Why is it that janitors are mostly male and cleaning ladies are overwhelmingly female? They seem to be largely doing the same type of work.
Of course, once there’s a stereotype in place, that tends to perpetuate itself; this would be particularly an issue in the case of home cleaners who are almost entirely female. But the question is why the situation came about in the first place. I can think of three possible reasons.
Janitors are frequently reponsible for some light repairs/maintenance in addition to their cleaning work; this is typically associated with males.
Janitorial work is typically a full time job, while cleaning ladies can make their own part-time hours, which tends to be more of a priority for women.
Home cleaning people are typically employed by women, who may be uncomfortable with routinely having a male cleaner in their home for that amount of time.
Janitors, porters, concierges, custodians, handy(wo)men, etc. are not completely synonymous, though some or all of them may be responsible for some cleaning and housekeeping. As for gender imbalance among “home cleaners”, I suspect this depends on a number of factors, such as where you are and what group of people with what skillset is available to fill the role. I would not be surprised if it is majority women in one place but not in another, majority Cambodian immigrants in one specific area but not in another region,. Do you have any econometric data?
I’ve noticed in Las Vegas and other casinos the room service workers are 100% female. In the big casinos it’s all Hispanic or Asian, at the smaller casinos its all white. I always wondered why.
In my previous line of work, I did water and fire damage restoration and this included frequent floor-to-ceiling cleaning of homes that were affected.
At our company, most of the staff who did this sort of cleaning were women, and the men who got assigned it on a temporary basis for one reason or another (large job needing extra labor for example), frequently claimed the work was emasculating even though they got paid the same as they always do. We’ve also had plenty of customers (men and women) who demanded women-only cleaning staff for various reasons. These reasons ranged from the belief that the men would clean too aggressively and cause damage, that the men were too clumsy, or that all the men were perverts who would snoop through underwear drawers and the like (actual reason offered by a customer who requested female-only staff).
On the other side, in all my years at the company, we only ever had one woman even apply for one of our technician roles. Although she got the job, she ultimately proved to be a deficient worker who was unable to improve those areas she was lacking in. When we had our cleaning staff help out on some of these kinds of jobs they didn’t seem to mind it too much.