Equal Opportunity Employment...?

I recently attended the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association (NWRA) Symposium in Bellevue, Washington. For those of you unfamiliar with this, it’s a week-long conference where wildlife rehabilitators from around the country and even some parts of the world meet to learn and share new techniques to make the challenging practice of wildlife rehabilitation smoother and better for the animals. Lectures were given all day from veterinarians, other rehabilitators, education animal trainers, and others.

While the information given was extremely valuable, there was one very visible, resounding observation: women are the very dominant gender in this field. Out of every room full of around 100 women, perhaps one or two men were seen on average. Most of the men that did attend were veterinarians or worked only with the “cool” and dangerous animals (bears, eagles, and hawks, for example). The NWRA Board of Directors is sixteen people strong, and all but one are women. This was mentioned in a lecture I attended titled “Education or Condemnation: Face to Face with your Fellow Rehabilitators.” Who admitted it out loud? A man who, before making this exclamation, called rehabbers “the most dysfunctional group of people” he’s ever seen. He made it in jest, of course, and followed it with his observed appreciation of the field. But we soon got into the discussion: Why are there more women in wildlife rehabilitation than men?

A few other professions dominated by women include education, social services, and healthcare fields. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2006, women make up 97.7% of pre-K teachers, 82.2% of elementary and middle school teachers, and 56% of secondary school teachers (high school), dropping to 46.3% for post-secondary education (like prep colleges or community colleges). 73.4% of healthcare professions are women, with 91.3% of nursing professions, and 91% dieticians or nutritionists. Healthcare support (which includes home nursing, massage therapists, and home health aides) accounts for 89.4% of women employed compared to men. Social workers are 82.6% women, with an overall 61.6% of women in social services. What do all of these professions have in common, and why are there more women than men? These professions are the so-called “nurturing” professions and have been labeled by some men as not “real” professions, because women are “naturally” more nurturing than men.

Is it because men are less nurturing or is it because of some societal standard that “real men” do “real work” like heavy lifting or operating machinery? It’s a clear distinction that in the education field, as children get older, the less likely they are to have a woman teacher. In my university alone I have been taught by a total of four women in my six semesters here. Men dominate the zoology field here, and most of them are doing research that involves trapping, killing, and opening up animals to collect data. The head of the cooperative wildlife research lab on campus is rumored to be against wildlife rehabilitation, claiming that animals should adapt to us, and we don’t need to allow more raccoons and squirrels in the world to live. I have yet to meet a woman with the same sentiment. I digress.

I once saw a book at a local book store titled “If Women Ran the World, Shit Would Get Done.” I haven’t read the book, but the title has stuck in my mind ever since. Some men may think that women are weak, and that nurturing-type jobs aren’t real jobs at all. But if it wasn’t for women nurses and healthcare technicians, men could quite possibly be walking around with broken legs and systemic infections without being nursed to health by a supportive, caring woman. Families would be in a state of utter chaos without the dedication and compassion of women social workers. Children wouldn’t grow up appreciating life and animals and the environment because the non-nurturing men wouldn’t reinforce a caring, appreciative attitude, and then who knows what the state of the world would be in today.

OK, I may be exaggerating or stereotyping here. I agree that men provide may types of supportive services us women would be lost without. According to the same Bureau of Labor statistics above, the logging industry is made up of only .4% of women. That’s four women for every 1,000 men that provide us with wood for buildings, paper, and other necessities. Men also make up the majority of the workforce in sanitation, hard labor such as construction and mining, and farming practices. However, to scoff at the less intensive work us women do as any less significant is ignorant.

To touch back on the wildlife rehabilitation part of this: the guys who volunteer at the wildlife rehabilitation center I volunteer at generally are more interested in doing construction, feeding the bobcats or cougar, or love to watch the birds of prey descend and kill their daily live mice. Most of them have little to no interest in the squirrels, the baby animals (unless it’s a baby predator), or the raccoons. Many of them will go on to work with large predators like big cats or raptors and rarely handle other less “interesting” wildlife. Likewise, a large majority of male undergraduate students that I’ve come to know in the zoology department are avid hunters and are more interested in game species (deer, waterfowl, gallinaceous birds, and other big ungulates) and the management aspects of them compared to the management aspects of protected or non-game species.

More animals that come into wildlife rehabilitation centers with human-caused injuries were inflicted by men. Forgive me; I don’t have statistics to back this up. I suppose I’m generalizing, but I find it hard to believe little girls or women are shooting eagles and red-tailed hawks. Men completely eliminated passenger pigeons, once the most abundant species on Earth, with brutal methods of trapping or killing by the thousands. It seems that more environmentally devastating political decisions and actions are created by men. Sure, some women are responsible for completely barbaric decisions (Sarah Palin and the aerial gunning of Alaska’s wolves, for example) but Reagan and George W. Were probably some of the worst influences on the environment in recent history (my lack of political knowledge, however, admittedly probably makes that an ignorant statement). I’m curious to know the statistics of women supporting or suggesting engagement in a war or battle compared to men. We hear far more often of negligent men in the military killing, raping, and abusing women in foreign lands. Men are, without question, more violent and less diplomatic than women.

The conclusion I've come to here is that women are more important in the workforce than men may think we are. We’ve come a long way from objects and homemakers to some of the most important professions in the world. Our natural aptitude to care and nurture others is unmatched, and the world would be lost without it. Should more men become the same way and join women in the same professions, or should some women embrace the rugged, physical side of the male workforce? I think a combination of the two would teach us all more tolerance when it comes to either side of our natural instincts, and could possibly eliminate a lot of the current corruption, competition, unfairness, violence, and brutality in the world. Equal opportunity for the world.