Guidelines for Promoting
Gender Equity in School-to-Work
Much of the early work in vocational and career education addressed deeply held stereotypes about appropriate careers for males and females. Programs around the country, supported by Affirmative Action, Perkins legislation, and Title IX, pushed for the inclusion of women and girls in non-traditional careers. These careers — in the skilled trades, crafts, engineering, and construction — provided opportunities for high-wage, flexible careers. In “How to Double Our Skilled Workforce,” (Vocational Education 57, no. 7, 1982), J.S. Sanders suggests, “It is rare for women to be actively excluded from vocational and technical programs or from the jobs themselves. Instead, the status quo in recruitment, hiring and job retention operates unintentionally to discourage women from considering these non-traditional careers.”

All of us — educators, equity specialists, and employers — need to rely on one another’s expertise to ask the right questions and make School-to-Work partnerships really work. The following are suggestions from equity specialists for planning and implementing School-to-Work programs that meet the needs of students.
The following strategies are suggested by Mary Wiberg, gender equity coordinator for vocational education in Iowa:
• Involve classroom teachers (academic and vocational education) in the development of STW programs.

• Involve community-based organizations that have worked with teen parents, gender equity programs, Girl Scouts, and others to understand how best to attract girls and to meet their needs.

• Involve businesses owned by women and people of color in the planning process.

• Train everyone — academic and vocational education teachers, counselors, administrators, employers, labor — in the intent of STW including the gender equity provisions.

• Involve elementary and middle schools to begin the process early of reaching parents and students in ways that help them value STW and non-traditional careers.

 • Hold special events for specific audiences: hold non-traditional career fairs; provide role models; examine outreach; and target specific messages to girls, students with disabilities, the academically talented, and so on.

• Identify and provide the child care, transportation, or other support services that girls, especially teen parents, might need in order to be in STW.

• Encourage states to invite representatives from commissions on the status of women or other human rights and advocacy groups to participate in the planning.

• Identify resources that can assist in the training and technical assistance support for white women, people of color, people whose first language is not English, and differently-abled people (see Appendix F, page F-6).
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