COUNCIL ON GENDER PARITY IN LABOR AND EDUCATION

Dianne Mills McKay, Chair

Members:

Christine Amalfe

Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione

Theresa Brown

Freeholders Office of Burlington County

Michele Darling

Prudential Insurance Company

Velvet Miller

Horizon Mercy

Patricia Palmeri

WISE Women's Center, Essex County College

John Tesoriero

Commission on Science and Technology

Agency Representatives:

Bear Atwood

Department of Community Affairs

Tom Henry

Department of Education

Arburta Jones

Department of Human Services

Barbara Lee

School of Management and Labor Relations

 Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey

Linda Lenox

Commission on Commerce and Economic Growth

Gary Nigh

                                    Commission on Higher Education

Virginia Pasqualini

Department of Labor

Henry Plotkin

State Employment and Training Commission

New Jersey State Employment and Training Commission

Council on Gender Parity in Labor & Education

P.O. Box 940

Trenton, NJ 08625-0949

(609)633-0605

FAX (609) 622-1359

May be reproduced without permission.  This document may be downloaded from the Internet at www.njsetc.net under Gender Parity - Reports

Special thanks to the New Jersey Department of Labor's Office of Marketing and Communications and the Print Shop.

STATE EMPLOYMENT & TRAINING COMMISSION

John J. Heldrich, Chair

Henry Plotkin, Executive Director

Members:

April Aaronson, Director, Division of Health & Human Services

Dana W. Berry, Executive Director, Starting Points for Children, Inc.

Hal Burlingame, Senior Vice President, AT&T

Michael Cantwell, Business Manager, Plumbers & Pipefitters Union, Local 9

Michael Carey, Vice President, Human Resources, Johnson & Johnson

Jerry Cunningham, Chatham, New Jersey

Nicholas Gacos, President, Colorado Café Associates

Honorable George F. Geist, Assemblyman, District 4

Gwendolyn L. Harris, Commissioner, Department of Human Services

Henry F. Henderson, CEO, HF Henderson Industries

Stephen C. Hornik, Sr., President Emeritus, Monmouth-Ocean AFL-CIO

Andrea B. Karsian, Executive Vice President, Toresco Enterprises, Inc.

Albert G. Kroll, Commissioner, Department of Labor

William L. Librera, Commissioner, Department of Education

Frank H. Lehr, CEO, Frank H. Lehr Associates

Susan Bass Levin, Commissioner, Department of Community Affairs

Jody L. Levinson, Vice President, Health Care Systems, Johnson & Johnson

Rev. Msgr. William Linder, CEO, New Community Corporation

Honorable Robert Martin, Senator, District 26

Brian McAndrew, Superintendent, Monmouth County Vocational School

Carol Novrit, Director, Division of Employment and Temporary Assistance

Harvey Nutter, CEO, Opportunities Industrialization Centers

Arthur O’Neal, Flemington, New Jersey

Clifford R. Reisser, Training Director,

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 269

Julio Sabater, President, Universal Communication Enterprise

Bruce D. Stout, Executive Director, Violence Institute of New Jersey, UMDNJ

James Sulton, Executive Director, Commission on Higher Education

JoAnn Trezza, Vice President, Human Resources, Arrow Group Industries, Inc.

Herbert A. Whitehouse, Managing Attorney, Whitehouse Law Firm

William D. Watley, Secretary and CEO,

Commission on Commerce & Economic Growth

Women at Work

Achieving Parity on the Job

A Report of the

 State Employment & Training Commission's

Council on Gender Parity in Labor & Education

Prepared by

Dr. Mary Gatta, Director of Research & Analysis

Center for Women and Work

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

June 2002

Introduction

            The New Jersey Council on Gender Parity in Labor and Education recognizes that the influx of women in the paid work world has had, and will continue to have, a drastic effect on American workplaces.  Women currently comprise approximately 46 percent of the United States labor force, and are predicted to make up an even larger portion throughout the early part of this new Century.[1]  In New Jersey, women’s labor force participation is predicted to grow at a rate of 63 percent through 2015.[2]  Further, it is estimated that 99 percent of all American women will work at some point during their lifetimes.[3]  The increase in women’s labor force participation, along with comparable increases in the number of minority, immigrant, and older workers; trends toward globalization; and, technological advances are forcing companies to examine workplace structures to recruit and retain skilled workers.

