OK besides this below and DEVO coming out of the Kent State massacre, what are other facts you have about the evolution of art / music /etc that wouldn't be obvious if you didn't know but, retroactively, explain and/or illuminate a LOT ?
Reminds me of how almost all the French dadaists and surrealists were WWI veterans of the trenches seriously exploring alternatives to conventional thought and language.
The earliest film editors were women bc the pieces were stitched together, hence "women's work." When male filmmakers realized that *cutting* was central to the art form (and they found a way to glue the strips), they pushed those women aside to do it themselves.
Computer programming followed a similar course; while it was considered to be just translating a process written down by some maths PhD, it was considered clerical work and done almost entirely by women.
The discipline wasn’t male-dominated until it was clear it was lucrative.
Beer making likewise was women’s work until it was clear money could be made. It makes me snicker everytime I see a toxic masculinity style beer commercial.
You can observe the inverse of this in the 20th century when women begin to become the majority in a field, it becomes less lucrative and prestigious. Examples include doctors (pediatrics first), lawyers, college professors, and med techs. The de-valuing of the field matches closely with % female.
That's interesting. I was a contract professor for 15 years, and I think the causality of that is they Uberfied profs and, systemic biases being what they are, women (and other oppressed groups) were shunted to contract work way disproportionately.
Exactly. If you take a very high status job and make it low status,you don't just reduce your budget--although you really do that!--you reduce the bargaining strength of that group of workers. It's simple misclassification. They've already done it to opticians. And yes,horror is the right reaction.
And lower budget / pay productions in my experience are across the board way more diverse by all criteria. You know, because they “need the opportunity”
Yes, this is the cycle. Downgrade pay and job security, and the work ends up magically going to systemically exploited workers. The oppression layers: work, gender, sexuality, race, disability, citizenship, etc.
It’s a huge issue with the bro claims that the gender gap is due to women trending towards lower-paying professions; as women move into a profession, its average pay goes down.
Yes, absolutely. Employers think they can get away with it when the employees are women, but also POC, disabled people, trans people, young people, and immigrants, as well as others, I'm sure.
Chicken farming too. Until the second half of the C20th chicken was rarely eaten except by people who raised them for eggs, which was essentially the pin money job on farms. (Stuff You Missed in History Class had a great episode, called The Chicken of Tomorrow)
