Pink-collar
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Of or pertaining to employees in predominantly female service industries.
"Black men have tended to congregate in laborers' jobs and certain service occupations, young workers in trade and such service enterprises as gas stations (to a lesser extent also in laborers' jobs), and women in the so-called "pink collar" occupations in trade, the services, and clerical work in all industrial sectors."
- 1 of or relating to a class of jobs once traditionally filled by women wordnet
Example
More examples"Black men have tended to congregate in laborers' jobs and certain service occupations, young workers in trade and such service enterprises as gas stations (to a lesser extent also in laborers' jobs), and women in the so-called "pink collar" occupations in trade, the services, and clerical work in all industrial sectors."
Etymology
From pink + collar. By analogy with various constructions ending in the word collar, especially blue-collar, and from the traditional conception of pink as a feminine color (with blue its masculine counterpart), a conception perhaps magnified in this case by the sometime popularity of pink blouses among women in the service industry.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.