Are they unusually well-compensated for this sort of construction work?
So...it's a pretty good living, but it's not a good life unless you just really love diving. But, even then, I can't imagine this is the fun kind of diving. Then again, as with most high dollar specialist industries, someone ambitious could probably work in it for a few years and then start a company and become management/sales/support for a team of lower ranking folks who do the hard work of actually diving. That's common in a lot of jobs that are hard on your body, like construction.
To paraphrase real world office debates, basically man dying after they did dangerous "at least knew what he did it for" while woman "stupid did not knew the risk". Judgement without knowing details in both cases. I havent seen dumb female death framed in terms of bravery, but I have seen dum male death framed that way. (This difference likely hurts men more then women imo, most paid jobs are actually safe)
Imo, neither that man nor that women meant to be death.
Take a tribe made of 10 men and 10 women, each women give birth to 4 kids during their life. You need 8 people for a very dangerous task. Are you going to send men or women? If you send 8 men and they all die, you are left with 10 women and 2 men. The two men can impregnate all the women and you have 40 kids for the next generation. The tribe will soon recover. On the other hand if 8 women die, there will be only 8 kids for the next generation, which is a much bigger hit.
That women are more risk adverse is only natural, and it is indeed the case. In fact, it maye be the most significant non-physical difference between men and women.
As for women possibly being better saturation divers, I don't know. After all, they do pretty well in space, they even seem to have some biological advantage. However, these divers are not just divers, they are also construction workers, and physical strength is important, an area where men have the advantage.
Otherwise, this could just as easily be a social adaptation (and if we are seeking equality in our society, which should try and address it).
Testosterone is strongly linked to aggression as well as financial/physical risk taking, so part of the difference between sexes is expected on that alone. [1][2]
The evolution of risk taking is actively researched [3], and we see pretty consistent sex based differences across most species.
On an individual level, women who want to take these high risk physical jobs should clearly have equal opportunity to do so. We're just unlikely to ever hit 50/50.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep11206
[2] https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn_a_0044...
The first (nature) paper appears to show that in market traders increased levels of testosterone result in more risk taking.
The third is mostly about fish and other animals, and doesn’t seem hugely relevant (though it’s interesting).
The second seems like the most interesting (MIT press article). They look at risk taking in adolescents. The paper seems to show that testosterone is linked to risk taking in males, but increased (natural) testosterone in females didn’t seem to show much increase in risk taking.
Overall, boys had very slightly riskier behavior than females. From the graphs the error bars are pretty big and the difference in risky behavior is quite small.
The difference doesn’t seem big enough that it would result in skewed gender ratios in jobs for example.
So, if this is well established in the literature, I’d expect to see better results than this. Are there papers that more really show that males are more prone to risky behavior and that this has a biological, rather than social basis?
My personal opinion is that if you’re going to make statements like this you should back them up.
As a counter example, being a police officer would I imagine not be considered the safest of jobs. But 30% of police officers in the UK are women, and the number is steadily rising:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-workforce-...
Why is this almost always a male occupation? Are women systematically excluded?
It isn't particularly dangerous in the UK. There were no officers killed in the line of duty in 2016, 2014, 2011, 2010 and 2008. Police officers have a relatively high risk of being the victim of an assault, but they're far less likely to be killed or seriously injured at work than workers in agriculture, construction, civil engineering, motor vehicle repair or waste management.
However, I’m not making any strong assertion one way or the other. The parent I was replying to effective said “it’s because men and women are different” without providing any evidence whatsoever.