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Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

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Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#211
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.

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.

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

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.

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#213
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

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.

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#216
post #18

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've wondered the same, from a different angle: 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)?

Interesting to think about in the context of overall rate of "moving" in the US has been declining for a while[0[

[0] https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2016/comm/cb16...

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#217
post #77
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously not his own quote; it's quite famous, and it is not an ironic coinage by the women's liberation movement.

HN has an international, and mostly young, audience.

I thought everyone was a mid-thirties tech worker in the bay area /s

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#218
post #2

I'd love to see the list of jobs that flipped from female to male.

"Computer programmer" could be argued to fit that description.

This isn't shown in the data in the article.

That could be explained as the data only goes back to 1970 (that I could see, apologies if there's a way to go back further that I missed).

Is there any publicly available data source that backs this up?

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#219
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. [1] http://www.infovis-wiki.net/index.php?title=Lie_Factor

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 think the technical issue is related to the circles and their sizes.

Feels like the best solution would be to remove the percentages, with more of a vague "more female" or "more male"

Re: Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 libera…

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 yo…

I think the point is that if you're right you shouldn't have to play dirty with rhetoric to prove your point.
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