Pipeline Program: Gender Equity in Career and Technical Education

Occupational segregation begins long before young women start applying for their first jobs. Despite the great opportunities afforded by vocational high schools around the country, young women comprise only a small percentage of students learning skilled trades.  Some teachers and vocational high schools perpetuate this imbalance by marketing some career tracks to male students, while channeling women to cosmetology and child care, which pay less. Some schools focused on construction and similar trades struggle to maintain a supportive environment for the minority of young women students attending.

Legal Momentum's Pipeline Project takes aim at just this problem. Legal Momentum works to increase girls’ enrollment in high schools that prepare them for the skilled trades with the goal of overcoming the intense sex segregation that has long been the norm in these schools.  From a pilot project in the schools of New York City, Legal Momentum is working to build a best practices model for career and technical education around the nation.