Ms. Red finger nails, lipstick and bleached hair looks ready to wire up a house or pump out a septic tank.

As a software engineer, I'm all for more women in evening dress working in the field. As long as standards aren't lowered, and the most qualified candidate is hired, I'm "ok" with the idea of trying to get more women in non traditional roles.

But at the same time I want efforts made to have more heterosexual male teachers in the K-12 area.

"Virginia officer killed on her first day on job ..."

"... first woman inmate in state history to lose her life while battling a wildfire ..."

So the risks are real and known, women have the "right" to apply/not apply, and this personal choice to "not apply" is a bad thing.

I vote these guys get first dibs on going into a rusted old tanker to fix (weld) things up (no personal injury beanies for failing during the probation period). We can film it and use it for training purposes.

Most women want to go to work in places where they can dress and groom like the woman in the photo.

All I can say is if you put that woman on an oil rig she is going to get raped. Dress like that and go to bumfuck Nigeria the locals will kidnap you and sell you into the sex slave trade. It aint pretty but that's life for you.

The people that advocate this stuff have/or do not work in a field where your product determines whether or not you are hired/fired.

The people I have encountered typically do what they can and if they can not they try to compensate by being valuable in some other way.

A female that has been welding since she was 12(ranch kids you know) is a welder.

However it is very probable that if during anyone's welding interview they state I need to come in late and leave early 'cause I have kids, ...

Bottom line is your boss only cares about what his boss wants and if you cross that you can kiss your ass goodbye, UNLESS you are a woman/minority then he needs to check with his boss before doing anything.

(Am I getting my point across here? It ain't about you cupcake.)

Profession in which I could be killed in an explosion? Thanks; I'll pass.

Explosion, fall overboard and drown, get crushed by falling equipment or debris, or losing parts of your hands because you weren't quick enough? that could be the life of anyone on an offshore oil rig.

Even if you were just in the galley slinging hash, one or more of those risks would apply. Not to mention travelling to/from said rig: helicopters crash, and boats sink.

All I can say is if you put that woman on an oil rig she is going to get raped.

I'm pretty sure there is more than one woman working offshore rigs. Is this a "men are ravenous rape machines" claim??

Explosion, fall overboard and drown, get crushed by falling equipment or debris, or losing parts of your hands because you weren't quick enough? that could be the life of anyone on an offshore oil rig.

Confession: I cried last week when I had car trouble.

I'm good in human-on-human verbal dustups; it's just anything with screws, bolts, and moving parts that turns me into emotional dust.

I could go head to head with males. I could climb trees faster, play on their baseball teams, run as fast, hold my own in physical play... then I turned 9.

"Is this a "men are ravenous rape machines" claim??"

No, this is a we drill for oil in third world hell holes argument. Men get kidnapped and ransomed back all the time. Women usually don't get ransomed back. The African-Asian slave trade is alive and well.

Honestly, an offshore rig is safer than a land based one in most of these locations for men and women both.

(Also, I was specific about 'that woman'. She is dumb enough to wander off and try to 'help' the locals.)

There's a reason that Rudyard Kipling's poem about the people who keep the world running is called 'The SONS of Martha'.

http://www.mindspring.com/~blackhart/The_Sons_of_Martha.html

Not all women are quite as bothered by things mechanical as our gracious hostess. I have known some excellent women engineers. It's just that, on average, the great majority of women don't find any attraction in the kinds of work that support and expand the comforts of our civilization. They just don't. I don't know why, either. And I just don't see any reason to try and persuade more women into work they just don't want to do.

llater,

llamas

As noted above, there are a whole lot of menial or arduous jobs that most women don't want to do. Construction for one is a very unforgiving trade. A few women make a good living at it. They have to have tough skins. But you know what? So do the men. There's a hierarchy where the apprentices have to know their place. There are general contractors who make impossible demands on the trades, and inspectors who sometimes want to jerk people around. Sometimes there are customers with unrealistic demands. Everyone watches each other, and then they are also watched by the customers -- these days, there are a lot more home and building owners who are knowledgeable about construction and will spot substandard work.

It's a job where you live and die on your reputation. Combine that with the physically demanding and sometimes very dangerous nature of the work, plus the potential liability if you screw up, and you've got something where few woman feel the desire to pursue it. So what now? Are we going to have to have the equivalent of '70s union featherbedding, where a bunch of women are nominally employed but really only have sinecure jobs? Is that going to be a cost added on to all construction?

