Surely in this case couple saw as obvious it’s a woman’s job to look after children? Why exactly solicitor husband didn’t say his boss: I need to cut my hours to provide a childcare, as my medic wife is needed in a hospital ?

exactly! I was just about to say this very thing. Imagine if there were no men on earth and humanity was made up of only women, pretend we reproduce asexually somehow. would we have no houses? no churches or monuments, bridges, schools? would we have no tools, no power, no electricity energy etc? the reason women "arent cut out" for these things is because it is not designed for them. as men have been builders for the past 200 years that is who the building tools are made for. imagine millennia of only women creating a society - do we think we wouldn't have achieved anything equally great?

I agree with this. It's kind of a contrast that we want equality but also want to 'marry up'. Well, not all of us obviously but a lot of women see a high earning partner as a big positive.

I think a lot of women don't go back to FT work because they don't need to. Husband has a good job and they share finances. It's simultaneously a risk and a massive female privilege that most men can't ever dream of.

@Lwrenagain With all due respect for your experience, you have missed the obvious reason why caring isn't well paid.
It's not 'purely' because it's female dominated. So is the world's oldest profession (which people enter mainly for financial reasons given the negative impacts it has on body and mind).
It's because it's unprofitable and there's very little money available to fund it.

Building is obviously profit generating.

Perhaps binmen and sewage workers would be a better comparison but again unlike care, they're not needed in that much volume!

Of course decades ago people just died young, those with additional needs just got put into asylums so 'care' didn't exist. Also a lot was done for free by family women, just like childcare.

Not sure why we don't focus on men entering these professions it's always the other way around.

@BeckyBloomwood3 care isn't profitable? You go and look around the mansions owned by the owners of care homes. You tell me why care providers charge hundreds of pounds per day to local authorities, and keep paying their workers MW? One of the housing providers with full time live in staff used by my local authority is £8K per week. The staff are on MW. How is that fair?
Non NHS Care workers need to step up, and take industrial action because there is a recruitment crisis and we need them. A friend of mine has a bank job for a care agency. If they're desperate they will call her and double or even triple her hourly wage if she will fill a last minute shift. They have the money to pay when they need to.

It seems unethical to leave vulnerable people without care whilst striking but women in care need to get over that. They need to union up and strike. The doctors did it.
Things will never improve whilst care owners know they can pay so little but the workers have more value than they know. If they just stopped for a week, the world would fall apart.

You've completely misunderstood the point of my post .

Pure profit making businesses with no social good element can charge whatever they like whenever they like. Supply and demand subject to the free market. If the company loses money they go bust and nobody cares. Simples.

Care however has to be provided whether people can pay or not. Whatever the LA pays, the average cost is less than the true cost of running a care home:
https://housingcare.org/downloads/kbase/2663.pdf
LA residents are actually subsidised by private residents as well.

If material etc costs rise a builder can just raise their fees. If people don't want the work they don't get it done. Builder earns no money, it just goes bust, fine. But care homes have to keep operating. And many have closed down.

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/hundreds-care-homes-england-close-funding-staffing-pressures/
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/ami_being_unreasonable/2419818-AIBU-to-consider-opening-a-private-residential-care-home-for-the-elderly

Of course institutions should pay carers more. But it's never going to be the kind of money they deserve, or anything close to what builders earn! As building was the profession compared to. Building is inherently a moneymaking profession, care is not.

Btw I suggest you also read up on the inverted pyramid/ageing population. We are reaching the point where there are too few young people working to pay for the older generation. Yet, do people value their health and care enough to pay? Nope, they hoard/hide their assets to avoid it 'going on care' and bang on about having 'paid into the pot' not realising that each generation pays for the one above them, not themselves. The UK has been spectacularly mismanaged , BUT people also have to realise that demographic changes mean things aren't going to be free from cradle to grave any longer.

I work in the construction industry and at the level I work at (multi million pound buildings, tier one contractors etc), the majority of the structure is pre-fabricated and slotted into place. Trades only get involved when the building is weather tight.

This has had a significant increase in the numbers of female engineers working on the buildings. Many of the structural engineers and QSs we work with are female - hopefully this change won't work in quite the same way as the changes to medicine and law.

@BeckyBloomwood3 hi! Hope luke and the kids are well 😁😂

I appreciate your point about building work and I agree, but my point about how builders skills which vary, as do a care workers, but only one of us can request more money dependant on those skills.
The comparison regarding transferable skills was where I tried to make my point, bin men or sewage workers aren't often showcasing a variety of skills in the way people who fall under care staff or builder do.

There is some profit to be made within heath and social care but often rather than a group of people making cash from it, it is one or two individuals unlike building work so I do agree with you, what is "a wee bit" isn't megabucks is it?

I've no idea the cost of contracts these days but in its infancy, supported living made a fuckton on their service users, they pay for their own care and rent, with no food or toiletries provided, over £200 daily for some people to be in these places under the guise of semi independence, but still funded for 1 to 1 time with staff which is highly unlikely they'll ever get, despite being funded.

There is one or two staff members keeping everyone's head above water, nobody gets their entitled care, staff are on nmw, the funding the service user gets from LA is now in some dodgy fuckers arse pocket. That is often how additional profit is made, from highly unethical and deliberately abusive ways to manipulate the system. Its heinous and I think should carry prison sentences for those caught.

You can't as a builder charge 200 a day to pop in for a brew, do the minimum and then fuck off to another customer, you'd not get paid. As where a carer may have to, because their crap wage is covering their hourly pay and in that time they'll be doing the jobs of 4/5 staff. Where is the 200 a day per client money going if there is skeleton crew on? Some replusive arsehole is keeping it. And the carer in that day may have to assist different needs off/on throughout that shift, going from personal care to cleaner, to helping someone sort finances and medication, to talking down someone with delusions of grandeur and be put in a scary situation. All for same pay with each person, all people differently able-bodied, differently funded, different needs etc but they all have in common, they're being shafted.

Often dodgy dealings make care more profitable, such as landlord of supported living facilities having a undisclosed link to the care company owner, meaning unethical ways to abuse the tenants are often found.
Eg - staff not allowed to change light bulbs, LL then instructe their maintenance team to change light bulb, 30quid charge. (Actual example) (yes I got sacked for creating an unholy drama when I was made aware of this!)

It's a whole sector that needs carpet bombing and restarting.

But I do believe that the reason care staff take so much shit is their brainwashed to believe striking, saying no, asking for what their worth isn't "being kind", things women are told to do repeatedly.

I do think even if megabucks made with sheer honesty, integrity towards its service users and it had correct funding to boost the health and social economy was given, care staff would still be underpaid, overworked, undervalued and still being made to feel like evil money grabbing fuckers when asking for a more financially secure future that doesn't rely on UC to top up their wages.

So much naive hypocrisy from everywhere. Why do women get less. Why would they get more in a capitalist system where women are treated the same way as men. Try having a child in university and see how far the system takes you. Or build a career with the current level of child support.

I accept that Care Home owners or companies owning several CHs are making money but there’s a shortage of care homes, it can’t be that lucrative.