Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

flowingdata.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 232 posts

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#171

Post by smmorneau »

humanrebar wrote: post #59
seanalltogether wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these circles had average salaries attached to them, I'm sure the article would write itself.

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?

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.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over...

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#172

Post by dsfyu404ed »

hiram112 wrote: post #166
Clanan wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 compare…

> 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.

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#173

Post by dsfyu404ed »

chrshawkes wrote: post #159
jhgb wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are there initiatives No, people tend to be only interested in professions that are "hip" enough. Nobody is going to glamorize plumbers (even though they certainly should!).

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.

Yeah. It's the guys in the sales dept that are doing the coke off of strippers.

Anything to make the sale.

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#174

Post by drpgq »

bbarn wrote: post #70

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)

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.

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#175

Post by scarmig »

malandrew wrote: post #107
scarmig wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have a citation for that with data?

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."

[0] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0163853X.2017.13...

[1] http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/08/facts-or-anecd...

[2] https://www.vox.com/explainers/2017/7/19/15925506/psychic-nu...

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#176

Post by chongli »

smmorneau wrote: post #171
humanrebar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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,…

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.

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#177

Post by dzdt »

nitwit005 wrote: post #139
randyrand wrote: post #112

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…

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.

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.

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#178

Post by irrational »

nitwit005 wrote: post #139
randyrand wrote: post #112

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…

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).

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#179

Post by irrational »

chrshawkes wrote: post #159
jhgb wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are there initiatives No, people tend to be only interested in professions that are "hip" enough. Nobody is going to glamorize plumbers (even though they certainly should!).

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.

Wait, that's not what you do?

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#180

Post by irrational »

vowelless wrote: post #49
mikestew wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a variety of possible contributing factors, primarily that 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. Along with that was the civil rights era, meaning at the least the idea of equality for all. In summary, the U. S. began, even if just a little bit, to pull its head out of its ass with…

> "a woman's place is in the home, preferably barefoot and pregnant" Is this your own quote or something that was used before the women's lib era you reference ?

I've always heard it with the addition of "and chained to the stove with enough slack to get to the bed".
Post reply on HN