Sone of these may be more skewed than they should be due to similar jobs sometimes having more than one title, with the different titles being strongly associated with gender.
For example, in a small organization one person might perform the duties of a janitor and of a maid. If that person is male he will probably be called a janitor, and if that person is female she will probably be called a maid.
Yep, this is a typical example of statistical lying[1] - clearly the data is not represented in such a way that you can get the accurate numbers from the visualisation. I really don't understand why the parent is being downvoted.
I'm not sure that statistical lying entirely fits here. The general shape of the visual hasn't been challenged, just the location of the percentage markings. Of course, this doesn't inspire confidence in the visual as a whole, but seems more likely to be a typo or technical issue than an actual lie ( I can't see a benefit to any argument by having impossible data points on both side of the graph ).
I was just about to make the same compaint; the first diagram is really confusing. They also say that "carpenters" was the "most male" job, but "Pipelayers, etc." is clearly to the left of it in the diagram.
Many of those shifts from a majority male workforce to a majority female workforce seem to happen quickly (or even abruptly) at around the 1960s/1970s.
I'm not well versed in American history. Did anything significant happen then to cause this, or is it just an interesting anomaly?
Among other things, it was influenced by ~2 million men leaving the civilian labor force temporarily because the government urgently required their services to fight a war.
The part would have been disproportionately true for jobs lower down the socioeconomic ladder because jobs higher on the socioeconomic ladder generally go to people who had more ability to licitly or illicitly avoid selection for military service.
And don't forget that a side-effect of the war was a drastic increase in inflation. A single-earner household often didn't cut it any more, even if one spouse wanted to stay home.
The women's movement also made it "not wierd" to want a job outside the home, and for some a badge of honor. It's hard to articulate exactly what that meant for women, but for my older sister, "not wierd" was being a teacher. For my wife, OTOH, being an attorney was "not wierd", and in fact past the point of being a meaningful badge of honor, it was just a job. We're talking a 10 year time span.
-edit-
And by "just a job" I don't mean to imply that discrimination against women completely disappeared overnight. I remember the day after a re-org, the new incoming manager walked into my neigbor's cube, my neighbor being a rather consistently excellent (female) engineer, and he said, abruptly: "I don't like women engineers.", turned and walked out. Those of us that overheard had a total WTF reaction to that. Luckily those dinosaurs are largely gone from the planet.
More women entered the workforce at that time, and households with more than one breadwinner became more common due to wage stagnation in the 70s, but I imagine there's more at play than just that.
I'm not sure why you think it was obvious, but it definitely wasn't. Not everyone has heard of everything that's "quite famous". I had to look it up, too.
I'm not making a value judgement, just observing that it's extremely well-known in western culture, and obviously not something the commenter came up with themselves.
My mistake in that case. I moved to America about 10 years ago. I still get caught off guard by some of the cultural (especially historical) elements of western culture. I should probably get more educated about this stuff.
I should probably get more educated about this stuff.
Meh, it's my fault for not considering an international audience when using my colloquialisms without explanation. It's one of those phrases that I heard so much growing up, it didn't even occur to me that it was indeed colloquial to at least western culture, if not specific to the U. S.
I found it intriguing and provacting. I searched online (but only now realised I had searched the string with the quotes which did an exact search ) and found only a handful of very recent websites / blogs.
A common phrase when I was growing up in the U. S., not coincidentally in the 60s and 70s. Usually in the context of something like, "anti-abortion advocates would prefer women all stay barefoot and pregnant", in contrast to women making their own decisions about childbirth, employment, or spousal choice. Others have supplied references to its usage. And thanks for the reminder that what I consider common usage hasn't been "common" for quite some time. :-)
> In summary, the U. S. began, even if just a little bit, to pull its head out of its ass with respect to equality and rights.
Please watch your tone. Just that your opinion is different from others and happens to currently match the majority view doesn't mean you should be rude to those with different opinions. There are plenty of people with more nuanced opinions on gender roles that aren't bigoted.
edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? If there is something wrong with my statement, I would love to learn from your opinion on it.
>> the U. S. began, even if just a little bit, to pull its head out of its ass with respect to equality and rights
> Please watch your tone... There are plenty of people with more nuanced opinions on gender roles that aren't bigoted.
But the opinions codified in policy prior to the 1960s/1970s were objectively horrifying.
Brown v. Board was decided in 1954.
Jim Crow was going strong in the 50's and hung on into the 60's.
Harvard Medical School did not (purposefully) admit women until '45; Princeton until '69. Title IX passed in the 70's and gender parity in university admissions didn't happen until '81.
The first no fault divorce law wasn't passed until '69.
The Equal Pay Act was passed in '63.
IMO there isn't a non-bigoted defense of -- or inappropriate tone for criticizing -- the confluence of those policies.
(Also, "watch your tone" is condescending and defensive. Unless you support returning to Jim Crow and repealing the Equal Pay Act, there's no reason to be defensive.)
I agree that most of above is objectively horrifying, but the tone of your post was overly emotional and attracts the kinds who vote based on emotion instead of logic. "the U. S. began... to pull its head out of its ass," is not professional.
> there isn't a non-bigoted defense of -- or inappropriate tone for criticizing -- the confluence of those policies.
>it was the era of "women's lib", or in full "women's liberation". IOW, "a woman's place is in the home, preferably barefoot and pregnant" began to go out the window.
