In normal times, men are a majority of the overall work force. But this crisis has flipped that. In March, the Department of Homeland Security released a memo identifying “Essential Critical
Infrastructure Workers,” an advisory guide for state and federal officials. It listed scores of jobs, suggesting they were too vital to be halted even as cities and whole states were on lockdown. A majority of those jobs are held by women.
Among all male workers, 28 percent have jobs deemed part of this essential work force. Some of the biggest employers of men in the United States are building trades, like construction and carpentry — lines of work that are now, for the most part, on hold.
Men do make up a majority of workers in a number of essential sectors, including law enforcement, transit and public utilities, and millions face serious and unquestionable risk as they head to work every day. But there are simply not as many of these jobs as there are in the industry at the forefront: health care.
There are 19 million health care workers nationwide, nearly three times as many as in agriculture, law enforcement and the package delivery industry combined.
Long before the outbreak, in an aging and ailing country, the demand for health care was almost limitless. The size of this work force has ballooned over the decades as medical advances extended the lives of the sick and well alike.
There are now four registered nurses for every police officer, and still hospitals raise alarms about nursing shortages. Within this massive, ever-growing and now indispensable part of the economy, nearly four out of five workers are women. This is reflected in another grim statistic: While male doctors and nurses have died on the front lines, a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that women account for 73 percent of the U.S. health care workers who have been infected since the outbreak began.
The nation’s health care industry spreads far beyond hospitals, encompassing a vast army of people who tend to the young, old, sick and infirm. This “care work force,” said Mignon Duffy, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who studies women and labor, “is part of the infrastructure of our whole society. It holds everything together.” Yet it has long been undervalued, she said, a neglect that is as obvious as ever right now, with acute shortages nationwide of basic safety gear.