What Are “Pink-Collar” Workers?
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By Lora Korpar
In Brief: (1) Pink-collar jobs refer to female-dominated positions like secretaries, early childhood teachers and nurses. (2) Gender pay gaps tend to be smaller in pink-collar industries, but men still dominate the higher-paying leadership positions. (3) The COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Resignation might signal a turning point in how people treat pink-collar workers.
You have probably heard of white-collar and blue-collar jobs. But people use a third color to describe traditionally female-dominated roles: pink-collar. Women have historically worked in these positions and continue to overpopulate them today.
What Are Pink-Collar Jobs?
Pink-collar jobs refer to any positions women have traditionally held. These include teachers, secretaries, nurses and childcare workers. These positions often relate to stereotypical female duties like managing the house and children.?
According to International Women in Mining (IWiM), the term “pink-collar” originated during World War II, when women entered the labor force to replace men fighting in the war. Author Louise Kapp Howe popularized the term in the 1970s.
"By the 20th century, you had a predominance of women in lower-level kinds of office work like various clerical and secretarial [jobs.] And pink-collar was kind of a pejorative, and it was intended to distinguish the women who did that kind of work from the men who were in more executive positions and so-called white-collar work… Early ed teaching, childcare and nursing were considered extensions of women's role as caretaker in the home. That's a major reason that those professions have been so sex-segregated.”
— Annelise Orleck is a history professor at Dartmouth College.?
Why Pink-Collar Positions Are Still Female-Dominated
Some pink-collar jobs are becoming less female-dominated, but other industries have held onto their female populations.??
IWiM reported that 98% of nurses were female in 1940. Zippia data says 86% of nurses were women as of September 2022. However, Zippia also reported that the number of women in early childhood education is steady at 92.4%.
“Despite decades of women's movements, and having seen an increase of women in higher-level white-collar jobs and in higher education, the truth is that the glass ceiling remains pretty stubborn and difficult to break. And it's one of the reasons why women predominate in new businesses. Small business has been an avenue that women have taken in the same way that it's been an avenue that immigrants have taken to get around the kinds of prejudice that they face in more established businesses and larger institutions.”
— Annelise Orleck
Pink-Collar Pay Gaps
Payscale says the uncontrolled gender pay gap shows women make 82 cents for each dollar a man makes.?
Many pink-collar jobs, like paralegals and social workers, see smaller pay gaps or are even paid more than men for the same job. However, many of these industries still prefer men in their leadership positions, keeping women in lower-paying jobs.?
A Harvard Business Review study found that women in female-dominated industries reported feeling “their workplace often still had a boys’ club mentality where decisions were made mostly by men.”
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"There are a lot of things you could say [about why the gender gap exists,] like some of the jobs having traditionally undervalued skills, but it's hard to separate that out from whether they’re undervalued because they're traditionally female-held. Which came first: the chicken or the egg? Did men who traditionally were supporting their whole families avoid them, and then they became more open for women, at which point it became more female-dominated and men avoided them because they were female-dominated or lower paid? It's hard to say. But women have been making strides in making up the pay difference with men and, particularly if you control for hours and experience, it's quite a bit closer. The big issue is motherhood. Once you have your first child, your earnings take a hit and don't always go back, particularly if you don't go back full-time.”
— Patricia M. Anderson is an economics professor at Dartmouth College.
The Future of Pink-Collar Jobs
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent Great Resignation made waves in every industry. Many pink-collar workers in education, hospitality and healthcare have seen the greatest burnout effects from the pandemic and are still recovering from them.?
A labor shortage puts more power in the workers’ hands. Recent teacher and nurse strikes indicate that people in pink-collar jobs refuse to let others devalue their work.
??In real life: The 2022-2023 school year kicked off with teacher strikes in cities like Seattle and Columbus. EducationWeek reported these strikes ended with agreements for pay raises, class size reductions and workload protections. More than 15,000 nurses in Minnesota also went on strike in September. According to PBS, it was the largest strike of private sector nurses in U.S. history.
"We’re definitely seeing more unionization of pink-collar jobs. Historically, another difference between pink-collar and blue-collar was the unionization… [Now,] private sector unions are quite small. The vast majority of unionization is actually public sector unions. And women are overrepresented in government and education — these public sector, unionized areas.”
— Patricia M. Anderson
“These pink-collar jobs have proven that sex segregation in the labor force is pretty intractable. We may be at a turning point as a result of tremendous labor shortages in traditionally female-dominated sectors of the labor market that have come out of remote work and the COVID pandemic. I think we’re going to see a lot of change in the next few years. And I'm not sure exactly where it's going to go, but I do think we're at a turning point.”
— Annelise Orleck?
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Meet the experts?
Annelise Orleck is a history professor at Dartmouth College. Her areas of expertise include U.S. women’s history, race, ethnicity, immigration and LGBTQ studies.
Patricia M. Anderson is an economics professor at Dartmouth College. Her areas of expertise include labor markets, food insecurity and social insurance programs.?
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