U.S. Labor Dept. Urges Women to Go for the Green

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The U.S. Department of Labor is encouraging women to consider jobs in the green industries.

Washington — “Green” jobs are where the money is, and American women are being advised to pursue them.

The Women’s Bureau at the U.S. Department of Labor is urging women to break out of “traditionally female occupations” that have historically paid less than jobs held largely by men and pursue well-paying jobs in green industries.

Green jobs can be broadly defined as jobs that restore, protect or conserve the natural environment, and they can be found across a broad range of industries and occupations.

For example, construction carpenter is a green occupation projected to have 325,400 job openings from 2008 to 2018, according to the Department of Labor. Ninety-eight percent of U.S. carpenters are men, the Women’s Bureau notes, and they earned a median wage of $18.98 an hour in 2009. In contrast, preschool teachers, 98 percent of whom are women, earned just $11.80 an hour.

But what if working with a hammer, nails and lumber doesn’t appeal to a woman? There are plenty of other types of well-paying green jobs to choose from, and many don’t require university degrees, according to the Women’s Bureau. These include coordinators for recycling programs and auditors who assess the energy efficiency of homes and commercial buildings.

On the upper end of the educational-requirement spectrum is environmental engineer, which is projected to be among the fastest-growing occupations from 2008 to 2018, with an expected 31 percent job growth rate. Environmental engineers, who typically need a bachelor’s degree, marshal skills in engineering, soil science, biology and chemistry to develop solutions to environmental problems. They are involved in efforts to improve recycling, waste disposal, public health, and control of water and air pollution. The median wage for environmental engineers in the United States is $37.04 an hour or $77,040 a year, the Department of Labor says.

 

According to the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3.1 million jobs in the United States in 2010 were associated with the production of green goods and services. That represents just 2.4 percent of total employment in 2010. Although that seems like a modest number, the U.S. Department of Commerce, in a study put out in April 2010, said the green economy is “in a position to grow quickly.”

As the public becomes more aware of the necessity of preserving the environment, consumer demand for green products and services is increasing, the Commerce Department report says. Moreover, high energy prices create financial incentives for firms to develop more energy-efficient products and services. According to the Labor Department, many businesses are adopting a “triple bottom line” philosophy that emphasizes ecological and social values as well as economic gain.

WILL GREEN JOBS HELP THE WORLD’S WOMEN?

The International Labour Office (ILO) at the United Nations is also promoting green jobs. The 21st century, the ILO says, is facing two defining challenges. The first is to avert climate change and the deterioration of national resources that threaten to degrade life for present and future generations. The second is to deliver decent work for the estimated 1.3 billion people living in poverty around the world and provide job opportunities for the 500 million young adults who will be entering the labor market over the next decade.

Impoverished women around the world are especially hard hit by degradation in climate and natural resources because so many are involved in farming, the ILO says. In Africa, for example, women constitute 70 percent to 80 percent of workers in agriculture. Agriculture, still one of the largest employers in the world with 1.3 billion workers, is especially affected by climate change, water use, pollution and deforestation. Increased access to information on the best ways to marshal resources could improve their lives, ILO reports say.

Global efforts to tackle environmental problems have provided green jobs for some 2.3 million people and could provide jobs to some 20 million more by 2030, according to the ILO. How many of these jobs will go to women remains to be seen. In a report presented to the European Parliament's Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee in early 2012, the ILO noted that an expanding green economy does not automatically provide more opportunities for women.

According to the ILO report, the obstacles many of the world’s women face in getting jobs in the green economy are mostly the same as in the “brown economy”: lack of access to formal education, finances and involvement in decisionmaking in the formal economy. Even so, programs in place to address gender inequality overall will serve to foster gender equality in green industries, the ILO says.