            This report explores the issues surrounding the experiences of women in five growing workplaces in New Jersey - building trades, financial services, health care, law, and technology.  As an initial step in recognizing and defining workforce issues and barriers to gender parity in New Jersey, this report was developed as an extension of the New Jersey State Employment and Training Commission’s (SETC) A Unified State Plan for New Jersey’s Workforce Readiness System. The Unified State Plan, first introduced in 1992, is an effort to address the complexities of creating a unified high-quality workforce investment system.  The Council strongly believes that this report will aid New Jersey in meeting one of the core principles of the Unified State Plan: there must be full utilization of all potential workers.[4]

The “New” New Jersey Workplaces

            As New Jersey enters the 21^st Century labor force, industrial and technological changes are propelling its workplaces into somewhat uncharted territories.  These changes are centered on four trends in New Jersey’s current workforce system.  First, the industrial base has transformed itself from an industrial goods-producing economy to a knowledge-based economy.  Second, along with this economic shift, there has been a shift in the types of skills demanded of workers.  Specifically, higher-level technology, communication, and leadership skills are in demand, while lower-level industrial skills are declining.  Third, the demographic composition of the labor force was marked with increased growth rates of women and minorities at the close of the 20^th Century.  This trend is expected to continue throughout this new Century.   Fourth, labor force growth rates will not match predicted labor demand, exacerbating the labor force shortages that were characteristic of the late 1990s.  This section will explore how together these four trends tell a story of the new labor market in which issues of parity become issues of economic competitiveness and survival.

Perhaps most significant is the change in New Jersey’s economic base is a shift from an industrial goods-producing economy to a knowledge-based economy (See Figure 1).  The knowledge- based economy is focused on jobs that use technology in new, innovative, and flexible ways.  Characteristics of this new economy include work teams, flat work structures, customer-focused strategies, and globalized markets.[5] 

Figure 1

Notes:

TCPU - Transportation, Communications, and Public Utilities

FIRE  - Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate

Source: Projections 2008 New Jersey Employment and Population in the 21st

            Century.  Vol. 1 Industry and Occupational Employment Projections for

            New Jersey 1998-2008.   Part A (State Projections, July 2000)

            Labor Market and Demographic Research, New Jersey Department of Labor.

The industrial shift is expected to occur most profoundly in the high-skill services producing industries.  This sector’s development is primarily fueled by rapid growth of business services, and health care, creating a significant transformation in New Jersey’s occupational structure.  By 2008, professional and technical specialty occupations will double the growth rate of all other occupational categories in New Jersey (See Figure 2).  These industrial changes correspond to shifts in the types of skills workers must possess.  These occupations require that the workforce possesses high-level skills in computers, electronics, life sciences, mathematics, and engineering, along with various combinations of those skills.  In addition to technical skills, workers need flexible analytical and communication skills that will enable them to adapt their talents to evolving labor market conditions and work organizations.  

Figure 2

Source: Projections 2008: New Jersey Employment and Population in the 21^st

            Century, June 2000, Labor Market and Demographic Research,

            New Jersey Department of Labor.

            While occupational and corresponding skill demands are changing in New Jersey, so is the demographic composition of the labor force.  As evident from Table 1, women and minorities are estimated to experience the largest labor force growth through 2015.  The New Jersey Department of Labor predicts that while there is only a small overall growth in the numbers of white men in the labor force (from 1,880,223 in 1990 to a predicted decline of 1,865,200 in 2005 to 1,899,500 by 2015); there will be a dramatic and steady growth of women and minorities during the same 15 years.  Women’s labor force participation is predicted to increase from approximately 1.8 million in 1990 to over 2.3 million in 2015.  Within that growth, there will be an almost doubling of the numbers of African-American women through 2015, and a significant increase in the numbers of Hispanic women from 163,997 in 1990 to 421,500 by 2015.

Table 1

Notes:

Hispanic Origin is not a race.  Persons of Hispanic Origin may be of any race.  “Other Races” include Asian, Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaska Native.

Source: Population and Labor Force Projections for New Jersey: 1998 to 2015

            Volume II, Part A, New Jersey Department of Labor

            These demographic changes in the labor force are significant because women, and particularly women of color, have systematically been excluded from higher skilled and higher wage occupations that are in demand in the economy and the educational training systems that prepare workers for these jobs.  In 2000, the Council on Gender Parity in Labor and Education issued two reports, Women and Work: Prospects for Parity in the New Economy, and Bridging the Gap: Gender Equity in Science, Engineering, and Technology.  These reports chronicle the barriers women face in the educational and workforce pipeline that prevents them from attaining the skills that are demanded in the new economy.  It is precisely the jobs that are demanded in our economy in which the growing segments of our workforce are least represented.