Some people don't think it's a bad thing that women were given the opportunity to be homemakers instead of laborers. I agree that policies at the time were too extreme, but many others and I also believe that perfect gender parity in all careers is also extreme. What is considered "equal" varies depending on the person.
> Also, "watch your tone" is condescending and defensive.
Interpret it how you like. I was critiquing a behavior that I felt hurt the conversation and if left unchecked, has the potential to damage the culture of this site.
So you think emphasizing rhetorical persuasion over reasoned persuasion is detrimental to productive conversation.
But then proceed to make an entire post about rhetorical content even though you completely agree with the post's logical conclusions.
And then use that critique of language -- not logic -- as a springboard for a counter-argument that isn't even responsive to the author's original claim (which you say you agree with anyways).
That position is untenable. Be consistent, especially if you're advancing an argument in favor of logic!
> Interpret it how you like. I was critiquing...
No, you missed my point. The tone of your writing comes off as condescending, regardless of your intent. It is the sort of thing a parent says to a child, or a judge to an unruly defendant. I literally cannot think of a way to read "watch you tone" in a way that is not condescending.
It is reasonable to tell someone to please phrase something in a more polite manner.
It is completely unreasonable to do so in a condescending tone, and many people will down-vote you for doing so.
IMO there is nothing wrong with blunt language on an internet forum. You apparently disagree, except when it comes to your own speech.
What's damaging to the culture of this site is describing strong gender bias and oppression as "women were given the opportunity to be homemakers instead of laborers."
The phrase is not "professional" but do you think it's wrong? Would you say policies where, for example, women couldn't get credit cards without their husband's permission, or black people couldn't go to certain schools, cannot be described as the country having its head in its ass?
I don't think full gender parity in all careers is likely to happen, nor necessarily a worthy goal. Full gender parity in opportunity, however, is extremely important, and this era you're romanticizing with an outrageously misleading description was far, far, far from equal opportunity.
> What's damaging to the culture of this site is describing strong gender bias and oppression as "women were given the opportunity to be homemakers instead of laborers."
I assume by that you're saying that shaming people is ok if they "deserve" to be shamed.
You can't take the hacker news rule, "You should be civil to each other." and say it should apply it selectively to those who you agree with.
It doesn't make hacker news "better" to have only one viewpoint, by shaming all others because they don't match the mob approved groupthink of what right and wrong is.
No, I'm saying that the offense of using strong language when describing something bad is completely trivial when compared to using nice language to lie about both past and present in service of the counterargument.
Bad faith arguments wrapped in nice language are vastly more destructive to the conversation then a little foul language.
We should not misinterpret "be civil" as "don't use the word 'ass.'"
How is that a lie, though? How do you know it's a bad faith argument? You know what bad faith means, right? That someone is not representing what they truly believe.
Again, you're shaming people that disagree with you.
> We should not misinterpret "be civil" as "don't use the word 'ass.'"
We also shouldn't misinterpret "be civil" as only allow certain sets of viewpoints to be conveyed.
How do you know anything? How do I know that you're talking about my comment and not, say, explaining the lifecycle of the sabre-toothed tiger? At some point you have to rely on individual understanding of language.
Should we allow all viewpoints to be conveyed? Should we allow the viewpoint that Hitler did nothing wrong? Or that your parents were chimpanzees? Or that you're a fuckhead? I don't see how "be civil" and "allow stating all viewpoints" can possibly be compatible.
I was talking about you being able to peer into someone's head and then label them mischievous and a liar. That's different from denying understanding of the semantics of language and how they apply to the real world.
> Should we allow all viewpoints to be conveyed? Should we allow the viewpoint that Hitler did nothing wrong? Or that your parents were chimpanzees? Or that you're a fuckhead? I don't see how "be civil" and "allow stating all viewpoints" can possibly be compatible.
If I express a viewpoint that has been proven wrong thousands of times, such as "Hitler did nothing wrong", I'm not seeking discussion, but rather seeking to annoy. That's obvious and not being civil.
If I hide insults in my argument, that's also not being civil.
However, if I express a controversial but novel opinion on a subject that is not closed, it shouldn't automatically be lumped into being the same as the first two categories.
> The phrase is not "professional" but do you think it's wrong? Would you say policies where, for example, women couldn't get credit cards without their husband's permission, or black people couldn't go to certain schools, cannot be described as the country having its head in its ass?
It's not wrong, but speaking that way also doesn't foster a nuanced conversation with emotion in check, hence is bad for the site's culture IMO. And yes, I do think those policies are wrong. There is a big difference between culture and policy though.
> Full gender parity in opportunity, however, is extremely important, and this era you're romanticizing with an outrageously misleading description was far, far, far from equal opportunity.
I agree 100%. The issue is that _many_ people see full gender parity as equality, and in fact may be the majority viewpoint depending on how this site is skewed. If this site fosters an environment where people with slightly abnormal yet nonextremist viewpoints are downvoted to oblivion, it has the potential to form a huge echo chamber where issues like gender parity, cultural values, and any other slightly political issue cannot be discussed. It's not a good environment, even if it matches the majority viewpoint at the time.
edit: Also, speaking this way pushes people to vote based on emotion instead of whether or not the comment contributed to the conversation.
