Women entering a previously male-dominated field

   
    LONG ISLAND, N.Y. (CNS) – For generations, funeral homes have been passed down from father to son.
    “Now, they are being passed on more and more from father to daughter,” said Valerie Wages, president of Tom M. Wages Funeral Service in Lawrenceville and Snellville, Ga., founded by her father.
    Wages, a former teacher who decided to work in her father’s funeral home, is an example of a growing trend, said Jessica Koth, public relations manager for the National Funeral Directors Association in Brookfield, Wis.
    In the past decade, she said, surveys show that a growing percentage of their members are women. The percentage of women attending mortuary science school increased from 35 percent to 57.1 percent from 1995 to 2010.
    “When I was in mortuary school, it was about 1 percent women,” said Jacquelyn Taylor, senior scholar at the New England Institute at Mount Ida College just outside Boston. Taylor, a veteran of the funeral directors’ profession, has seen the steady influx of women in this career.
Loves helping people
    “I was a psychology major in college,” said Beth Dalton-Costello, president and co-owner of Dalton Funeral Homes on Long Island, whose grandfather founded the business. “I was always interested in helping people, and I worked in several jobs after college before being drawn to the family business.
    “Being a funeral director is a helping profession,” she said. “I enjoy it. I’ve been doing it more than 30 years.”
    Wages pointed out that “it’s  not just daughters of funeral home directors that are coming into the business.” She said nurses, former hospice workers and others have joined the profession.
    Taylor said she became interested in this line of work when she was growing up in Oregon. “My family’s church was next door to a funeral home,” she said, adding that her friends would dare each other to walk up to it.
    One day, Taylor said, she was curious and knocked on the door and asked to speak to the funeral home director. That conversation led to a tour of the funeral home for her parish youth group. Over the years she was impressed with the dedication of funeral directors serving families and considered it for her own career.
    When Wages was growing up she said she saw her father “getting calls in the middle of the night or on Christmas Day” following the death of a loved one. She found her father’s commitment inspiring.
It’s more than a job
    “I see it as a ministry,” Wages, a Southern Baptist, said. “You are meeting people at the lowest point in their lives.”
    Treating them with compassion is essential. “Over the years I’ve been happy to hear so many people say: ‘You really listened to me,’” she said.
    “It is a difficult time in people’s lives,” Dalton-Costello said. “You can’t remove the pain and grief, but you can help them gain order and control.”
    One of the ways that a funeral director helps is “by providing a comfortable space for families to grieve. The funeral home is an extension of their home.”
    “Funeral directors also become involved in their community,” Wages said. When she was young she said local Catholics didn’t have a church in town and used the funeral home chapel for Masses until their church was built.
    She said the profession of funeral home directors is often not portrayed accurately in the media. To clear up any misconceptions, she said the profession is made up of “dedicated, caring people who serve families and do a lot of good for people that nobody knows about.”
Opening up
    Wages said the funeral home business used to be a “male-dominated profession.”
    Taylor agreed, saying that when she first looked into the prospect of being a funeral director, she was told women can’t do that.
    “I think the real turning point came when more professions that were traditionally male professions were opening up,” Taylor said. Funeral directors followed suit.
    “A lot depends on what you bring to it,” Dalton-Costello said. “I think women bring a certain energy to the profession. Sensitivity and compassion reflect the nurturing side of women.”