However, not only is the overall number of women in the labor force important to employers and policymakers, so are the demographic characteristics of the women themselves.  While single and divorced women have always made up a larger share of the labor force, the numbers of married women and women with children in the labor force have significantly increased over the past decades.  In 1960, less than a quarter of married women were in the labor force working full time.  By the beginning of the 21^st Century that fraction had risen to over two-thirds.[6]  Further, 60.7 percent of mothers with children under the age of 3 were in the labor force at the beginning of the 21^st Century.[7]  In addition, many women are the sole providers for themselves and their families.  The Census Bureau reports that 47 percent of women are on their own, 27 percent are single and 20 percent are divorced, separated or widowed.  Single women head 18 percent of all families.[8]  The ability to meet the workforce and training needs of women and families in order to recruit and retain workers is pivotal in the new workplace. 

The Employment Policy Foundation predicts that while the United States has experienced labor force growth throughout the 1980s (1.7 percent), and early 1990s (1.3 percent), between 1999 and 2006 labor force growth will decline 1 percent.   Further, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that labor demand will continue to exceed the growth of the labor force, a trend that has been characteristic of our labor market since the 1980s.[9]  Labor market demands and changes in labor force composition will require companies to recruit and retain a diverse workforce in order to compete.  As a result, it will be good business to provide workplace structures and alternatives that help to accommodate the needs of the workforce. 

Based on the trends in the workforce, the Council on Gender Parity in Labor and Education chose to investigate ways that companies can recruit and retain diverse groups of workers by addressing workplace issues.  While the focus of this paper is on workplace issues, it does not diminish the importance of parity in the educational and training systems to increase the number of workers in growing fields.  To begin the dialogue on changing workplace structures, the Council chose to focus on five industries that are pivotal to New Jersey’s economic growth -- building trades, financial services, health care, law, and technology.  The Council believes that it is important to define the issues of parity in the workplace.  Armed with such research, the Council can formulate effective recommendations for workplace change.

While New Jersey does not collect data that allows us to detail the composition of many of the occupations in each of the five industries, national Bureau of Labor Statistics data illustrates that each of the industries presents some gender parity issues (See Table 2).  While the distinctive issues of each industry will be discussed in the following sections, there are some general trends that help to frame workplace issues.  As evident in Table 2, for the most part, occupations continue to be sex segregated.  In other words, women continue to be over-represented in typically female occupations such as nursing and legal assistants, while men continue to dominate the traditionally male occupations such as lawyers and building trades.

Interestingly, it is precisely the occupations in which economists have documented labor shortages that there is gender inequity in composition.  Typically this inequity often takes the form of male dominated occupations.  For example, in science and technology occupations, physicians, and securities and financial service sales, women make up less than 30 percent of the workforce.  Alternatively, in other occupations that are facing shortages, such as nursing, men make up less than 10 percent of the workforce.  As such, gender parity in opportunity will help to increase the numbers of potential workers in occupations that are experiencing labor demands.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2001. www.bls.gov.

            However, this data only tells part of the story.  In addition to recruiting women into occupations, particularly those that are in high demand, it is important to focus on how to retain women once they enter these occupations.  This requires us to examine the workplace climates in order to understand ways to treat women equitably and meet their needs.  While some women in professional and managerial occupations have been able to take advantage of workplace practices such as flex-time, job sharing, alternate work schedules, and telecommuting, comparable programs are not available for nonprofessional women.  Further, even among professional women there is much variability in how effective these practices are to integrate work and family demands.  Additionally, despite advances, all women have yet to achieve parity with men.  Women continue to earn less than their male counterparts; hold only a small number of top leadership positions in all industries; and, feel unvalued in many nontraditional occupations.

            Gender parity is clearly a workforce issue and the status of women in the workplace is both an economic and social issue.  As companies try to fill growing labor demands for highly skilled employees, they must focus on women as a potential labor source.  Yet, in order to recruit and retain women, companies must address issues of workplace climate, work and family integration, and parity in labor market rewards in creative and innovative ways.  Recognizing the needs of women in the labor force will better prepare New Jersey to address issues of our workforce systems.  As Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan stated, “Discrimination is patently immoral, but is increasingly being seen as unprofitable…Discrimination leads to higher cos