Telephone operation was a good career for women.
Then it got automated.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/7/18/23794187/telephone-operator-switchboard-automation-att-feigenbaum-gross
Answering the Call of Automation: How the Labor
Market Adjusted to the Mechanization of Telephone Operation
https://www.nber.org/papers/w28061
Abstract
Telephone operation was among the most common jobs for young American women in the early 1900s. Between 1920 and 1940, AT&T adopted mechanical switching technology in over half of the U.S. telephone network, replacing manual operation. Although automation eliminated most of these jobs, it did not affect future cohorts’ overall employment: the decline in operators was counteracted by reinstating demand in middle-skill clerical jobs and lower-skill service jobs. Using a new genealogy-based census-linking method, we show that incumbent telephone operators were most impacted, and a decade later more likely to be in lower-paying occupations or have left the labor force.
Automated telephone switching eventually displaced
the women at the switchboards. But they kept their jobs for decades after the
technology arrived
https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/RichmondFedOrg/publications/research/econ_focus/2019/q4/economic_history.pdf
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/7/18/23794187/telephone-operator-switchboard-automation-att-feigenbaum-gross
https://www.nber.org/papers/w28061
Abstract
Telephone operation was among the most common jobs for young American women in the early 1900s. Between 1920 and 1940, AT&T adopted mechanical switching technology in over half of the U.S. telephone network, replacing manual operation. Although automation eliminated most of these jobs, it did not affect future cohorts’ overall employment: the decline in operators was counteracted by reinstating demand in middle-skill clerical jobs and lower-skill service jobs. Using a new genealogy-based census-linking method, we show that incumbent telephone operators were most impacted, and a decade later more likely to be in lower-paying occupations or have left the labor force.
https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/RichmondFedOrg/publications/research/econ_focus/2019/q4/economic_history.pdf