
Most Female and Male Occupations Since 1950 - mustafabisic1
https://flowingdata.com/2017/09/11/most-female-and-male-occupations-since-1950/
======
tzs
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.

~~~
paulddraper
Indeed, the categories are "Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners" (predominantly
female) and "Janitors and Building Cleaners" (predominantly male).

That said, I'm not convinced there's a significant classification bias.

------
tlb
According to the first visual, secretaries are 108% female and carpenters are
-10% female. Don't trust this data too much.

~~~
l0b0
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](http://www.infovis-
wiki.net/index.php?title=Lie_Factor)

~~~
nebulous1
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 ).

~~~
rtpg
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"

~~~
paulddraper
But we need the (accurate) scale. Are carpenters 48% female and teachers 52%
female? Or is it 5% and 95%? Or 108% and -10%?

------
disconnected
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?

~~~
patio11
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.

~~~
tonmoy
The GP was asking if something happened in the 60s/70s, and I believe you are
describing the effect of WW2 which happened much earlier

~~~
seanalltogether
Vietnam

------
VirtualAirwaves
Don't we need more men in primary and secondary school teaching? I would think
so.

~~~
watwut
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.

~~~
humanrebar
> 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.

~~~
andai
> They do. There are lots of ways to do that. Just none that are attractive to
> the pedagogic establishment.

Could you elaborate?

~~~
humanrebar
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.

------
randyrand
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.

~~~
nitwit005
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.

~~~
irrational
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).

~~~
Borealid
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.

------
kharms
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.

~~~
MBCook
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.

~~~
jsonne
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.

------
heartbreak
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.

~~~
russdill
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:

[https://www.avma.org/News/JAVMANews/PublishingImages/100215g...](https://www.avma.org/News/JAVMANews/PublishingImages/100215g1.gif)

~~~
nv-vn
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.

~~~
russdill
I think it's just that it's not oncommon for vets to work well into their 60s
and even 70s. I found this site:

[https://datausa.io/profile/soc/291131/](https://datausa.io/profile/soc/291131/)

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.

------
Snoozle
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.

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

~~~
humanrebar
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?

~~~
smmorneau
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...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-
dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html)

~~~
chongli
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.

~~~
com2kid
> Is that the case? Or is it that men leave a field when the pay begins to
> drop?

Supply and demand as well. More workers willing to do a job means the offered
pay can be lower. Sellers market VS buyers market.

~~~
danjayh
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.

------
ciex
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.

~~~
daveguy
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.

~~~
nv-vn
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.

------
Practicality
Nothing that went from female to male?

~~~
exDM69
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.

~~~
Pxtl
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.

~~~
vilhelm_s
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.

[1] [https://www.ultrasaurus.com/2008/11/declining-number-of-
wome...](https://www.ultrasaurus.com/2008/11/declining-number-of-women-
studying-computer-science/)

------
lumberjack
I'd like to know what makes Physics so different from Math and Chemistry. Why
are the latter almost equal but Physics is just so overwhelmingly male?

~~~
afsina
AFAIK Most woman Mathematicians are school teachers.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
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.

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

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

~~~
danielam
Though arguably, FWIW, the meaning of "computer programmer" has also changed.

~~~
humanrebar
It clearly changed. Just like "debt collector" used to involve more property
repossession and less robocalling.

------
DINKDINK
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"

------
lawlessone
Seems like while female employment has increased much much more than male
employment has decreased.

------
verelo
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]

~~~
andai
What direction would it point in?

------
tgtweak
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.

------
andreygrehov
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.

------
Clanan
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!).

------
zaroth
Too bad that first bubble chart isn't an animated GIF showing the changes over
time. Or it could have a 'Year' slider under it.

------
11thEarlOfMar
_Automotive Service Technicians and Mechanics_

99% male

Haven't considered that, but might be the highest level of imbalance.

------
ArlenBales
The only graph that surprised me is the one that says most bartenders are
female now.

~~~
ars
Surprised me at first as well, until I realized that a bartender is basically
a waiter.

Some are also people to chat with.

Both are roles more often associated with females.

And they live off of tips, and since most drinkers are male, females do better
there as well.

------
bbarn
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)

~~~
jhgb
> 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!).

~~~
astura
[https://www.watersafe.org.uk/news/latest_news/get_girls_plum...](https://www.watersafe.org.uk/news/latest_news/get_girls_plumbing_campaign_launched/)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That's an interesting article.

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.

------
jonthepirate
The sad reality of the Bay Area is that many engineers would get into trouble
for sharing this link at work.

~~~
Cthulhu_
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)

~~~
mahyarm
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.