> it has the potential to form a huge echo chamber where issues like gender parity, cultural values, and any other slightly political issue cannot be discussed
As a reminder, the post to which you originally replied was answering this question:
>>>>> Did anything significant happen [in the 1960s/1970s] to cause this, or is it just an interesting anomaly?
This is a very reasonable and important question about "gender parity, cultural values, and other political issues".
IMO the parent provided a pretty decent, if pithy, answer. You have stated that you agree with the substance of parent's answer.
> edit: Also, speaking this way pushes people to vote based on emotion instead of whether or not the comment contributed to the conversation.
The way I see it, OP answered an important question in a mostly accurate manner. Their language was perhaps crass, but the substance of the "head out of their ass" claim -- that the US prior to 1960 was very bigoted and the political movement to end that bigotry contributed in part but not in whole to a move toward gender parity -- is one that you even seem to agree with.
So, parent wrote an accurate answer to a significant question about the very topics you deem important.
In turn, you replied with a condescending rebuke of his tone, a sequence of straw-men that distract from the original conversation about the cause of historical trends in employment, and a sequence of inconsistent positions about the role of rhetoric in argumentation.
I don't think these sorts of meta-conversations are particularly useful, but the content of your posts contradicts your stated preferences.
You are right. I had an issue with the crass language, made a bunch of assumptions on their opinions, and responded very poorly. Your post helps me see this, thank you.
> The issue is that _many_ people see full gender parity as equality
No. This is a massive strawman that is often repeated to justify the following counter-argument: "well, why aren't you complaining about all the other industries that don't have gender parity?", but it is not actually representative of the opposing viewpoint.
I'd much rather have a reasonable statement made in course language than an outrageous lie wrapped in friendly-sounding language.
"The issue is that _many_ people see full gender parity as equality...." What is this based on? I see this stated pretty often, but I don't think I've ever encountered someone who thinks this way.
I'm not sure why you've been downvoted. Phrases like "pulling its head out of its ass" are not going to contribute to sophisticated and level-headed discussion.
Phrasing and tone aside, you're not making any point about the content.
To deconstruct your comment:
>Just that your opinion is different from others and happens to currently match the majority view doesn't mean you should be rude to those with different opinions.
Who is he being rude to? The hypothetical reader who believes all social progress made since 1960 was a mistake and Jim Crow was fine and good?
>There are plenty of people with more nuanced opinions on gender roles that aren't bigoted.
This isn't saying anything of substance. You are claiming some people have a more detailed opinion on gender equality than "it was bad in 1960/70" and is also not a bigot. This is just patently true... so what point are you trying to make??
So completely bereft of any meaningful contribution, the only thing left is some condescending tone policing. That's why I down-voted you.
That is highly discussed issue in pedagogic cycles - how to get and keep more males. For years. The answer usually ends up "yes, but they would come only if there would be higher social status and salaries for teachers". And no one knows how to achieve that.
It is possible that money is not the only thing to keep males away, I dont recall any studies. Just that is the usual assumption. The fact that male teachers tend to come up as ironical response (nor saying you are doing this) to female-in-tech topic suggest also contributing cultural reason. Non trivial amount of people finds idea of male working with children (except coach for some reason) funny or absurd.
> And no one knows how to achieve [higher status and salaries for teachers].
They do. There are lots of ways to do that. Just none that are attractive to the pedagogic establishment.
> It is possible that money is not the only thing to keep males away
I know male teachers who have had to deal with sexism (the men as sexual predators stuff). A non trivial amount of people find men untrustworthy with children.
For example, let's assume for the sake of example that objective evaluation of teachers and even schools is impossible. This is true in other jobs in the service industry.
Then it should be possible to have a subjective rating system that is accessible by consumers (parents, students) and employers (schools). Teachers that relatively rate well would benefit. Teachers that rate relatively poorly would have incentive to improve. Teachers that cannot improve could either be supported by their bosses for their good "intangibles" or be removed from their positions with better evidence than "Well, I think he is a bad teacher".
Thought experiment. Why doesn't this happen?
* Parents don't always have the ability to switch teachers or schools, so there's a lot of conflict of interest in providing publicly available feedback; students shouldn't suffer more because their teacher is called out for something.
* Unions absolutely don't want this. They get more power in numbers, so there's very little incentive to serve the top 10th percentile and introduce risk to the bottom 50th percentile.
* I don't see why the education regulators would care about this approach. Ask a regulator for solutions, and you'll get regulations (standardized testing, lunch nutrition standards, etc.).
* Teacher pay would have to be more subjective and negotiable (set by the superintendent or something). This means all the teacher contracts would have to be renegotiated.
* Teacher mobility is low. Jumping to a new district in a different state that takes good ratings seriously might actually involve a loss of seniority and a pay cut.
* New public schools aren't going to be started to "try this out". Private schools, maybe.
* So, ultimately, school districts don't tangibly benefit from a change like this. They benefit more from property values going up. Or from more student attendance.
* Finally, given all of the above, who will build Yelp/LinkedIn for teachers? It seems like a political hot potato with plenty of external barriers to actually working. Maybe legislators or regulators decide to design one by committee, but I'll be skeptical that they can create a product that gets any real traction that way.
I don't think it's a particularly great idea, to be clear. I'm just exploring why established parties aren't interested in change. And I don't say that to say everyone in education is uniquely greedy or self-interested. I think people in education often have noble hearts, but they're people at the end of the day, like the rest of us. Putting nobility at odds with economic interest limits achievement. We're all human, after all.
