Mens Jobs That Women Cant’ Do? Think Again!
There are lots of jobs dominated by men for no real reason other than tradition really. Take for example the Haulage industry. There are female truck drivers but women make up only a tiny percentage of the overall figure. There is no strength requirement to driving a big lorry and women are able to do it just as well as men but for some reason, the industry does not appeal. Perhaps that’s because it is very male dominated.
Staying on the motor theme, it is also quite rare to see a female mechanic, but why not? Women are very manually dextrous and flexible and agile enough to squeeze themselves into small spaces underneath car engines and being a mechanic is certainly not all about strength, in fact, it’s not about strength at all. Perhaps it’s the constant dirt and motor oil that women dislike but in fact, female mechanics attract female customers who feel they are not going to be bamboozled with jargon or ultimately, ripped off.
On a completely different note, lets’ put to one side for a moment the recent and quite outrageous remark by a leading male conductor who stated that “orchestras react better when they have a man in front of them”. Why are so many orchestra conductors male? To be fair to him, he was actually talking about the possible level of distraction that could be presented by a woman in front of a usually mainly male group of musicians, but statistics reveal that there are still only a tiny proportion of females willing or able to pick up the baton. This is probably connected to the dominant male population of most orchestras although this is slowly starting to change.
The trouble with being a grip is that most people don’t even know what a grip is, let alone the fact that most grips are men. A grip is a person who builds and operates all of the complex equipment surrounding a film camera but as most the people behind the camera are male anyway, it is perhaps no surprise that there are very few female grips in the film and television business. There is no doubt this is a physical job but some of the challenges to be faced apply equally to both men and women anyway so there is actually no reason why women can’t break into this male dominated bastion and step out of the makeup department.
Why is that when women make up over 50% of the applicants to medical school, do so few of them go on to become surgeons? At Consultant Surgeon level, the rate drops to less than 10%. Well it might be fair to say on this one, that the training to become a consultant is very long and so women do go off for career breaks in order to have a family which is not quite so compatible with the long journey to becoming a consultant. It is a very male dominated profession which can be off putting for some women but once more females filter through to Professorship level and act as role models, then this is bound to have an impact on the uptake by other women. Have you heard of Niamey Wilson, a successful surgeon, mom & wife?
Click here to read her story and get some interesting tips on how to survive male dominated surgical industry & juggling between the roles.
And when was the last time or even the first time that you saw a female train driver? Women are even more under represented as train drivers than they are as consultant surgeons. Again no strength required for this job, it just doesn’t seem to be on the female radar. And yet, it offers shift work which can fit in really well with family life and would definitely suit someone who didn’t want to be stuck behind a desk all day. But isn’t always that girls are bought dolls and it is the boys who are given train sets.
So when you are looking for children’s toys and costumes, stop a minute and think, is this just social engineering which is inculcated into children at a young age. The nurses’ outfit is for her and the Doctor’s outfit is for her brother. Isn’t this just social stereotyping from a young age? So mix it up a bit and buy the pirates costume for her and let her brother have the toy kitchen.