To dominate, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “to have a commanding influence over”. If we consider the idea of female-dominated industries based on numbers and statistics, then these have always existed, much like male-dominated industries. However, if we look closer at the verb ‘to dominate’, and apply this to the requirements for an industry to be female-dominated, then we can clearly see that the question of such industries’ existence becomes very debatable indeed. In a society where the rights of minority groups and women are said to be advancing more each day, do women dominate and have power within any single industry? Can that even be possible? And what about the nature of the industries where women are more present, can these be described as dominant or having influence?
When the phrase ‘female-dominated industries’ or ‘male-dominated industries’ is used, our general understanding would be that statistically, one gender is more present than all others within that profession. A female-dominated industry would be one that employs more women, and a male-dominated industry would be one that employs more men. If we look at it this way, then female-dominated industries are present within our society. According to a House of Commons Research Briefing titled ‘Women and the UK Economy,’ women occupied 77% of jobs within the health and social care sector of the economy in the UK and 70% of jobs in the UK’s education sector. If our requirement for an industry to be considered female-dominated is that women occupy the majority of jobs within that sector, then the above data would absolutely support the claim that such industries exist in the UK.
However, when we circle back to our dictionary definition of ‘dominate’, statistically holding the majority of jobs in an industry can be vastly different to having ‘commanding influence’ over these sectors. I believe that for a sector to be dominated by a certain group, not only would they need to hold the majority of positions, but they would also need to exert influence over that industry. And that industry would need to have some influential power within society. As soon as these become our prerequisites, we quickly see the claim that these exist within the UK becoming a lot flakier. If we take the education sector in the UK where women hold 70% of positions, and break it down into what specific roles they occupy, we can see that women are much less likely to attain leadership or influential roles within teaching. In 2022/23, 76% of the teaching workforce was female, however 77% of classroom teachers and 93% of teaching assistants were women, whilst only 69% were in leadership roles such as headteachers or deputy headteachers etc. From the data, we can clearly see that women, upon entering the education sector and more specifically teaching professions, are much less likely to attain higher positions than their male counterparts. Women are also more likely to teach in nursery or primary education settings than men who are more likely to teach in secondary education. This would suggest that women do not dominate or exert influence over the education sector or the teaching profession, and that even the positions in which they could be argued to dominate, such as teaching assistants, are perceived as less significant, lower value jobs in comparison to leadership positions more likely to be attained by men. This angle supports that female-dominated industries do not exist within the UK.
I would argue, to evoke Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, that female-dominated industries cannot exist in our society due to the entrenched systemic power imbalance between men and women, and the way that this seeps into all aspects of social, political and industrial life. If men are considered the ruling class within society, then they are the ones who assign cultural significance and value to every aspect of societal life. This assigned value is then normalised as fact. Therefore, even if women did dominate an industry, in that they held the majority of posts, had influence as a group within the industry and said industry was perceived as powerful and influential within society, cultural hegemony would still mean that any wider social influence or value assigned to that profession would have come from the ruling class – men. The question that follows, then, is whether women can dominate an industry whose influence and value has been assigned by men?
To answer our original question of whether female-dominated industries can exist, it is primarily dependent on how we define and measure ‘domination’ in this context. If we want to look further than statistics and numbers, to deconstruct the question, then I would say that professions dominated by women do not exist, and that Western social structures, and the way in which power is currently distributed, make it impossible for female-dominated industries to be established and exist within our society. That is not to say they will never exist, but, in my opinion, a lot more work and progress is still needed for their meaningful establishment.