It's a fascinating topic, really. It's almost like "women in tech", just for men in "teaching". Yet, the discussion is framed entirely differently and the reasons for its existence are somehow perfectly valid, items that "women in tech" advocates would not consider conceding/admitting for their own cause. Because that would run contrary to "structural oppression" by the males reason.
Well, arguing that higher salaries in tech would attract more women is ridiculous, mainly because salaries are high already. Arguing that women in tech are suspect sexual predators would be absurd. The social bs (beers and games up etc) are not mentioned in case of techers, because teachers are not expected to socialize with each other as much as techies are.
Then there are other cultural reasons that seems to be sa me in both cases - role models and societal idea of what is appropriate for males and females. The sexism in the assumption that gender x is less qualify is stated in both cases.
It seems to be roughly the same except completely unapplicable arguments?
> The social bs (beers and games up etc) are not mentioned in case of techers, because teachers are not expected to socialize with each other
You would be surprised then how common it is that men cite work culture issues when leaving the teaching profession. It is mentioned in the government report that I mentioned in a other comment.
Imagine a profession with incorporate gender identity into the work culture, and try to see what form of social BS it will produce for both men and women. Which one will would include beers and games?
Stopping as 'higher social status and salaries' can miss the driving factors of why men might want those. Society currently judges a ma's relationship worth on those scales far more than a woman's relationship worth. Men who earn less or have lower social status are seen as less dateable, and even married men will face negative social pressures if they earn less than their wife (to say nothing of social pressure the wife may face).
Another issue is false accusations. I know personal anecdotes aren't a replacement for peer-reviewed data, but I tutor kids and have had my own mother ask me to stop because she is scared my life will eventually be ruined by a false accusation.
I've heard from male teachers that teaching younger children isn't worth the risk (perceived or real) of baseless accusations ruining them. They much preferred to teach high school or above.
In my elementary school, teachers up until age 7 or so were women, above were men. One factor there might've been that kids below that age still have a chance of having err, 'accidents'.
There is a good report done by the Swedish government body for higher education (which include the program that teach teachers), and it has multiple reasons stated. Two I strongly remember is that the education work culture has incorporate female gender identity (similar to "bro culture" in IT), and that the rate that male students leave the teacher program is significant higher than for female students. The few men that ends up finishing the program also tend to the leave the profession in higher rate than women.
The similarities are very striking to me to those made about IT profession, but with the roles reversed.
One way that comes to mind is to put some work in lowering the social pressure on young males to be "earners" and "providers"... when it becomes acceptable that my wife earns the real money and I do something not particularly cool nor profitable that I enjoy, and that we're not being weirdos in everyones eyes because of it ("poor woman, what's she doing with that looser?"), then all those problems will be solved...
One strong argument for this is that boys who are at the highest risk for crime, not graduating, lower incomes, etc. frequently lack positive make role models.
Eh, that's a potentially true narrative, but not really what I'm taking about. I'm referring more to lower income neighborhoods where as many as 80 percent of children's fathers will be absent for at least a year of their childhood.
I've said this before, but technology progress is the reason women now work outside the home. Not societal progress.
Tasks that took all day in the 1900s - 1930s are now completely outdated or take minutes instead of hours. A housewife today would be bored out of her mind relative to how much work a 1900s era housewife had to do.
Making 3 meals from near-scratch for 6+ people every day, raising 6-10 children so they could help on the farm, making and hand cleaning your family's own clothes, fetching water because you did not have home plumbing, etc etc etc.
Today doing these tasks is either trivial or not necessary. Food prep has changed dramatically (freezers, microwaves, affordable food delivery, gas stoves, plumbing). As has the number of children because we no longer use child labor for farming.
The movement of women into jobs outside of the home was a change brought primarily through tech innovations. Not feminist protesting, a societal "wake up" or anything like that. Additionally calling a 1990s era housewife as "not in the labor force" is pretty condescending given how much work they did in the home.
With you up to the very last sentence. Labor force is an economic term with a specific meaning. It is not the same as saying that someone is not working for someone to not be in the "labor force". Since there's an economic purpose to the definition as-is, I don't see how you can possibly claim it is condescending without misrepresenting what the term actually means.
Stay at home work has the same affect on the economy as away-work. I don't find the distinction useful in this context.
The only thing we'd have to change is semantics. If house wives charged their husbands for their work, and vis-versa, then they could be 'employed' but nothing would have changed.
Women between the ages of 18 and 64 spent 18 fewer hours on housework each week in 2005 than they did in 1900. However, men aged 18-to-64 took up much of the slack, spending about 13 more hours on housework in 2005 than in 1900.
What has changed are the specific things they spend time on.
The work seems to expand to fill the time. You'll notice people struggle to raise their 2-3 kids, when people previously had over a dozen. They're now putting in more effort per-child.
Having cleaning be easier similarly seems to raise cleaning standards.
