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>Historically, when jobs are male dominated, they pay well and have good benefits. If they become female dominated, the pay drops and it becomes a dead end job that is no longer held in high esteem.

If you double the supply it would be weird if the laws of economics magically cease to function. If there is an oversupply of workers then wages are going to drop and it doesn't matter if you add women first and then men or men first and then women.

I don't see any reason to believe that's the explanation. The counter example is programming which went in the opposite direction: It began as female dominated and was not deemed to be important and yadda and later became male dominated and now it is well paid and so forth.

So why didn't pay for programmers plummet when "supply doubled" because we added men to the equation?

I'm happy to entertain explanations like "Well, whether it is PC or not, everyone knows women end up doing the housework. So the reality is that men typically have more time, energy and mental focus to offer, so it's not unreasonable to think they will bring more to the table."

But please don't give me mathematical BS explanations that don't fit the data. I've had a class in statistics and I've read plenty of statistics books, including a great classic called "How to lie with statistics." Math doesn't really explain the gender based outcomes that have been well documented for decades at a minimum.

> Women don't really need to do anywhere near as much housework as they do. The amount of hours worked by a homemaker has stayed steady at 60 hours per week for about 300 years while we have increasingly created household technology to make the job easier. Meanwhile, the demands on her have crept up to keep her working that many hours.

This is the story of every other job, too. Increased productivity doesn't really lead to shorter hours worked in any other field, either. Children today enjoy more opportunities and a higher standard of living, which necessitates some parental care (no one was driving kids to soccer a hundred years ago.)

> You can look up terms like "Pink Collar Ghetto" if you want to explore that further.

I did, and I noticed it uses the typical "men vs. women" stuff. "Men have/women have" statements, presenting them as diametrically-opposed factions. Your source has good stats, but I can't say I like this sort of rhetoric.

> Plenty of women find it soul crushing to be a homemaker.

I mean, lots of people hate their jobs. Change jobs. As you said, get a divorce. Maybe that wasn't acceptable a hundred years ago, but it is today.

> Trying to establish an adequate income after being a homemaker for years can be a very hard row to hoe.

Well, yeah. Those people have been out of whatever profession for usually between a dozen and two dozen years; I know others who've had medical absences of just a few years and had serious difficulty re-entering their professions. The people I know who had an easy time of going back to work stayed somewhat engaged with their professional communities. They attended some events, maybe did a little freelance work. Doesn't have to be much, just enough to remind people that you still exist and keep up-to-date on the happenings of the industry.

> Adult men (married with kids) typically choose colleges that serve their career goals and move the family there. Adult women (married with kids) typically attend whatever school happens to be conveniently nearby and not too expensive. Unsurprisingly, men tend to have better credentials that are more career enhancing.

Are you referring to going back to school? For young undergrads, they don't base their decisions on this as they aren't married and don't have kids. This was different with older generations (especially with, say, soldiers who came back, married, and went to school on the GI bill.) As far as I'm aware, most people who go back to school do so at either a local community college or online, often part-time, regardless of sex.

> Men who start businesses are much more likely to start as a full-time thing with adequate funding as their new career focus. Women who start businesses are much more likely to be starting "lifestyle businesses" that will accommodate the demands on their time as wives and moms, often because they have special needs kids or because the details of their husband's career make it impossible for them to pursue a serious career or regular job. Unsurprisingly, businesses founded by men tend to be much more financially successful than those founded by women.

You claim that, "Women who start businesses are much more likely to be starting lifestyle businesses" that will accommodate the demands on their time as wives and moms". While this is true, "lifestyle" businesses aren't the only available options. I know a guy whose wife has more "rigid" career. When they had kids, he quit his job and started a chemical import/export business. He makes good money, has lots of flexibility, but no "lifestyle" business. There's nothing that stops a lady from doing the same.

> While dismissive replies are par for the course on HN, it remains rather aggravating to have decades of reading up on the subject dismissed so casually and by a new account that was about two minutes old when you left the comment.

While dismissal is rude, account age is one hundred percent irrelevant.

I'd like to address your above comment:

> Women and men generally do not face the same options. They simply don't.

No one forced ladies to get married, have children, or stay home with them. At least, not in the past decades. What opportunities to men have that ladies do not?

