Office Workers,Factory Workers,Cashiers or Cooks: a North American perspective on vocational education reform at the secondary school level

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the issue of secondary school vocational education reform in North America from a critical‐feminist perspective by linking directly to challenges that women face in pink and blue collar jobs. In the first part of the paper we review the research literature on pink and blue collar jobs in the clerical, sales, service, and manufacturing sectors. We explore how occupational sex segregation, job value and job security shape the working contexts of female employees in these jobs. In the second part of the paper we turn our attention to the implications of these challenges for vocational education reform. We focus on how curricular contexts such as traditional and non‐traditional vocational curricula, secondary school‐workplace linkages, and nonvocational courses could be reformed to become more responsive to the workplace challenges that current and future female workers face in pink and blue collar Jobs.