Charity Village� Research: A Few Good Men: Being Male in a Female-Majority Sector

Charity Village� Research: A Few Good Men: Being Male in a Female-Majority Sector: "A Few Good Men: Being Male in a Female-Majority Sector
By Jan Masaoka & Lynora Williams, from Blue Avocado
November 29, 2010

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Editor’s Note: We considered a Canadian version of this story, but decided this one published by Blue Avocado does a good job at sparking the discussion. In Canada, data published by the HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector in 2008 showed that women comprise 75% of employees in the sector. We’d love to hear more from the men. Maybe you have an opinion you’d like to express for The Podium, or have requests for stories you’d like to see in Vibes. Write to us: editor@charityvillage.com.

We asked Blue Avocado's male readers to let us know their thoughts on being men in the majority-female nonprofit world. What we learned surprised us — and raised new questions:

The facts are that women comprise 70-75% of nonprofit employees (Nonprofit Almanac 2007). The experience of Ed Seay of Help Network in Russellville, Arkansas, reflects this exactly: 'You go to a United Way quarterly meeting,' he remarked, 'and there might be one other man in a room of 35 people.' But this, as they say, is just the tip of the iceberg of what it's like for men who work in the female-majority nonprofit sector."