I love graphical presentations of information especially ones that make me rethink my well held opinions. Graphics have the sneaky knack of appearing to simply present reality, they say: ’this is how it is’ , rather than engage in an argument with you. But can we trust them?
This week I came across an unfortunately named website called: Chart Porn: data visualizations you just gotta love. It aggregates graphical representations of data- mainly from the US press onto its site. There are some graphics on gender data that might interest GSET readers for example:
He Said she Said : words that men bloggers use more than women, and vice versa . - made me wonder about how we’re doing in this blog?
And did you know that in the USA women working in mining quarrying and oil and gas extraction earn roughly 22% more than those working education and the health services, while women in construction earn 3% less than those in education and health. However, women in construction earn 92% of what their male colleagues earn, while women in mining etc earn only 80% of what their male colleagues earn. [If you click on the chart below you should get a version you can read]
After all these years we still can’t predict where the biggest gender gaps in earnings lie – even in our SET fields. ( Gill)
I found the fact that women in construction have the lowest gener pay gap very interesting. Do you think that this is because construction is a typically masculine field, so women in the area are few in comparison to the number of men, meaning that as “exceptions to the rule” they are treated as equals? Or something completely different?
@George – I think another factor could also be that in construction a lot of men work as labourers, where as women are more likely to have an office based position with a higher salary.