Why did women make up the good majority of switchboard operators?

[SkippyDoodle]

Originally Posted by Grandstander

When telephone companies discovered that women could do the job as well or better than males, they naturally started hiring them in masse because they didn't have to pay females as much as they did males for the same work. Women competed for these jobs because there wasn't a broad range of jobs available to them. They had to take what was out there.

This. Some countries are still like this (e.g., South Korea), though they are slowly, slowly improving.

[GiGi603]

Originally Posted by Azureth

...switchboard operator ...

Thanks for the blast from the past memory. As a part time job at college in the mid-70's, I was a switchboard operator. It was a fun job.

[Taiko]

Originally Posted by msgsing

.

I’m not clear on the Vietnamese nail shops. Lately here they seem to be more Chinese owned. They seem to be mostly operated by new arrivals as the newer generations are better educated and into more mainstream jobs. And the Koreans operating dry cleaning stores. Prevalent here with military folks having uniforms cleaned.

Returning to Chinese now versus Vietnamese then. The goal was not nails but a business for limited English speaking refugees. The Vietnam born children are now in their 50s and more recent immigrants are not running from re-education camps and payback. The American born and raised children are more Pan Asian model minority group members than French speaking refugees who take their education and support the elders in a better way than the profit margin from a highly competitive business.

[cebuan]

Maybe it was because of the design of the mouthpiece, suspended around the neck, requiring an anatomy to prop it up.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by cebuan

Maybe it was because of the design of the mouthpiece, suspended around the neck, requiring an anatomy to prop it up.

What anatomy? Like the boys had, whom the women replaced, using the same mouthpiece setup?

[yellowsnow]

The first telephone operators were men. Then the company decided female voices were more soothing. It was a low wage job too and I am sure they wanted to hire women because they would work for less. And back then it was quite acceptable to pay women less because they didn't have a family to support.