The Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education (OCTAE) at the U.S. Department of Education has released a letter designed to share recent progress around gender equity within CTE programs and highlight areas of success. The Perkins Act continues to place a priority on encouraging students to pursue programs that lead to careers that are non-traditional for their gender, making this a critical issue for CTE leaders as well as the economy, as many fields are struggling with staffing shortages due to a lack of employment interest and retention among one gender.
The first part of the memo includes a review of historical data trends around gaps in CTE and workforce participation by gender. Key insights included:
- Between 1990 and 2019, there was no major differences in the share of male and female graduates who earned at least one credit in CTE subject areas such as information technology, construction and architecture, all non-traditional occupations for women.
- In 2021-22, there was more than 2.8 million CTE high school concentrators across the nation, 46.7% of which were female.
- Between 1990 and 2019, gaps narrowed between male and female participation in architecture and construction; manufacturing; and transportation, distribution and logistics, but largely because male participation declined. The gap also narrowed in human services, although female continue to have stronger participation.
- Females made progress in closing the participation gap with males in agriculture, food and natural resources between 1990 and 2019, but the gap widened in IT, continued to be large in engineering and technology, and a new gap emerged in business and marketing.
- During the 1990–2019 timeframe, a gap emerged in male-female participation in health sciences, with females participating at higher rates.
- In STEM Occupations requiring less than a baccalaureate degree, women comprised only 25% of the workforce in 2021, highlighting the need for more progress in secondary level training efforts.
The memo then highlighted results from several states that have made progress closing gaps in participation by gender in some fields. Profiles are included of Arkansas’ efforts to expand female participation in computer science, Washington D.C.’s partnership with a national organization to evaluate and take action on male-female participation gaps in STEM and architecture and construction fields and Kansas’ efforts to increase the number of male concentrators in health science pathways to address critical shortages of nurses and other health care professionals.
The report emphasizes that these efforts represent a considerable initiative by state leaders to go above and beyond the bare minimum requirements of Perkins V for advancing gender equity, and that significant progress is unlikely if efforts are confined to only legal requirements.
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