If raising 3 kids is 3x work, raising 12 kids is not 12x work. The reason being is that as the kids get older they start to take on the chores and helping out with the little ones (unless the parents are morons and don't train the kids to work and assign them tasks). So you have 3 young children and that is 3x work. But, by the time the next three come along, the first three are old enough to help out (maybe 4-5x work) and they are even more capable of helping out when the next set of 3 come along (by which time the second set of 3 have taken over the tasks previously done by the first set of 3, so maybe 6x work). There actually reaches a point where the last set of 3 no longer have to be constantly monitored, fed, dressed, etc. and you have a whole pipeline of trained helpers and the parenting becomes fairly easy (maybe 2x work).
This argument assumes the older children share the parents' goals.
If the children are assumed to possess free will, it is possible that the older ones' actions could result in an increase in the amount of work for the parent as they got older.
It is also possible to "raise" children one did not have biologically, and to have more than one child at a time biologically. Twelve children born together would be... tough. For a number of reasons.
Children also weren't expected to continuously be monitored by adults before. They left the house and hung out with siblings or neighborhood kids until it was time to eat.
That was his whole point when he said the work expands to fill the time. There's no particular reason new to the current era that children should be continuously monitored.
Well if you have a dozen children it is a safe bet that some are over the age of 12 and have lots of experience with younger siblings, excellent babysitter qualifications.
We basically implemented public schooling as soon as it was technologically feasible.
The main issues were affording teachers, affording your kids to leave the farm, and affording transportation. The cost of books and classrooms was non-trivial for a long time as well.
You make it sound as if as soon as farmers had surplus, we took that surplus and invested in public education.
Wikipedia reads that England had their agricultural revolution in the 16th century and the population boomed to 5.7 million by 1750. [0]
School however:
"The Elementary Education Act 1880 insisted on compulsory attendance from 5 to 10 years.[20] For poorer families, ensuring their children attended school proved difficult, as it was more tempting to send them working if the opportunity to earn an extra income was available." [1]
The main issue with public education was that people didn't want it, hence compulsory attendance.
The British Empire ruled the world, and had an industrial revolution -
"The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840" [2]
Something tells me given the choice to go work in a factory and make money, or go get educated - people chose to go make some money.
None of this had anything to do with technology not allowing the existence of public education - if anyone could afford it, it was the British Empire at the time. They just had other priorities - like bullying the world and trade. The usual capitalist stuff.
I'm not sure how this refutes the claim that technology was a significant determining factor in establishing public education. Most Western European countries, as well as the U.S. and Canada established their public education systems in the 19th or very early 20th century. The late 19th and early 20th century was arguably the height of colonialism. That doesn't seem to be in line with the theory that colonialism made public education have a lower priority.
I'm definitely not a historian so I could very well be wrong.
What were the technologies that made public education possible exactly?
Reading about USA during 1870-1916, USA was quite busy ruthlessly exploiting it's own people (what else is new), the thought of educating them was not a concern - making millions off the broken backs of your own people and building mansions was much more appealing.
"The lives of the people in the cities contrasted sharply.
A small percentage of them had enormous wealth and enjoyed lives of luxury. Below them economically, the larger middle class lived comfortably. But at the bottom of the economic ladder, a huge mass of city people lived in extreme poverty." [0]
Goes perfectly in line with what I've been saying before - capitalists are busy making profits - the British Empire from it's colonies, the USA from it's own people and the floods of immigrants. You know, you exploit what/who you can, it's a hard world out there.
Technology preventing public education? I've heard you need to not live in extreme poverty before public education is even an option for you.
Extreme poverty ended due to technological advancements too I suppose?
I'm not quite sure how your points contradict the parent saying school was about affording the expense. Saying people chose to have kids work for money doesn't seem to contradict that.
I think the last paragraph summarizes it well:
"None of this had anything to do with technology not allowing the existence of public education - if anyone could afford it, it was the British Empire at the time. They just had other priorities."
Britain had industrialized, had colonies all over the world, went to war with China over allowing to continue selling them opium in this time among other things.
Education was not a priority for them - they were busy exploiting everyone they could get their hands on.
If that sounds strangely familiar - it is because it is not unlike another country you know very well in modern times :)
That was nearly 200 years ago, we as a species haven't changed a whole lot it seems.
I don't think your comment necessarily established that Britain could afford public education earlier.
You can interpret 'afford' as "can literally pay for given any tradeoff" (I can afford a Mac Pro in that sense), or "can realistically make the tradeoffs" (short of cutting my 401k contribution, I don't have the money). Even in the first sense, you said nothing that implies that in the 16th century, the agricultural improvements that grew the population was large enough to spare children from agricultural work. All that population growth implies is that you've escaped the Malthusian trap. Going forward, my sense of the early industrial revolution was that families depended on the money from children's labor, though I could easily be wrong.
Your argument would be much stronger with data. I wouldn't be surprised if the truth is somewhere in the middle and I certainly wouldn't discount the impact of the Vietnam War, feminism, social services, heck even consumerism, etc. on the tendency of people to work or stay at home.
And you're totally right that homemaker/stay-at-home-parent should be represented in the workforce... developing software is cake compared to that workload.
> And you're totally right that homemaker/stay-at-home-parent should be represented in the workforce... developing software is cake compared to that workload.
I don't have kids, so I don't know just how tough the job is, but I'm always reminded of this funny clip when someone does mention it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoJrMaFlxOk
Both of those jobs have very low minimum amounts of work.
If you just want the kid to make it to 18 without dying and develop an android app to show the user pictures of cats while harvesting their data then it won't take all that much effort.
