You can really only talk about underrepresentation if women are applying for those jobs. I
do see the women who do try to get into those male-dominated blue-collar fields complain about the lack of representation (and the absolutely horrid treatment that they're subjected to by their colleagues), but because so few even try, they're easy to miss.
Female-dominated fields are typically less physical (though tell that to my radiological tech friend who has to roll, lift, and drag non-responsive obese people around all day every day), but that doesn't necessarily mean they're easy or "comfortable."
View attachment 369576
1. Healthcare: Already discussed.
2. Personal care/service: hairdressers, nail techs, massage therapists, etc. Pay is typically terrible, you're on your feet all day, can be surprisingly physical.
3. Education/training/library: generally low pay, and only a fool says teaching is easy or comfortable
4. Office administration/support: comfortable and easy, but again, generally low-paying
5. Food prep/serving: low pay, not comfortable or easy
6. Legal: comfortable, easy, generally good pay
Of those, I would only say that office admin and legal are comfortable mid-range positions. Everything else is either hard, pays like crap, or both.
Employed persons by detailed occupation, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity
www.bls.gov
Here's a more complete list
If you download the csv file, it's tab 11, and then it makes it easier to sort
If we set the threshold of "female dominated" at 75%+, there's a plethora of jobs listed that are both "comfortable" (meaning not being subjected extreme weather elements, not touching bodily fluids, not physically demanding etc...) and that have pay that's respectable for the task.
Omitting the secretarial work, food service industry, nursing, and cosmetology stuff that you mentioned, I'm still seeing these...
Speech-language pathologists
Audiologists
Skincare specialists
Dental hygienists
Dietitians and nutritionists
Medical records specialists
Dental assistants
Payroll administrators
Phlebotomists
Occupational therapists
Travel agents
Billing specialists
Veterinary technicians
Healthcare social workers
Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing managers
School psychologists
Social workers, all
Animal trainers
Respiratory therapists
Interior designers
Court, municipal, and license clerks
Paralegals and legal assistants
Therapists, all other
Diagnostic medical sonographers
Child, family, and school social workers
Pharmacy technicians
Insurance claims and policy adjusters
Information and record clerks, all other
File Clerks
Tailors, dressmakers, and sewers
Educational, guidance, and career counselors and advisors
Eligibility interviewers, government programs
Human resources managers
Human resources workers
Meeting, convention, and event planners
Title examiners, abstractors, and searchers
Keeping in mind, some of the male-dominated positions I mentioned aren't exactly rolling in the dough, roofers around here make about 22-24 bucks an hour, that's not exactly glamourous pay considering you're getting skin cancer from being in the sun all day and lugging 80 pound bags of shingles up a ladder to work in the heat all day.
When you consider the median wages (throwing out the extremely high earners that throw off the numbers), they're not that far apart... and that difference is diminished even more by the "STEM-factor"
A lot of that male advantage is thanks to STEM fields. According to the BLS, STEM workers on average make 30-35% more than non-STEM workers, and STEM happens to be about 70% male.
There has been a concerted effort to get more girls interested in STEM fields, but to not much avail. And that one hasn't been a "barrier" thing, as much as it is an "I'm not interested in that" thing.
And it's not just an American phenomenon... even in the Scandinavian countries (that are much more progressive and egalitarian than we are), women only account for about a quarter of people in those fields.
There's not much we can do about that one. If we know the tech and engineering jobs pay better, but there's one cohort of people that express way more interest in it than another... we can't chalk the difference in pay outcomes to an "ism"