Yes, it is indicative of societal issues that women outnumber men in lower pay, lower status careers like teaching and nursing whereas men outnumber women in higher pay, higher status careers like tech.
I would take strong exception your comment that teaching and nursing are "lower status" careers. My mother, grandmother, and grandfather all taught their entire lives and contributed greatly to society over the course of their lifetimes, and a college professor is a high status position by any objective measure. It's a position I would like to attain but never will because I simply don't have the time to put into it, and even though I have a good career in tech I wish I could follow in their footsteps at times.
Nursing also pays quite well -- perhaps not quite the level of FAANG salaries, but six figure salaries in nursing are not at all uncommon, and relative to the education required to get into that career it is a very good return on investment. Also, nursing is absolutely not a low status career by any metric I know of either.
You're trying to make a point, I get that -- and perhaps you could use other career fields to make it more legitimately, but the previous poster has a very good point as well. People gravitate towards careers that interest them -- my mother was never going to write software because she has no interest in that field, but she loved to teach and chose to do so her entire life. I love to teach as well, but I don't have the aptitude for dealing with an academic career.
To be clear, by lower status (and I said "lower", not "low", very specifically) I was not saying anything negative about those professions or the people who work in them. I was only referring to their status within society at the moment, in that they are not accorded great power or influence, or feted in the same way as e.g. tech entrepreneurs, doctors, or lawyers are. I think that nursing and teaching should be much higher status jobs than they currently are and I think their importance is undervalued, which frequently tends to be the case for professions dominated by women.
You mention college professor as a high status position, which I think supports the point I was making, as whilst the majority of school teachers are women, the majority of professors are men.
As to people gravitating towards careers that interest them, I think that is begging the question a bit, as it avoids considering why people gravitate towards the positions that they do. Are women more likely to go into nursing than into tech because of some intrinsic preference, or because nursing is much more frequently presented as an appropriate career path for them than tech, and they can currently see a lot more women doing that than applying to YC or whatever? I would suspect the latter.
Low status isn't the same thing as low value. One of our big problems as a society is that educators don't get half the respect their position deserves.
I think men dominate over both ends of the job market - the best and the worst jobs.
Men dominate fields that require physical labour (farm work, construction work), risk taking (soldier, fireman, policeman, professional driver), bad working conditions (mining, waste disposal), long separation from home (sailor, travelling salesmen).
Why are comparisons made only to the most desirable jobs while forgetting about the rest? I think feminists only have an issue with the top 1% of men, only care about equality with them.
Nursing is a high-pay job for its education and risk bracket. It's low pay compared to doctor, but there are other confounders like education required do get an MD license.
jki275|6 years ago
Nursing also pays quite well -- perhaps not quite the level of FAANG salaries, but six figure salaries in nursing are not at all uncommon, and relative to the education required to get into that career it is a very good return on investment. Also, nursing is absolutely not a low status career by any metric I know of either.
You're trying to make a point, I get that -- and perhaps you could use other career fields to make it more legitimately, but the previous poster has a very good point as well. People gravitate towards careers that interest them -- my mother was never going to write software because she has no interest in that field, but she loved to teach and chose to do so her entire life. I love to teach as well, but I don't have the aptitude for dealing with an academic career.
irb|6 years ago
You mention college professor as a high status position, which I think supports the point I was making, as whilst the majority of school teachers are women, the majority of professors are men.
As to people gravitating towards careers that interest them, I think that is begging the question a bit, as it avoids considering why people gravitate towards the positions that they do. Are women more likely to go into nursing than into tech because of some intrinsic preference, or because nursing is much more frequently presented as an appropriate career path for them than tech, and they can currently see a lot more women doing that than applying to YC or whatever? I would suspect the latter.
PhasmaFelis|6 years ago
visarga|6 years ago
Men dominate fields that require physical labour (farm work, construction work), risk taking (soldier, fireman, policeman, professional driver), bad working conditions (mining, waste disposal), long separation from home (sailor, travelling salesmen).
Why are comparisons made only to the most desirable jobs while forgetting about the rest? I think feminists only have an issue with the top 1% of men, only care about equality with them.
papln|6 years ago