Both those jobs can also be time black holes if you let them.
Interesting. One of the theories I've heard regarding a possible decline in educational quality in the US was that in the 50s, the most qualified women became educators due to a lack of other jobs, while today they become CEOs, etc. On the surface this data seems to contradict that.
I wonder how much of if the gender disparity in education is pure preconceived notions. "All my teachers were women", so women are more 'teacherly' and more likely to be hired.
More recent fears over men in proximity to kids probably reinforces this.
I've certainly heard the theory you suggest and it does seem to make sense. Perhaps the data doesn't show that because as smart women have 'left' teaching they've been backfilled by the additional women joining the workforce that didn't used to be there?
Interesting questions around the massively skewed jobs.
I would say this sort of thing goes well beyond gender and even "demographic" preconceived notions. I'm a freelance marketer and since I've had success in paid social in the past I am now the "paid social" guy despite the fact that I have a much broader skill set with areas I'm arguably more skilled in. I think human brains are lazy and just desperately want to put things in buckets.
What happens to the structure of society when a larger fraction of intelligent people have access to higher education, the ability to easily relocate, and a financial incentive to work in finance, science, engineering, and applied-academia?
How does that impact legislative and executive politics, community groups, and education (direct and educating the educators)?
The story behind AVMA's push to become more inclusive for women is an interesting one. You can see the results in the profession lookup under "Veterinarians" on the page.
The tech community could certainly learn lessons from that campaign, both what to do and what not to do in order to try to balance out gender disparity in tech.
I think the Veterinarian one shows that some of these numbers are seriously lagging. It'd be interesting to see age plots with these. While the industry reached parity in 2010, college admission reached parity in about 1987:
That's true of the overall workforce and I don't see it as evidence of lag. I think the effect is caused by a disproportionate number of women who go to college but either don't ever enter the workforce or stop work after a few years. The cause for this is obviously pregnancy/raising children. So even if it was 50% in 1987, maybe 10% of women who studied to become veterinarians chose not to pursue a permanent career because they wanted to have kids either right after or a few years after finishing college.
That has a chart for age by gender. The crossover point is about 55, which would be for the "generation" that graduated 30 years ago, or around 1987.
I'm pretty doubtful of veterinary graduates not entering the workforce or stopping after a few years. I'm certainly not personally aware of any, but I don't have the numbers. Their debt is absolutely crushing. It's currently pushing 180k, and since it's post graduate, the interest rate is in the 5-7% range.
Like another commenter said, it lags for the same reason lawyers lag: vets have a long shelf life. I have a parent who is a working veterinarian and is well past retirement age.
Went to a graduation at NC State, one of the top veterinarian schools, and one of the takeaways was that we're not going to to see gender parity any time soon. This profession will be dominated by women over the next few decades.
I think that regardless of your social or political stance of anything regarding males, females, workplaces, salaries, or sexism, more data is always nice to have.
Now I'm going to figure out how to twist this into fitting my own personal world view and then make a news article about it.
Assuming you mean that men have jobs with higher average salaries, there are still implications beyond that. Do men have higher salaries because they are more likely to consider salary when choosing a job? Do women have lower salaries due to sexism? Some combination of the two? Something else?
I did notice (anecdotal) that people in management are usually taller. Taller than me I might add, and I'm a solid 6'2" (which is like... slightly above average in NL). A lot of people in management are closer to 6'6" (2 meters).
Makes sense. If you have to literally look up to someone when you talk to them, they are in a very solid position of power from an instinctual, "primitive brain" perspective.
Once women start doing a job, “It just doesn’t look like it’s as important to the bottom line or requires as much skill,” said Paula England, a sociology professor at New York University. “Gender bias sneaks into those decisions.”
She is a co-author of one of the most comprehensive studies of the phenomenon, using United States census data from 1950 to 2000, when the share of women increased in many jobs. The study, which she conducted with Asaf Levanon, of the University of Haifa in Israel, and Paul Allison of the University of Pennsylvania, found that when women moved into occupations in large numbers, those jobs began paying less even after controlling for education, work experience, skills, race and geography.
Is that the case? Or is it that men leave a field when the pay begins to drop? Distinguishing between cause and effect is very important in these matters. I don't see anything here to suggest the authors have established the cause and effect relationship.
Exactly what I came here to say. Ramp up STEM grads? Pay drops. Ramp up attorney grads? Pay drops. Ramp up workforce in a sector? Pay drops. Adding women to the marketplace for a particular job significantly increases competition for employment. As an example, if a bunch of pro-male motivational speakers went out and encouraged men who currently have very dangerous jobs to move into nursing en mass, and the spots in nursing schools weren't artificially limited (they are, in reality), the pay would drop.
Let's add workplace injuries and deaths per 100,000 workers while we're at it. We could get another article that writes itself, and one that's gotten way less airtime and print space than the one you're talking about.
There's a study that indicates an interesting trend: you can have articles that have hard data, have soft anecdotes, or have both. Of those, the ones that try to do both are significantly less convincing than the ones that solely focus on one approach.
I know a guy who loves articles that do both though, so YMMV.
When I see an article that starts out with a "soft anecdote" I'm immediately put off because it seems like an attempt to manipulate my emotions. That's not really necessary if you have the data to support your point, so my first inclination is your data is weak and you're trying to slip something by me.
