The male welding worker and the female caregiver; the male baker and the female pastry chef; the male laborer and the female cleaner. Traditional gender roles keep shaping the question children begin to ask themselves as they grow: What do I want to be when I grow up? Despite progress toward equality in recent years, vocations tied to vocational training (VT) show a stronger gender bias, and this bias translates into a wider wage gap for those professions.
According to data released this Friday by the union UGT, women with VT training earn 30.6% less than their male counterparts, a gap more than 10 points higher than the overall economy’s average. And the heavier the reliance on VT, the greater the risk that that gap drags up the general wage disparity across the labor market in Catalonia.
The union explains that this difference is more pronounced in VT due to higher segregation by activities, meaning women tend to enroll in lower-paid trades while men gravitate toward higher-paid ones. With VT currently booming—driven by strong demand from employers and a growing supply of public VT slots—this bias could end up widening the wage gap across the Catalan labor market.
“We are on alert,” acknowledged Eva Gajardo, secretary for equality and VT in UGT Catalonia. “It remains a cultural, stereotype-driven issue. We must work hard on career guidance and advance it much earlier, when children are still very young and begin to picture themselves in professional roles.” Strong pedagogy, broad media outreach, and prioritizing enrollment for women in more-masculinized sectors are among the central proposals the union puts forward to address this gap.