Amy, you are right but phrased it backwards, in my mind.

It's not a question of a woman who is child-focued having the same opportunities. It is a question of whether women should have the choice of which focus to follow. Because many (most?) women have the opportunity for either, but others disagree with their choices and then say they clearly didn't have opportunity. Bullsh*t.

Please don't pander to their way of thinking. I, and almost every other at-home (or part-time) mom I know (and dads too) had plenty of opportunities, but chose differently. There are a lot of assumptions going on if we are, as a group, determined to "not have opportunities."

No, this is a we drill for oil in third world hell holes argument.

AH, that, yes.

Are we going to have to have the equivalent of '70s union featherbedding, where a bunch of women are nominally employed but really only have sinecure jobs? Is that going to be a cost added on to all construction?

We sort of have that already, due to minority and women-owned business set-asides in government contracts.

Usually, it involves the husband who is the actual contractor to restructure the business as a corporate entity with his wife as the CEO. She then is able to bid on those set-aside contracts that he wouldn't have had a chance at gaining. As well as all the others.

That's the way it's been practiced in my locality. And those are well paying, high-end jobs.

I'd like to see some of these special snowflakes do roofing work in Tallahassee. Humping 100 lb shingle pallets up ladders, working in the hot sun, dodging the occasional heavy rain shower complete with thunder, and in commercial situations, hot tar.

I knew a young lady who lamented that she'd be working in IT in the air conditioning and look out and see the guys doing manual labor in the hot Texas sun and feel sorry for them. I didn't have the heart to remind her that such computer rooms are air conditioned for the benefit of the hardware, not the employees.

Re I R A's last part-- I've done construction, and think about the sort of women in air conditioned offices... who typically look down on the very men who BUILT those offices.

Women perennially whine about "What happened to CHIVALRY?" while forgetting that chivalry is a lot about shielding women from work that gets them killed or maimed. 94% of workplace deaths are male. When women demand equal opportunity such as this, why should we talk about 'chivalry'?

I didn't have the heart to remind her that such computer rooms are air conditioned for the benefit of the hardware, not the employees. ~ Posted by: I R A Darth Aggie at February 29, 2016 10:54 AM

Early in my working life, I worked in an office with a fire-proof vault with auto-closing doors to protect the files.

I once joked that the place to be in a fire was in the vault. The department manager advised against it as the room would be flooded with a chemical that sucked the oxygen out of the air in order to suffocate the fire.

When I asked what would happen to any employee caught in the room when the automatic fire doors shut, she said, "he'd die." The files in that vault were, apparently, more important than any employee.

That, she told me is why she never went in there. She sent her employees in there to get anything she needed.

Harsh lesson to learn so early in one's career.

These ideas of needing to even everything out is effecting our group at work today. We have a woman on our team that is basically untouchable and up on a pedestal, because she's visibly involved in the "Women in Engineering/STEM" initiatives the higher-ups are all over.

It wouldn't bother me, but she is one of those that's really good at taking credit for the work of others by dressing it up in slideshows and presenting it like she was the one that made stuff happen. Thankfully my exposure has, so far, been relatively minimal. I've heard some stories though that she's driving others crazy.

The stupid thing is, we have (and have had) several other women on the team who are actually really good Unix sysadmins but who want to do the job and not spend their time doing political crap.

Are we going to have to have the equivalent of '70s union featherbedding, where a bunch of women are nominally employed but really only have sinecure jobs? Is that going to be a cost added on to all construction?

My dad lived through some of that in the late 70's/early 80's when he worked for AT&T. They whined that there weren't any women managers in the offices. When it was pointed out that the older guys that couldn't as easily climb the poles and do the other uncomfortable work anymore, they tended to migrate to office jobs, and there hadn't really been enough women in the field long enough to migrate to those positions. So the union demanded women work in the field to "earn" those spots.

He tells me how so many man hours were wasted for a long time where a woman would go to do a job, couldn't put the ladder up, had to have a 2nd truck roll with a man to setup the ladder, wait for the woman to do the job, then put the ladder back on her truck/van. Stupid. Those few that could do the work on their own though.. they were just one of the gang.