The "soft anecdote" is for the people who are bored by hard numbers and wouldn't read to the end if they didn't want to find out how the story ends. And right at the bottom is a carousel to take them to the next similar article.
So, yes, it's an attempt to manipulate emotions, but it doesn't have to mean that the data doesn't support the overall point. A clickbaity headline isn't indicative of a bad article either, it just hints at the readership they're trying to attract.
So, having spent some time trying to track it down, the best I found was [0], which wasn't nearly as strong as I suggested: "In an experiment, people read a realistic persuasive message that was relevant to them. Results showed that anecdotal evidence does not benefit from the inclusion of statistical evidence or from its intrinsic quality."
I originally heard about this from Kevin Drum [1], but I was unable to track down the actual study he alludes to.
That said, he does link to an interview [2] with... an anecdote about the use of data: "We have an experiment of helping a starving child. A certain percentage of people help [by donating money to the kid]. Then we have another condition with a different group, same child, same situation, except we put the numbers of the statistics of starvation next to her picture, and the donations dropped in half."
What about the other direction; do pure statistics benefit from the inclusion of anecdotes? I would expect that to be the case, at least in the general population; but you seem to say that it's not.
Remember to take the most debatable data points, assume them to be facts and overgeneralize them to show how it is an indication of something systemic.
I would love to see the first diagram with circles coloured according to average wage of the respective occupation. I would expect to see more high-income male occupations and vice versa – a correlation that explains most of the gender pay gap.
Your statement reflects a misunderstanding of how the gender pay gap is analyzed. The pay gap is a gap between genders performing the same occupation.
Therefore, job position/title is not a confounding factor. Some confounding factors (which are well known and usually accounted for) are length of time at the job, education level and prior experience.
There is still a pay gap of ~5c/dollar adjusted. Non adjusted is 20c/dollar. There is no excuse for the adjusted discrepancy and the unadjusted discrepancy will require the crumbling of boys clubs.
While there's a small discrepancy, the "77 cents on the dollar" thing has been spread so much that I think it's important to put into context the real differences. I agree with your statement, but it's also true to say "the gender wage gap [as presented in media/by politicians] is a myth." To me, both sides seem at least slightly deceptive. Saying it's a myth outright makes people forget that there's a real issue, but saying that it exists outright confirms the false notion of a 23% gap for the same work. It's obviously extremely unfair that a man and a woman doing the same exact job in the same exact way are getting different pay. One thing that I started wondering about while reading your comment (as a confounding variable, I guess) is proportions of men/women in every company. Clearly if women were much cheaper to employ, only women would be working many jobs. What I wonder about is whether the discrimination occurs because employers with more women pay less on average. As an example, Google might employ more women than Facebook (their culture may be seen as more friendly to women, for example, or their hiring practices may differ). But at the same time, it's entirely possible that Facebook pays higher on average regardless of gender. So in this situation, women are choosing (or being chosen for) more lower paying jobs in the same industry, and thus being discriminated against indirectly in terms of pay. Clearly this too is an issue, but it changes the ways that this issue can be addressed.
Seems to be a few as other comments have pointed out. But the female labour-force participation rate at the start of the dataset would make it difficult for individual job categories to switch from majority female to male over this particular time span.
>Between 1950 and 2015, there were 82 occupations out of 459 that flipped from male to female and/or female to male. Out of the 82, 72 shifted from male to female majority. There were 28 occupations that shifted from majority female to male.
Programmers and computer operators did, but I can't find it in the page.
"Computer" used to be a person crunching numbers using slide rules and mechanical calculators and it was an overwhelmingly female profession. When machines appeared, the operators were predominantly the same personnel that were doing it by hand earlier.
There isn't a lot written about that time. So my understanding could be incorrect. But as far as I know, back in the 40s/50s, programmer meant something different and very specific than what people today might mean. Basically, a programmer would have all the algorithms and pseudocode written and chosen by someone else (a man), and your job as programmer was to translate (for pseudocode) or transcribe (when provided more direct instructions) that into the computer.
Even this was not easy though - programmers may have had to debug the pseudocode or a broken computer (not nearly as reliable as our modern ones). Once it was revealed it wasn't a straightforward process, men took over. My understanding is that this happened relatively quickly - in the 50s or 60s.
But, still, it was a job most people on here probably wouldn't care for.
If anyone has any good books on this subject, I would love some recommendations.
It's listed as "Computer Scientists and Systems Analysts/Network systems Analysts/Web Developers" and their dataset starts in 1970.
Their dataset shows it always being a male field - in fact, in 1970, it's even more male than now in their dataset. It shows a rise of women from '70 to '90, and then flat until today.
Since the launch of personal computers (the Altair in '71) was supposed to be the catalyst of the change of programming into a male field, I'm suprised to see the data directly contradicting that.
Perhaps it reflects a difference in job titles - "computer scientists" vs "programmers" if programming (the women's work) was titled separately because it was considered a more menial job.
The usual story (as told in Nathan Ensmenger's "The Computer Boys Take Over") has the change earlier than that. He says in the late 1940s to early 1950s lots of women were hired for "coding" positions, which at the time was seen as a a fairly unskilled, clerical work. In the 1950s, the division between high-level "programmers" and route "coders" disappeared, leaving just programmer-coders who did both, and as a result there was quite a few female programmers. Then in the 1960s the computer industry grew dramatically, but at the same time the image of what a programmer was, and what kind of characteristics made you a good programmer, also shifted a lot, and by the end of the 1960s it had become a very male field.
