The funeral industry is experiencing a significant gender shift. While men still hold the majority of positions (about 66% of the roughly 40,000 morticians, undertakers, and funeral directors working in the U.S. as of 2023), the share of women has been climbing steadily, and women now make up the majority of students in many mortuary science programs. The trend is striking because, for most of the 20th century, the image of a funeral director was almost exclusively male.
How Funeral Work Became a Male Profession
Caring for the dead was traditionally women’s work. Before the funeral industry existed as a business, women in families and communities washed, dressed, and prepared bodies for burial. That changed after the American Civil War, when embalming techniques spread and undertaking became a commercialized career. As funeral work moved out of the home and into professional parlors, sexist norms around women earning income and running businesses pushed them out. By the early 1900s, the industry was firmly male-dominated, and it stayed that way for decades.
The stereotypical funeral director of the 20th century was a somber man in a black suit. That image became self-reinforcing: families expected a man, funeral homes hired men, and young women rarely considered it as a career path.
What Changed Starting in the Late 20th Century
Several forces converged to reopen funeral work to women. The broadest was simply the wider cultural shift toward women entering professional fields that had previously excluded them. As barriers fell in medicine, law, and business, they fell in death care too. Women who might have been discouraged from the profession in the 1960s or 1970s found doors opening by the 1990s and 2000s.
Mortuary science programs began enrolling more women, and researchers studying this shift describe funeral directing as “historically male-dominated and currently feminizing.” Interviews with mortuary science students reveal that men and women often arrive at the profession through different pathways. Women frequently describe feeling a calling toward caregiving and service, while men are more likely to have family connections to existing funeral businesses. Both paths are valid, but the “calling” pathway has brought in a wave of women who previously had no family ties to the industry.
Generational attitudes matter too. As millennials and younger adults become the primary decision-makers for funerals, they bring more progressive expectations about who should be guiding them through grief. Funeral homes that reflect gender diversity at all levels are better positioned to connect with these families.
Why Women Are Drawn to Death Care
People in the industry point to what they call a “natural affinity” many women have for the emotional and relational aspects of funeral work. The job is not just embalming and logistics. A large part of it involves sitting with grieving families, helping them plan meaningful services, and guiding them through one of the worst experiences of their lives. These interpersonal skills, long associated with caregiving roles that women have historically filled, translate directly to funeral directing.
The profession also offers something many caregiving fields don’t: business ownership. Funeral homes are often small, independently operated businesses, and women entering the field now have access to training in both the trade and the business side. That combination of hands-on care and entrepreneurship appeals to women who want meaningful work with real autonomy.
Where the Numbers Stand Now
As of 2023, women make up about 33.6% of working morticians, undertakers, and funeral directors in the United States, out of a total workforce of roughly 40,345. That may not sound like a majority, but the pipeline tells a different story. In many mortuary science programs across the country, women now outnumber men in incoming classes. If that enrollment pattern continues, the active workforce will likely reach gender parity within the next decade or two.
The gap between classroom demographics and workforce demographics reflects a lag that’s common in professionalizing fields. Students graduating today won’t fully reshape the industry’s gender balance until older, predominantly male practitioners retire. But the direction of the trend is clear, and it represents a return of sorts. Women cared for the dead for centuries before the profession was commercialized. What looks like a new phenomenon is, in many ways, a correction.