March 8 is International Women’s Day. To that end, we decided to use today’s post to look at employment by gender in several Louisiana sectors.
The chart below illustrates the proportion of men and women working in different occupations in Louisiana in 2009. The data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.
While the ratio of men to women in Louisiana’s labor force is roughly 50:50 (52.4% male vs. 47.6% female), certain sectors employ disproportionately more women than men, and vice versa. Most worrying for us, these gender gaps appear to be largest in sectors like construction (96.8% male vs. 3.2% female) and engineering (88.7% male vs. 11.3% female) that are important sources of workers for wetland restoration and hazard mitigation projects.
(Click to enlarge) Louisiana Female and Male Employment by Sector, 2009 (Source: U.S. Census Bureau)
What might be behind these disparities? What are the implications of this gender inequality for green job growth in coastal Louisiana? In a future post, we’ll be revisiting these questions, but for the time being, we’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.
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