CHAPTER IX[ToC]
VOCATIONAL TRAINING FOR GIRLS
The discussions in the preceding chapters have been limited intentionally to a consideration of the needs and possibilities of training for wage-earning pursuits in which men predominate. The conditions which surround vocational training for girls are so fundamentally unlike those encountered in the vocational training of boys that a combined treatment leads to needless complexity and confusion.
Cleveland uses a relatively smaller amount of woman labor than most other large cities. In only one of the 10 largest cities in the country—Pittsburgh—is the proportion of women and girls at work smaller as compared with the total number of persons in gainful occupations than in Cleveland. In 1900, 20.4 per cent of the workers in the city were women; by 1910 the proportion of women workers had increased to 22 per cent, a shift of less than two per cent for the decade.
A consideration of the occupational future of boys and girls shows at once how widely their problems differ. The typical boy in Cleveland attends school until he reaches the age of 15 or 16. About this period he becomes a wage-earner and for the next 30 or 40 years devotes most of his time and energy to making a living. The typical girl leaves school about the same time, becomes a wage-earner for a few years, then marries and spends the rest of her life keeping house and rearing children. To the man wage-earning is the real business of life. To the woman it is a means for filling in the gap between school and marriage, a little journey into the world previous to settling down to her main job.
The most radical and important difference between the two sexes with respect to wage-earning is found in the length of the working life. The transitory character of the wage-earning phase in the life of most women is clearly seen in the contrasted age distribution shown in Table 13.
TABLE 13.—PER CENT OF TOTAL POPULATION ENGAGED IN GAINFUL OCCUPATIONS DURING THREE DIFFERENT AGE PERIODS[TableList]
| Age period | Women | Men |
| 16 to 21 | 60 | 85 |
| 21 to 45 | 26 | 98 |
| 45 and over | 12 | 85 |
Approximately 85 per cent of the boys and slightly less than 60 per cent of the girls between the ages of 16 and 21 are at work. In the next age group—21 to 45—given by the census, 98 per cent of the men are at work, but the proportion of women employed in gainful occupations drops to 26 per cent, or about one in four; in the next age group—45 and over—it falls to about 12 per cent, as compared with 85 per cent of the men. Of the women still at work in the older age group, over one-half are engaged in domestic and personal service as servants, laundresses, housekeepers, etc.