While I’m all for investing in infrastructure, I’m really starting to resent the message of “put our construction workers back on the job!” when my greatest prospect is becoming a minimum-wage secretary at one of these construction companies.
At least I can pretend to be one on Halloween!
Related reading:
Alternet: “The Recession’s Hit Women Hard, but the Myth of ‘Mancession’ Won’t Die” by Alice O’Connor
Against All Evidence 
I would recommend to young women to consider careers like carpentry or painter etc, if you have talent in that direction. Becoming a secretary is basically just “office wife” and you will be treated like any other wife – doing all the work for none of the credit. Many years ago when temping around as a secretary, I got rather shitty when I realised that my boss’s retirement package was greater than the wage I was working for. It really puts it into perspective. Women working in male dominated fields will be far better off financially than working in female dominated fields (even if you still get paid less than the menz). As soon as a field becomes female dominated, the wages plummet, and it becomes a ‘pink ghetto’.