The personal computer revolution is usually mentioned in connection with a different trend. Throughout the 70s the proportion of female computer science majors was steadily climbing, then somewhere around 1984 this trend broke [1]. It's often said that this has something to do with video games becoming popular toys.
They have "Software Developers, Applications and Systems Software" and "Computer Programmers." The latter goes back to 1970. However, I'm really not sure if there's supposed to be a difference between the two.
I basically went to the circles thing in the middle and started moving my mouse around till I found one that I thought might have been female dominated in the past, then I checked it in the box below.
I was wondering the same thing. "Also the Paper Goods Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders" seems to be more in the female to male category and not fluctuating category.
Probably just depends on what they decide to include in each category.
I can tell you that when I was studying math (2008-2013), almost all of my professors were male. But maybe "university professor" isn't the only thing they include in their data set for mathematicians, but for physics maybe it is.
Since this data is about occupation and not training, it seems like the "Teacher" category would skew a lot of other categories. Is a Computer Programming Teacher in the "Teacher" category or the "Computer Programming" category? Probably "Teacher" since that is their occupation. But it hides the fact that they probably have the background & skills to be a programmer but chose a different outlet to use their knowledge.
I thought the section showing which fields had gender oscillations was an interesting axis to pivot on.
Another interesting metric might be: "Jobs that the gender distribution has remained the most static"
and
"Once Female, Shifting to majority male" to contrast the section "ONCE MALE, SHIFTING TO MAJORITY FEMALE"
I wish there were three additional views to this data:
1) Average salary, adjust the circles such that they change shape based based on this value.
2) Total $ spent on employing people in this occupation
3) Average cost to train someone in this occupation
It could get real interesting if you could intersect data like average salary with the number of people in a field, and the cost to benefit ratio of training v's income once on the job.
I think we all know what direction it would point in, but it'd be nice to see it regardless...and hey, maybe i'm wrong? [although we know that's unlikely here]
Would be very interesting to see which professions trended from very bias to near parity, and study those to see what truly influenced that change with the goal of applying those influences to other professions that remain biased or are trending away from equality.
It's interesting, but I personally could not find any "surprises". Common job circles are pretty much obvious. Technological progress is probably one of the main reasons of the male->female shift.
I don't have a whole lot to add, except to say that this is a great article with excellent presentation of data (minus the flexible boundaries; -10% female construction!).
So according to that, software developers are around 20% female. That seems high to me, from my own experiences.
Even still, with all the "let's get more women in tech" stuff I read, are there initiatives to get women in the other jobs even further to the left on that graph? (largely physical labor jobs)
There are specific factors, such as the age of a company, the experience distribution/requirements, standard working arrangements (hours, overtime expectation, on-call) which are correlated with deviations from the mean.
No, people tend to be only interested in professions that are "hip" enough. Nobody is going to glamorize plumbers (even though they certainly should!).
Twice as many women were suggested they could take up a trade as wished that they were offered that opportunity .. but the article spins that as 24% weren't suggested to take up a trade.
I live in UK and was never given any career guidance, I wish a trade had been offered to me too; I'm not sure that's a difference based on sex though.
I hate the common form "these women weren't given X, it's horribly sexist" without comparison to show it was even different for men at all.
Things got out of control with the advent of the social network movie. All of a sudden the general population thought coders were snorting cocaine off strippers in Palo Alto while wiping their bums with hundred dollar bills. Now everybody wants to join the party.
I don't think the comment is nonproductive. The majority of "women in tech" issues like this post is referring to, are belittled/misunderstood due to the differences in individual experiences. It's a fair comment to point out at this sometimes works in the reverse as well (i.e. sometimes there are more woman and/or fewer problems).
I've been lurking here since it started. It's not patronizing - it's pointing out a basic statistical fact. Has the bar on HN truly fallen so low that pointing out that anecdote != data is now considered rude?
Not as strongly, but there is demand for male nurses - they need stronger people to help move people around, and men are stronger. (biological facts, etc)
You could, but might face liability. Also, perhaps not a full time job but also not easy to schedule. So you'd be paying someone to sit around 90% of the time.
It would be interesting to know for different types of software developers, embedded, front end, scientific etc. Sometimes 20% seems high to me, but I only work at one company so I'm sure I'm missing something.
I'm sure that will work swimmingly. The "Everybody Can Code" craze led to a ton of bootcamps and now they are falling one by one. Turns out not everybody can code.
Citation needed. It's a neutrally worded data visualization article, it doesn't even reference IT or the SV drama wrt gender distribution, nor does it pass judgment on the data it presents.
(I shared it in my work slack, mind you I don't work in Bay Area and we haven't had trouble with aggressive political correctness etc yet)
It's hard to explain without being misconstrued. The bay area tech scene is embedded in the general culture of the SF Bay Area itself, and that culture is very sensitive to these topics. It's like opening a recent wound before letting it heal.
Imagine a school shooting happened where you were recently and then some shared an article about the distribution of school shootings around the country on company chat. Just not a good thing to do.
For example, in a small organization one person might perform the duties of a janitor and of a maid. If that person is male he will probably be called a janitor, and if that person is female she will probably be called a maid.