The job market is flooded with both men and women in equal measure. Unlike the old days, the current society has become more accommodative of women chasing careers and official jobs.
Despite the competitive nature of the job market, there are several career options where employers prefer hiring more women in comparison to men.
There may be discussions surrounding equality in pay and opportunities for growth available for both genders in the job space, but in this article, we delve into careers that are dominated by women.
Also, despite the general view that men earn more than women in the workplace, these careers dominated by females pay good money.
Nutritionist/Dietitian
Women are traditionally seen as the head of health and nutrition in a household. The family looks up to the woman in terms of what food is good for members of the family.
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As such, most employers go for female nutritionists because they believe women have a more natural talent to learn and know what’s healthy for you and what’s not.
This may also explain why nutrition and dietetics courses in school are flooded by female students with just a few men.
Human Resource Managers
Human Resource (HR) has a feminine hold to it. Most employers prefer hiring female human resource managers to men because of the following reasons.
HR requires a lot of tolerance and understanding, needed to deal with different types of personalities in the work environment. Thus, women known for their motherly instincts and touch fit the description.
In addition, women are more patient and have better relationship building capacities than men, a quality required in HR.
Also, women are more likely to follow rules and regulations set as opposed to men. This is because women are seen to be more obedient and submissive in nature.
Employers prefer female human resource managers because they are considered trustworthy and consistent even amid difficulties and challenges at the workplace.
Occupational Therapist
An occupational therapist works with rehabilitating and enhancing injuries or disabilities through special therapies.
Women are generally warm, patient, more understanding and empathetic as compared to a majority of men.
As such, employers in this field prefer hiring women to men because therapy requires all these qualities aside from the book knowledge.
Moreover, women are better at handling emotional matters.
Teachers
The woman is traditionally considered the teacher in a household.
Women have the role of nurturing children from an early age, they possess the patience and understanding required to help students advance in their studies.
Further, they are the voice of reason and advisors in the family, hence making them better suited educators.
As such, you are likely to find more female teachers than men in the Education sector especially at the primary school levels.
According to a report by Statista on the number of teachers in public primary schools for the period 2015 to 2021, female teachers were found to be more than male teachers.
“In 2021, Kenya had around 220.7 thousand teachers in public primary schools. Female teachers were in higher number than males for the mentioned educational level,” the report states.
Interior Design
Women are considered to be more creative and possess an artistic eye as compared to most men.
For this reason, employers prefer hiring female interior designers.
Interior design requires a lot of attention to detail, and the way women’s brains are wired helps them create works of art which are aesthetically pleasing than those most men create.
Cosmetology
For many years, this field has been dominated by women working in hair, skin and beauty.
Gender roles assume beauty is a woman’s specialty, as such, women have flooded this field despite men slowly getting into the game.
Also, a client would trust a woman to make them look good as compared to a man because women are known to be more knowledgeable in the field.
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Discrimination in the Work Environment
In every work environment, all employees are in a competition to climb the corporate ladder, hence, begging the question whether men and women follow the same route to the top.
According to a study that evaluated male and female executives in similar positions, women revealed that they had to work extra hard to overcome challenges such as being excluded from informal networks and getting less mentoring than men.
Moreover, a different report looked at over 1000 MBA graduates from the same university to evaluate their career progress and salaries.
The study revealed that Women experience discrimination more frequently than men in the work environment.
It further stated that women earned less than men among other forms of discrimination in the job environment.
“Salary data indicated that women did earn less than men, even when controlling for work experience. Evidence for other forms of discrimination was also found,” the study reveals.
