It's different but the same, in the sense that your primary occupation is PhDing, you aren't paid well, and the most obvious pathway to reasonable employment is

It's different but the same, in the sense that your primary occupation is PhDing, you aren't paid well, and the most obvious pathway to reasonable employment is joining some faculty. In the humanities, social sciences, and sometimes math, it's mostly teaching instead of research. The students are paid a bit worse (usually). The overall deal is a bit better because a TAship really can be a part-time job if you work efficiently and don't "care too much". Of course that also means the research work is unpaid. Whereas the type of research work done by most STEM PhDs is more like a 40 hr work week on top of occasional TAing, so the overall deal is worse but at least you're being paid for the thing that can get you a decent job afterwards. Different tradeoffs. It's really the applied/clinical life/health sciences, education, and a few other "professional pathway" fields that work much differently. Most people getting those degrees aren't interested in TT faculty positions and are working a full-time or part-time "grown up" job outside of the university, so the power dynamics and expectations are quite a bit different.