Gender equity in access, services and benefits from vocational rehabilitation

Journal of Rehabilitation, Jan-March, 1989 by Fredrick E. Menz, Geraldine Hansen, Harry Smith, Constance Brown, Meg Ford, George McCrowey

Gender Equity in Access, Services and Benefits from Vocational Rehabilitation

Statistics for the 1980s continue to show that women and men are still employed largely in traditional occupational groups and that women fair economically less well in the work force than do men, regardless of their education or whether or not they are disabled. Women represent more than 53 percent of the United States population and 39 percent of fulltime workers (U.S. Department of Labor, 1983). Since the 1970s, women have increased their participation in nearly every job category listed in the national census of occupations (U.S. Department of Labor, 1983), but the greatest number of women continue to be employed in clerical, teaching, retail sales and service jobs and the greatest number of men continue to find employment in skilled craft, operative, and management jobs. In general, the jobs into which 80 percent of women are employed are lower-paying and provide fewer benefits, provide little opportunity for advancement, are less likely to lead to careers through which significant economic independence could be achieved, and are occupations in which the risk of displacement has increased due to technological advances. With earnings at 64% of those of men (Spain, 1985), women's incomes are more often at or below poverty-level and it has been estimated that by the year 2000 women and children will make up the population in poverty (Coalition on Women and the Budget, 1984).

According to the 1982 March Current Population Survey (Asch, 1984), 13.1 million, or 8.9 percent of working aged Americans, were classified as having a work disability. Of the 8.9 percent of working age women who report a work-related disability, 80 percent are not part of the work force (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1983, 1987; Bowe, 1984) and only 7.4 percent are working full-time, year-round (Asch, 1984). When employed, the average white women with a disability earns approximately 10 percent of that earned by white men with no disability (Levitan and Taggart, 1977; Bowe, 1984). compared to women with no reported disability, women with a disability tend to be somewhat older (six of every 10 women of working age who have a work disability are 45 years of age or older), have less education (1 in 6, as opposed to 1 in 28, have less than eight years of formal education), and are more frequently divorced or separayed (Bowe, 1984).

Nationally, women represent less than one-third of the caseloads of vocational rehabilitation programs and, while they are more likely to be closed from the system as "successfully rehabilitated," their reported earnings at closure are 56 percent of those achieved by men at closure (Carrick & Bibb, 1982; Danek & Lawrence, 1985; Goldberg, Bernard, & Granger, 1980). Though successful closures from vocational rehabilitation are generally higher for women than men, Goldberg, Bernard, and Granger found that these higher rates were a function of the types of allowable closures used with men and women: Women were more likely to enter part-time work or return to "homemaker" status, while men were more likely to enter employment outside the home within the primary labor force.

Gender-bias can be described as the set of assumptions which proscribe men or women and their employment options in terms of role-stereotypes. Women with disabilities face "double jeopardy" based on both their disability and their gender (Atkins, 1982; Deegan, 1981, Holcomb, 1984; Saviola, 1981). the stereotypes ascribed to people with disabilities and women, in general, condones passivity, dependence, helplessness and failure. Women with disabilities have no sanctioned vocational roles, few clear role models to which they might relate, and lack institutional means to achieve roles. This "rolelessness" cultivates a psychological sense of invisibility, self-estrangement, an image of poor self-worth, and a sense of powerlessness (O'Toole & Weeks, 1978; Tate & Weston, 1982; Vash, 1982).

There are both societal and rehabilitation system bases for discrimination against women in education, employment, pay and benefits. This discrimination derives from constraints "....usually embedded in traditional values, (which) restricts women's chance for self-improvement and development (Tate & Weston, 1982, p.222)." ginzburg (1971) was among the first to suggest that rehabilitationists must be aware of the changes occurring in roles for women and questioned whether they are giving adequate attention to the unique counseling and education needs of women, particularly in curriculum selection and career planning they do with women returning to the labor force after extended periods of homemaking and child bearing. Pietrofesa and Schlossberg concluded in 1970 that counselors can be expected to hold similar beliefs to society as a whole about sex-appropriate behavior and that"... counselors need to be aware of the degree to which they try to push counseless into certain directions because of their own sex biases" (p. 45).