Visualization Research Project, First Year Seminar: Everything is a Network
Authors: Alex Melchert, Huikang Qian & Elliot Turner
Research Question. In the last visualization projects, we learned that non-stem majors have many distinct job categories to choose from. California’s unique and impressive economy is almost singular in terms of the world’s job market. If California was exclusive from the United States, it would be the sixth largest economy in the world. However, according to the California State Department of Finance, only 20 of the 100 most common occupations in California have roughly an equal number of male and female workers. We will investigate whether gender affects the flexibility of employment for non-stem Wooster majors.
Hypothesis. We hypothesize that there will be differences in the jump from Wooster Majors to Jobs in California between women and men. Even with recent gender equality movements, there are still jobs that are dominated by one gender or another, so we expect to find some major job categories that have only male or only female alumni. We will discover what these jobs are, as well as what jobs are shared by different genders. Patterns that separate jobs with different genders of alumni versus those that do not may be uncovered. It is possible that there are no differences across gender because the job market does not always cater to one gender another. However, we expect to find differences across gender because some jobs are often dominated by one gender or another.
Approach. We included data on non-stem Wooster alumni from 1973 to the present in our network. Our group categorized our own alumni, combining some data with another group that matched our criteria (non-stem alumni that found jobs in California). This study only included 113 alumni with a clearly categorizable job, and a non-stem Wooster major. The two networks are separated with a bold black line. One is for major job categories that share gender and one for major job categories that cater to a specific gender. In order to show the separation of gender, we organized the network of wooster majors and jobs such that majors were in the middle, with male jobs on the left side and female jobs on the right side. We kept the major job category on either side of the majors at the same horizontal level if it was the same across gender. Edge color was used to differentiate between major job categories, so that one can easily trace majors to one specific job category. We learned from the last project that too many nodes can make a presentation excessive and unreadable, so we wanted this demonstration to be comprehensive but also understandable. The node size and font size are large enough to see and read. Lastly, the link weight now depicts the range of 1-5 alumni. In other words, the thicker the link, the more alumni it represents.
Findings. Notably, we found the only alumni food preparation was a man. Also, we also found that the major job categories of community and social services and healthcare that are exclusively female drew from a wider range of majors than the major job categories that are exclusively male.The jobs in farming, fishing, and forestry, architecture and engineering, and public relations and sales managers were exclusively male alumni. Finally, the jobs in primary and secondary education, healthcare, and social services were all female alumnae.
Conclusion. Our original hypothesis was valid in that there are differences between which major job category the genders skewed towards, but many major job categories were fairly equal in male vs. female alumni. We concluded that the network on the left may have techniques or reasons for allowing different genders that could help the network on the right to achieve more gender equality. It may require further research to discover just which of the variables, such as only non-stem majors or only wooster graduates, had the largest effects. In further research, we would recommend using a larger pool of alumni to discover if the conclusions we drew apply to Wooster graduates at large.