I'm all for the best person getting the job, but when you can't physically do the frickin job.. the standards shouldn't be lowered just to make people feel better.

As has been said many times before; equal opportunity does not always translate into equal outcome. Get over it.

And, equal outcome does not mean that there has been equal opportunity. Just ask those who have been passed over so that someone else can be promoted to satisfy some stupid quota.

That being said, many years ago I worked on an assignment which was training mostly construction folks - from workers to managers (managers, who spent most of their time in air-conditioned offices looking at blueprints). The class was a 3-day course, mostly lecture and quizzes; but the third day was hands on, very hands on, in that it involved getting down and dirty with putty, caulking, sealants, etc., playing with some small power tools such as electric drills, jigsaws for cutting into drywall, etc.

Most folks, who clearly wanted to do the hands on, made sure to wear jeans, work boots, etc. on the third day. (as we told them)

Ha! As for those who worked in offices? Clearly didn't want to get dirty as they dressed in their regular office clothes; often claiming that they "forgot."

Almost all of the attendees were men. However, there was this one woman, who didn't want anyone to know that her father was the owner of the company where she was a manager, on the first few days of class dressed in office attire. The only thing missing from her office attire was a set of pearls!

But, on that third day she was just as gong-ho as those who wanted to do the hands on. She came dressed in jeans and work boots; brought her own gloves and safety goggles. She was ready!

And, unlike all the other field guys, she wanted to try everything that we taught. Her reasoning was that if she was expected to tell others how to do their job she felt that she needed to fully understand everything. And hands on is the best teacher! (that why we included it as part of the training, duh!) She was, in fact, one of the few managers who did the hands-on portion of training. So many other managers just stood around and watched, just like they normally do, I guess. But, not her!

So, by all means, it should be equal opportunity; but, do not make exceptions for those who don't/can't meet the standards.

Why men make more money than women, as evidenced by the "women and children first" escape policy on the Titanic:

Women total survived: 72%
Children total survived: 50%
Men total survived: 19%

Are we going to have to have the equivalent of '70s union featherbedding, where a bunch of women are nominally employed but really only have sinecure jobs? Is that going to be a cost added on to all construction?

There's something I noted in my last project CD. Rail construction, our company was doing signalling, communications, radio, that sort of stuff. Now I'm an engineer, about 50% office 50% site, so I used to joke that I'd have to stay home if I sprained my pointing finger because how would I answer questions (it goes there)? In reality, even though I'm not very physically capable, I still lift boxes, pit lids, bolt things in place, help put up temp fences that have blown over - all the stuff that just needs to be done on a site.

We had a back office team consisting of all the other functions you have to have these days. An environmental department, various systems engineering (quality assurance, requirements traceability, systems analysis) departments. And they were mostly women. Women who had trained as engineers and had consciously decided to stay out of the field (except for inspection visits to make sure we were doing *our* jobs properly) or even doing serious design work in the office. No, just raising objections to the actual work being done by other people.

It's not all women and those sorts of roles need to be done - I guess, although there are days when I grump about wanting to get on with my job without jumping through so many hoops. But it is interesting to see how men and women self select into different roles.

Why men make more money than women, as evidenced by the "women and children first" escape policy on the Titanic:

Women total survived: 72%

Children total survived: 50%

Men total survived: 19%

Posted by: Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at February 29, 2016 12:41 PM

It was also a class thing.

The survival rate among the various classes:

First Class: 62%
Second Class: 41%
Third Class (Steerage): 25%

The majority of the women and children in First Class survived.

The disparity of the survival rates helped usher in the end of the Edwardian Era and started the demise of the British class system.

Walter Lord wrote two very interesting books if anyone's interested in reading about the Titanic.

• A Night to Remember (made into a movie in 1954)
  
• The Night Lives On

Yes, there was a class component to the survival rates on the "Titanic".

But 'women and children first' was a real thing in those days, generally observed and understood without question. It even had a name - the "Birkenhead Drill" - named after the troopship HMS Birkenhead, which sank off South Africa in 1852. The entire male contingent aboard, over 600 men, stood fast on deck or at their posts while the lifeboats were loaded with all the women and children aboard. In the subsequent sinking, 5 out of 6 of the men lost their lives.

llater,

llamas

Related: The most ignored memorial in Washington.