Reporting by Lucy Nicholson and Alex Dobuzinskis. Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis.
Neurosurgery, welding, venture capitalism, construction, film directing and the electrical trade – these are six jobs where U.S. women have made inroads but are still vastly outnumbered.
And one position, U.S. president, has never been filled by a woman. With presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton seeking to become the first to break that barrier, several women in career fields made up mostly of men told Reuters that they saw her candidacy as significant.
Liau said: “It’s a very male-dominated profession. Currently there are about 3 percent of neurosurgeons that are women… When you walk into the room they assume you’re the nurse or the assistant as opposed to the actual surgeon… I think one thing that is impressive about Hillary is that she also has a husband and a daughter and is a mom. That’s where I think it would be useful for young women to have role models like that, who are strong, professional and do well in their professions, whether it’s a surgeon, a teacher, or president. I think ultimately the goal would be to be gender-blind completely, so the fact that we’re even talking about having a female president as a novelty is in a way sad… Hopefully my daughter will grow up without even talking about having a woman president; it’ll be a non-issue at that point.”
Dr. Linda Liau works with the precision of a master, peering into a patient’s head with magnifying loupes as she removes a brain tumor.
When Liau was called into an emergency room as a surgeon more than 20 years ago to help treat a car crash victim, another member of the medical team assumed she was a nurse.
Even today, the 49-year-old neurosurgeon sometimes gets a surprised reaction from new patients who were expecting a man.
Such an assumption is common in career fields dominated by men.
“I think ultimately the goal would be to be gender-blind completely, so the fact that we’re even talking about having a female president as a novelty is, in a way, sad,” Liau said.
“I eat lunch alone,” White said. “I don’t have people to relate to at work.
“Don’t get me wrong, I identify more with the guys, but to them, ultimately, I’m just a girl.”
Wearing a hard hat, White passes under heavy steel beams, walking along the commuter train tracks she is helping build in her working-class neighborhood in southern Los Angeles.
Welder Darlene Thompson, 45, is also no stranger to the construction site, or to the hostility that she says women often encounter in the field. These days, she teaches others as an instructor at Los Angeles Trade Technical College.
In a heavy coat and blue gloves, she looks from under her helmet at the white-hot flame of a welding torch.
It was a fight to learn these skills. More than a decade ago, when she began receiving job training as a welfare recipient, Thompson had to argue for the chance to study welding. Public assistance administrators wanted to push her toward cosmetology or culinary arts, she said.
Thompson did not say how she would cast her ballot in November but said she would not vote for Clinton just because the candidate is a woman.
Sometimes, she will encounter someone on a construction site who knows her mother, Kelly Cooper, who also was an electrician.
“Everyone remembers her because there’s only a few women,” Cooper said.
Kelly Cooper began as an apprentice in 1975.
“You have to have thick skin to be anyone in the trade,” she said. “To be a woman in the trade, you have to have a particularly thick skin.”
She is now director of construction for the Los Angeles Department of General Services.
Eva Ho, 44, is a woman working in the technology field, which is unusual enough. But she is also a venture capitalist, which is rarer still.
“In some ways the V.C. career has really been an old boys club, and it’s been dominated by white men for the last three or four decades,” Ho said.
A graduate of Harvard and Cornell, Ho said she was drawn to work in technology because of its ability to drive social change. But she came late to it, never having used a computer until college.
Maria said: “A woman in power in the real world, in the top position of power… little kids see that and it doesn’t seem uncommon. Then maybe women directors are hired more, and they put more interesting women onscreen.”
Ursula said: “I don’t think it’s so much having any woman be president; I think there’s something about having an extremely qualified person. I wouldn’t vote for any woman who was running. But I think when you are talking about a candidate who is so qualified it really changes the conversation that she is a woman.”
For the Burtons, who work together as filmmakers through their company Five Sisters Productions, their career had its seeds in their childhood as the daughters of a writer and a former professional musician.
Both parents were feminists who thought their five daughters could do anything, said Ursula Burton, a director, producer and actor.
Now the possibility of a female president could help create more opportunities for women, she said.
“Having a woman president opens up the presidency for girls,” Burton said, “and it will shift the perception for boys of what girls can do.”