Toolbelts and hard hats: the road to female financial freedom?

The American workforce is still surprisingly segregated by gender, and this separation does not seem to benefit women. Two-thirds of working women are concentrated in only five percent of occupational categories. And in the few fields where more than 90 percent of workers are women ?- like childcare and food preparation ?- the pay tends to be low. Compare this low pay to male-dominated industries (there are a lot of them). Almost one in four job categories, such as construction work and trucking consist of workforces that are almost exclusively male. And those same jobs pay up to 30 percent more than traditionally female jobs like secretarial work.

Considering this, why aren’t more women pursuing higher paying, blue-collar jobs in male-dominated fields as a career? And for those interested in doing so, what can they do to make that move? Our workplace contributor Beth Kobliner, author of ‘Get a Financial Life,’ explains. And Rochelle James, a female union electrician in New York, shares her own career change.