I'm aware of these patterns, I just think they're a downstream consequence of perfectly normal and healthy specialization.

>The amount of hours worked by a homemaker has stayed steady at 60 hours per week for about 300 years while we have increasingly created household technology to make the job easier. Meanwhile, the demands on her have crept up to keep her working that many hours.

At the same time, the birth rates have been going down, now standing at sub-replacement rates in many countries. With the present development, it seems like both trends will continue. It seems like a more reasonable idea then to try and encourage women to be homemakers.

It seems like the efficiency remains about the same - being a homemaker supposedly requires less work now, but women also have less kids. Some stuff seems like it should be more efficient, but the human aspects will never be possible to automate.

Or, I mean, you can, and people do - many parents let the iPad raise their kids. But it's not a good thing.

>Historically, when jobs are male dominated, they pay well and have good benefits. If they become female dominated, the pay drops [...]

>[..] men tend to have better credentials that are more career enhancing.

>[..] businesses founded by men tend to be much more financially successful than those founded by women.

All of this is reasonable. I could put forth some alternate explanations (men have higher testosterone -> can take better decisions under pressure -> better businessmen), but it doesn't matter. Men bringing home the bacon and women taking care of the household is a perfectly normal and healthy state of affairs.

>Adult men (married with kids) typically choose colleges that serve their career goals and move the family there.

What adults attend colleges?

>Women were routinely prescribed Valium for depression when, arguably, they should have been told to get a divorce, but trying to establish an adequate income after being a homemaker for years can be a very hard row to hoe.

Yes, that is the nature of these things. Even if they do divorce, they're an old woman with pre-existing children. Of course it would be hard to return to their carefree 20s. This is why, like everyone else, they should plan ahead.

If a man makes a bad decision going into college, studying something that turns out to be a poor fit, then he will face an uphill climb trying to find a new career and an employer willing to accept him despite of his past. This is just the accepted state of affairs, and it's why we place such emphasis on making sure kids make the right choices the first time around.

It's regrettable, but the alternative - an existence of weak, short-term connections, where any relationship or career is entered or exited on a whim - is not much better.

>I soaked up a whole lot of such stats over the years. While dismissive replies are par for the course on HN, it remains rather aggravating to have decades of reading up on the subject dismissed so casually and by a new account that was about two minutes old when you left the comment.

I do not object to the fact that there are patterns pushing women into staying home, I object to the claim that this is regrettable. To me, women working is a sign of financial desperation, whereas for men it is a natural part of life and something from which meaning is derived.

You see this with the successful businesswomen - becoming a businesswoman completely destroys their ability to have a family, forcing them into a sterile and anti-natural lifestyle. Whereas, even the top male CEOs generally enjoy healthy family lives, if a bit challenged owing to their long hours.

The answer isn't to make it easier for women to work, it's to realize that division of labour is an inherently good thing.

"And if so, we must infer that all things are produced more plentifully and easily and of a better quality when one man does one thing which is natural to him and does it at the right time, and leaves other things." –Socrates

I do not object to the fact that there are patterns pushing women into staying home, I object to the claim that this is regrettable.

My initial post was explanatory of a well established phenomenon (that people don't like to hear about, so it's common to get downvoted for saying "Yup, that's a thing and here's some of the stuff that is probably driving it") and my follow-up comment that you replied to was data backing up my claims.

You are reading in claims of regret that I did not make. Seeking to understand why my life turned out different from what life, the universe and everything led me to expect is not an expression of regret. It is an expression of puzzlement and a desire to figure out how to get what I want out of life in the future so I don't end up some bitter old maid.

I'm a person of few regrets. But the reality is that getting divorced after two decades as a homemaker has left me with a raft load of financial problems that have proven to be surprisingly stubborn, so we will have to agree to disagree about the wonderfulness of women specializing in this particular way and society reinforcing that whether they want it to be so or not.

Without the claims of regret, I think it becomes nonsensical. I am of the opinion that women should stay at home with the kids. Any development driving this is, ipso facto, good.

