Feminization of work

Article: Feminization of work (PDF)

Objectives

• To understand trends in the work of women and men.
• To examine why work has increasingly become feminized internationally.

Classroom instructions

1. Have your students discuss how women's employment experiences differ from men's.
2. Survey the class to find out what types of jobs their mothers have (e.g. occupations, work full-time or part-time, temporary or permanent job). Discuss how these jobs are clustered. Are they clustered in particular occupations and do they have similar characteristics? Do the same for the jobs their fathers have.
3. There have been major changes in gender roles and in women's work in the labour market and at home. Among the female students, discuss how they expect their employment experiences to be different from their mothers' experiences. Among the male students, discuss how they expect their employment experiences to differ from their fathers'.
4. On average, women have always had lower earnings than men, but the gap has been narrowing. Ask your students to explore the reasons for this gap. Why it is narrowing?
5. Internationally, part-time work is more common for women than for men. Explore the reasons for this.
6. Women are increasingly working in occupations that were traditionally male-dominated. Explore if the reverse situation is true where men are increasingly entering female-dominated occupations.

Using other resources

• Women in Canada: Work Chapter Updates
• 2001 Census Results Teacher's Kit — Activity 13: Women in the labour force
• The changing profile of Canada's labour force (Internet or PDF)
• Check out the Statistics Canada Website to find lesson plans, articles and data for elementary and secondary schools.

Please e-mail comments or examples of how you used this exercise in your class.