Posted on: Sunday, September 28, 2003

Health, tech jobs key areas for women, experts say

By Kristen Gerencher
CBS MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO — As the economy improves, so too will employment gains for women, job experts say.

Women are attending law and medical schools at almost the same rate as men, and more of them are getting undergraduate degrees than their male counterparts.

In the work force, women are most represented in retail sales, teaching, administration and nursing, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Although healthcare is traditionally a female-dominated field, it stands to offer even more diverse opportunities in years ahead as the population ages, economists said.

Among medical school graduates this year, 45.1 percent were women, up from 42.5 percent five years ago, according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Computer, biotechnology and information technology jobs also will be in high demand, and tighter security after Sept. 11 means recruiters likely will target women for spots formerly filled by foreigners, said Linda Basch, executive director of the National Council for Research on Women, a nonprofit research and policy group.

"Because of immigration laws, now there's going to be more looking to women," Basch said. "Women are a large untapped pool."

Information technology jobs make up six of what the Labor Department forecasts will be the 10 fastest growing occupations through 2010, said William Rodgers, a former chief economist for the department who teaches economics at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

Despite IT companies' deep downsizing in recent years, demand for computer networking will continue to grow among both the service and manufacturing sectors, Rodgers said, which will force companies to recruit aggressively.

Such demand likely will offset discriminatory patterns in schools of steering women away from technology-oriented jobs, he said.

"The economy should work to penalize those who discriminate," Rodgers said. "The market should fix itself. It becomes costlier to be a firm that has norms that are hostile or not as friendly to women or minorities."

For their part, women would be wise to take at least a few courses in computer science to round out their skills as the economy rebounds, he said.

"The key for women's employment in these areas is to continue breaking down barriers within education that still at times route women into humanities instead of social sciences," he said.

Healthcare professions are expanding as well, with home-care aides and medical assistants also making the list of fastest-growing professions, Rodgers said.

More women have been scooping up consulting jobs in the past few years that they once passed over because it required too much travel, said Deleise Lindsay, a managing consultant at Drake Beam Morin, an outplacement firm in Atlanta.

Traditionally, female job candidates preferred to be the stay-at-home spouse, but men have increasingly taken that role either out of choice or because of a job loss, Lindsay said.

"Now, they are home staying with the kids, which frees up the female to do these 90 percent travel jobs," she said.

Caring for seniors likely will draw the attention of small-business-minded women who can carve a local niche by running their errands, helping with lawn maintenance or taking them to doctors, she said.

"It's a totally missed business and, not just in Florida but sometimes in other geographic areas."

Working for themselves or as contractors holds unique appeal for women, she said.

"There are more and more women going into the entrepreneurial ends because of the flexibility and funding opportunities and the support they have from the government."

Still, women have a long way to go in taking jobs where they make up less than 25 percent of the work force, Basch said. Among these nontraditional posts, just 2.6 percent of firefighters were women and 15 percent were in police forces, she said.

"Since these fields have not traditionally looked to women, I'm not so sanguine that they'd be looking for women at first blush," she said. "There's not a big push for affirmative action right now."

Some fast-growing, high-paying nontraditional jobs for women include architects, detectives, inspectors, insulation workers, mechanics and repairs, Basch said, adding that one of the problems "is going to be training women in these areas."

Younger women tend to have more access to training, she said, noting that most women in nontraditional jobs — 55 percent — were younger than 30. A third were between 30 and 40, and just 8 percent were between 40 and 50.