Robin L. sent us this great visual, from Flare (via), that uses U.S. census data to show how work type has changed over time.  The image below displays the percentage of men (blue) and women (pink) in each job between 1850 and 2000:

If you go to the interactive, you can see what percentage of all workers were of any given type, by sex, for each year.

You can also look at work by gender.  Look at how women’s participation in paid work has increased over time (but watch out for the shortened y axis):

The trend for men is down and I can’t think of a good reason for why (you?), though the source explains that some modern jobs are left out because they use occupational categories from 1950.

You can also look at each job individually.  This is the image for farm laborers (again, with a short y axis):

This data is great for comparative purposes, but leaves a bit to be desired in terms of capturing the whole picture because of the missing occupations.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Phoebe sent in this Moto Guzzi website.  You can see that it allows buyers to select a “lady seat” for their motorcycle:

What is a lady seat?  As Phoebe explains:

The lady seat is simply a lowered seat to allow people with shorter inseams to straddle the bike comfortably when stopped or maneuvering by foot.

So really, it’s just a lowered seat for people who are shorter than the imagined person for whom the motorcycle is being built.

This is a use of sex as a shorthand for referencing physical characteristics that (may or may not be) true on average, but are not categorically true.  That is, women may be on average shorter than men, but not all women are short and not all men are tall.  So we have (1) a conflation of women and short stature and (2) an erasure of short men that essentially means that they cannot buy a comfortable motorcycle (unless they’re willing to buy it with a lady seat).

This kind of thing is done all the time.  In fact, it is the primary conflation that we use to justify sex segregated sports.  Women, it is often argued, can’t play football because they are too small and would get too physically knocked around.  But this (1) assumes that all women are small (which they are not) and (2) erases small men.  Few people seem to notice that it’s not only women who are excluded from football, it’s also all of the men who aren’t big enough to play with the “big boys.”  Rather than excluding women from football, we might use a weight class system (like they do in wrestling).  If we had two football leagues (say, in high school) based on weight, both sex integrated, then not only could women get a chance to play football, lots of men who otherwise don’t get a chance to play could play too.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

The answer to that question matters because, even if bloggers don’t have the ability to control what we think, they do, to a certain extent, shape what we think about.  And bloggers can sometimes make enough noise to be heard.

Kay Steiger drew my attention to the findings of a study of the blogosphere by Technorati.  Below are a selection of their findings, click over for more on who blogs and answers to other interesting questions:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Using maternal mortality, Hans Rosling illustrates the uncertainty in different ways of measuring variables:

Found at GapMinder.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

In a previous post, Gwen explained that sugar consumption rose in Britain during the late 1800s because more nutritious foods were scarce and saved for men.  Women and girls, then, consumed sugar because it offered energy, even if less nutrition.  This led to an association of sugar with women that remains to this day (think of who supposedly LOVES chocolate, binges on ice cream after a break up, etc.).

While having tea with my friend Marie in Ireland, I spotted her bag of sugar and snapped a photo for the blog:

Notice that not only do we see a giant, lipsticked kiss on the bag, but their slogan, “spread a little sweetness” (plus heart and arrow!), is a statement with a double meaning invoking both sugar and a quality associated with/required of women.

NEW! Sarah D. snapped this photo of a sugar packet, also in Ireland:

See also this post on efforts to market chocolate to men.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

From Vintage Ads, another great example of the propagation of the stereotype that women are jealous of and hateful towards one another:

The ad reminded me of the Pantene commercials from the 1980s with the slogan “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful…”  The real message not being “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful…” but, “Don’t hate me because you could be beautiful too, and if you can’t, well then I suppose you’re going to have to hate me”:

More examples of this meme here, here, here, and here.

I discuss the phenomenon, and how sexism (NOT estrogen) produces this situation, in a post about Battle of the Bods.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Angry Asian Man wrote about two East High Schools–in Rochester, New York and Akron, Ohio–with a peculiar mascot: the Orientals.

East High School merch (Rochester, New York):

Screen shot of the East High School website (Akron, Ohio):

Notice the Asian-y font and the stylistic dragon.

When high schools and sports teams recruit a type of person as a mascot, it objectifies and caricatures them.  It also encourages opposing teams to say things like “Kill the Orientals.”  This can only be okay when we aren’t really thinking about these kinds of people as real humans beings.

This reminded me:  As an undergraduate, I went to the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Our mascot was the Gaucho, which I remember being described as a Mexican cowboy (though South American cowboy may be more descriptive).  I went by the UCSB website and found these two logos.  There is a story about the first identifying it as a brand new logo; the second is for kids:

I am troubled by the Gaucho mascot for the same reasons that I don’t like the Orientals mascot, but at least authentic gauchos are not likely to enroll at UCSB the way that “Orientals” are likely students of the East High Schools.

Then again, this is the image on the front page of the UCSB athlectics website:

It does indeed read: “GLORY. HONOR. COURAGE. TORTILLAS.”  This seems to invalidate any argument that the use of the Gaucho mascot is “respectful.”

Thinking about the Orientals and the Gauchos, alongside the many American Indian mascots still found in the U.S., Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish, and the soccer team in the Netherlands who call themselves the Jews, may give us some perspective on this mascot phenomenon that thinking about one at a time doesn’t.  If we feel that one of these mascots is less discriminatory than another, what drives that feeling?  And is it logical?  Or does it stem from a trained sensibility that isn’t applied to all marginalized groups across the board?  Or is it in response to different characteristics of these different groups?  Or different contexts?

Maybe all five mascots are equally offensive and offensive for the same reasons.  But thinking about them together may also be useful for teasing out how, exactly, they are offensive.  What do you think?

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Vintage Ads.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.