Divorces are regrettable. The fact that they carry with them financial consequences is not. That is, after all, what people are entering into – "Till death do us part". They should be as unpleasant as possible without being legally impossible, so that they are used only as a last resort. This will put the onus on the counterparties to do their due diligence before entering into the predicate marriages, a clear and present benefit to society.

I've started multiple replies to this comment and never finished them. I was also busy trying to meet a deadline and that took priority.

If this isn't a sock puppet, you are apparently brand new here. I'm guessing you are new because you don't seem familiar with the cultural norms for the site.

And I'm not sure there is any good way to engage you, but I'm a demographic outlier and I spent years homeless and I hated being given the silent treatment by people who were doing so out of malicious motives -- assuming the worst about me, not giving me any kind of fair chance and so forth. You don't know me so you have no way of knowing that my silence is more a signal of "I have no idea how to engage you. This just seems like a bridge too far." and I remain uncomfortable with remaining silent when I know it may come across as malicious.

I was a homemaker for about two decades. I liked being home with my kids and being a military wife. I got divorced because it became clear that staying was a death sentence for me and possibly for my sons.

I was diagnosed late in life with a genetic disorder. One of my sons has the same thing.

My ex was all too happy to agree with doctors that it was the fault of my genes that I was so sick. It was a way to wash their hands of responsibility for a lot of things.

So it became clear to me that I would die because of his unwillingness to look out for my welfare and no one was even going to blame him for it. Everyone was going to blame my genes.

So I fled for my life in essence under very difficult circumstances. I also spent several years homeless.

You are making generic statements about how you think things should go and you are doing so knowing that I'm divorced and it negatively impacted me, but I assume you don't really know the details of what I have been through and it's been extremely bad in a "I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy" sort of way.

So that makes is hugely challenging to try to engage you in good faith.

I was a homemaker and full-time mom for so long in large part because my parents were big believers in the idea that children need to be looked out for and cared for. My sister stayed home for a few years with her child even though she had a well-established career. This was a very big thing in the family, that the family made sure someone was there for the children. I flew out to take care of my sister's baby for a month so her baby wouldn't have to go to daycare (after all her parental leave and such had run out). Then she quit and stayed home with the child.

But this devotion to the children in the family didn't always fall along gendered lines.

When my brother's wife left him under shocking circumstances that he could have never predicted, he got custody of their infant child and he moved back home. Our father quit work to provide full-time care for that baby, though he had never changed a single diaper for any of his own children.

My father was a career soldier who fought in the front lines of two wars and had a Purple Heart. He hunted. He had guns up on the wall. He was an old fashioned manly man.

He never learned to do housework or cook. My mother continued to do all that. But he stayed home with his grandchild and changed diapers for the first time in his life.

So I think it is too rigid to insist that women in specific must be the ones who stay home with the kids, but I'm pretty appalled by the excessively low value that American culture places on the welfare of our children. That's not at all in line with the family values that I grew up with.

I don't know how to solve that, but I don't think overly rigid policies help with that.

I'm on record as not self identifying as a feminist. Feminists are frequently openly hostile to homemakers and former homemakers. They treat them like they aren't really people.

A lot of people treat homemakers like they aren't really people. I don't really understand that. That's not part of the culture I grew up with.

I don't know if this comment is constructive or not. I'm not looking to fight with you and we might agree on more than you would guess.

But it's super hard to figure out how to get there from here when staring at a comment that boils down to "The nearly six years you were homeless and no one would help you establish an earned income because you are a woman and you were literally going hungry at times is totes fine with me." That's really rather hard to swallow, even when assuming you don't know those details about my life.

I will probably be stepping away from this conversation. It seems like a hugely difficult conversation to have and it seems unlikely to go well.

I've been here for a while lurking, it's only now that I decided to make an account.

Thank you for your reply. I think it might be best to agree to disagree, yes. Your characterization is accurate - if women are to be homemakers, a divorcee does indeed lack a place in this world. This is unfortunate, but I believe the alternatives to be worse.

I think your point about the feminists is entirely valid. Unfortunately, that's how it is in politics. You're either for or against something. You're either in support of homemakers, in which case it's in your best interests to argue that it ought to be the only option, or you're in opposition to them, in which case you ought to argue it should be illegal, and that no woman would make the choice of her own volition.