To think this is a poor excuse for men not wanting to enter these jobs?

Yes, they could have been doing lots of cash-in-hand work, or casual work, rather than being in service o'r in a factory o'r profession.

Erm….

Not in regular employment is not the same as not working.

Especially when “not in regular employment” is not defined.

Indeed, which is why I quoted the 1901 census results in my response to you as being the more accurate.

I've looked up the stats - according to Grok 57.6% of women over 20 were married, that is 10.7M people. We know 13% of these women worked - 1.39M.
So 9.31M did not. The unmarried women in employment would likely not continue in employment once married.

It makes a stark contrast to today where 78% of married women work and 22% do not.

Agree. We don't see women banging on about representation for jobs down the sewers, because they don't matter. It's only when status is involved it seemingly becomes a problem. I say let people do what they want to do, if men are put off by female dominated occupations (which can't really be determined) it means more spaces for women.

It always pays to read the link never AI summary:

In 2018 the female labour force participation rate reached a record high of 74 percent. Reliable figuresbegan in 1851, with the first census in which it is possible to discern anything like a labour force participation rate. In 1851, 43 percent of women were reported to be in ‘regular employment’. ‘Regular’ was not defined, so that figure should be taken as a minimum of those engaged in paid employment, with no indication of hours worked.
Mid-19th century concepts of full-time employmentwere very different from our own: agricultural work was from dawn (or earlier in the case of milking) to dusk, so varied seasonally; textile factory or mining or blast furnace shifts were 12 hours; shops were open in all daylight hours, six days a week. Today’s full time eight-hour day and 40-hour week would have been considered part-time for the last 500 years.
If 43 percent of adult women were in regularemployment in the mid-19th century, then women constituted nearly one third of the total labour force(not counting unpaid domestic work). Single women and widows were much more often employed than married women, only 10 percent of whom were in regular employment.
However, while the great majority of women married, and most of those who married had children whose upbringing was certainly their mother’s responsibility, nonetheless more than half of all adult women (usually counted as 15+) were not married at any given point in time.

10% in “regular employment” but what that meant was not defined.

The men who do trades aren't usually the same men who do medicine, though I'm sure there are some who have done both.

What? Now you’re really not making any sense.

Men can do any jobs. Do you want me to list out every possible job a man can do?

Why is the under-representation of men in some professions a cause for concern?

Maybe women should work more instead of relying on men for income?

How did you get that I want a society with lots of unemployed men from “I don’t care what men are employed in”. I meant I don’t care if they’re a post man or a plumber, a teacher or a tree surgeon. As long as they’re employed.

But you knew that.

Me too! I get a thrill when I order an Uber and a female driver turns up. Or when they announce the pilot’s name before take-off and it’s a woman’s name. I love seeing women in so-called ‘men’s’ jobs.

It isn’t. I don’t in the least mind what men choose to work as, as long as women aren’t restricted by gendered ideas about ‘women’s’ and ‘men’s jobs’. As someone who’s in the middle of a big house renovation, I would love, for instance, to be able to have a wide choice of women builders, plumbers, electricians, plasterers etc.

60% female? Hmm, I'm betting that most male dominated jobs are way more disproportionate. Like, no way are 40% of refuse collectors female. The clue is that no feminist has ever protested the phrase 'binman'.

It's usually the same excuse too. That women are intimidated.

I also want men to be gainfully employed, but I don’t care what they’re employed in! Why would we want to row back from the great achievements towards female representation in fields like medicine, law, veterinary science etc.?

I’m genuinely struggling to see the argument here?

I think the causation is probably mostly that men are attracted to higher status, higher pay and riskier jobs. Rather than that women enter, and a cabal of managers lower the pay in disgust.

When programming was a methodical secretarial task, lots of women did it. In the 80s when it became associated with the possibility of riches, gambling on a startup, transforming the world etc, men became interested in it.

But why is this not associated with a drop in salaries since there is an influx of labour?

Specifically the men who enter are interested because of the rewards potential and chance to make it big. They actively want to grow the field and the total rewards available. They join risky fields that might boom or might bust, no-one knows yet. They are okay with the chance of receiving 0 compensation (startup fails) in exchange for the chance of joining the rising tide.

I think relatively fewer women are okay with that deal, and want/need to work in industries which are stable, have core hours etc. This isn't the same thing as easy necessarily, but more secure and predictable. If lots of women enter a mature, stable field, the effect is more likely to be that it simply decreases wages rather than "grows the pie" rapidly as you see in, say, AI booms.

Where I think there might be a circle is that people observe the above, that men seem to be joining the sexy, high status careers (because they are) - and then flips it so if they see a lot of men in a field, they think it must be a high-status field.

Why is men choosing not to apply to jobs that are female-dominated of any relevance to this cause? What do you propose? Forced 50:50 distribution in professions, with hundreds of women in medicine, dentistry, law etc. losing their jobs?

We want equality. Which is never a bad thing.

It’s like we’re trying to have it both ways?

We want greater female representation but not too much because that’s “male flight” which is A. Bad. Thing.