MORTUARY DEGREES Funeral industry opens up to women

Women make up more than half of students in funeral education.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
CHICAGO -- Talk about breaking new ground.
Burying the dead used to be men's work. Hoisting dead bodies and lifting heavy caskets was reserved for the brawnier sex, with fathers passing the family funeral home to sons.
No more.
Fueled by an increased focus on caring for the bereaved, the funeral home industry is opening its doors to women, who now make up the majority of students studying for mortuary degrees.
In 2001, the most recent year for which data is available, 51 percent of students in funeral education programs were female. That's up from just 5 percent in 1975, according to the American Board of Funeral Service Education.
Holistic care
Part of what has attracted women to the funeral business has been the profession's greater emphasis on holistic care. Mortuary colleges used to be embalming schools. Now, programs spend more time on the psychology, counseling and ethics associated with funerals than on the science of after-death treatments.
"Many families come in a crisis situation. Everything's crashing down upon them," said Aura Nelson, a mortuary student at Worsham College in Wheeling, Ill. "Just doing our job is very therapeutic for families. You become someone they can rely on to take care of the details."
Nelson, 26, initially set out to be a psychologist. She landed a counseling job at a home for the mentally retarded but then decided that the profession involved too much paper work and not enough one-on-one care.
Her husband once mentioned that funeral directors must lead interesting lives. The topic kept coming up, and eventually they both decided to enter the field.
"Death is out of the closet and people recognize it now as a viable career opportunity, so that's going to draw everybody, including women," said Jacquelyn Taylor, director of the New England Institute of Funeral Service Education.
Obstacles to overcome
Yet obstacles remain. While they constitute the majority of mortuary students, very few women have ascended to become owners of funeral homes.
Part of that, industry experts say, is because the influx of women has been so recent. Traditionally, it takes 20 years to rise from apprentice to director or owner of a funeral home. Only rarely do newcomers start their own homes.
The other part of the equation is that funeral care is oftentimes still considered men's work.
"The attitude of some of the baby boomer funeral directors is that women don't belong in funeral homes, and if they're there they should be at the front desk," Nelson said. "It is a battle. Many people still picture funeral directors to be strong male figures."
Surprisingly, some say, most of the women seeking mortuary degrees don't hail from funeral home families. George P. Connick of the American Board of Funeral Service Education estimates that only 30 percent of today's female students grew up with morticians in their homes.
Until recently, the bulk of mortuary students were men on whom their fathers bestowed the family business. Connick estimates that, until recently, 75 percent of funeral service students fit that profile.
Now "men whose families were in funeral service are choosing other vocations, which is really creating a void and demand for women," said Dwayne Spence, president of the National Funeral Directors Association.
At the same time, the increasingly corporate structure of the funeral industry is creating more opportunities for women. While funeral homes used to be among the last holdouts of mom and pop businesses, now some 15 percent of such homes are chain owned. And the corporate career ladder has proven more amendable to women, who don't have to break through family patriarchies to succeed.
While women's enrollment in mortuary colleges is new, they have always played an important role in funeral care.
Before the Civil War, women in rural towns were known as "layers out of the dead." They were the same women who served as nurses and midwives, said Taylor. But they weren't considered professionals, and they worked alongside the male furniture makers who also helped care for the deceased.
Then, as Americans flooded to cities, epidemics of infectious diseases triggered a popular sanitation movement.
"Beginning in the 19th century, the body was seen as dangerous after death because it was subject to diseases which were horrible," said Robert Habenstein, author of "The History of American Funeral Directing."
"People began experimenting with chemicals that would preserve the body and also kill any of the germs," he added. "In a country like ours, it would take three, four days for family to travel to come visit the body."
That's when embalming came into existence. And once that happened, funeral care developed all of the officialdoms of a profession. The complex science of preserving a body necessitated schooling and occupational standards.
"It wasn't suitable for women to go away to school," said Taylor. "So when it became a formalized education, funeral service became a male profession."