I would say things have changed here and that females really do have equal opportunity. Given the free will choice ... they seem to choose the jobs where they're more protected. They seem to choose store clerk, bank teller, the medical industry, caregiving, office work,teacher,professional positions, etc.
Given a choice ... most seem not to choose jobs that involve hard manual labor or poor working conditions. They might try it out for awhile but they almost never stay with it for the long term.
I run a small carpentry / construction business. I prefer to work alone, but there are some jobs where i need to hire a temporary helper. Over the years i've hired an equal number of female and male helpers. You have to run the job differently depending upon who you are working with.
I just finished up a project last week where the helper was female. In the beginning, she seemed like a pretty good prospect. She had a strong work ethic, was well organized, and had a logical thought process. These are all good qualities for an apprentice.
Once the job got started things went terribly wrong. She was horrible to work with. She had this chip on her shoulder and something to prove.
A construction site is run something like the military. Things are done the way a man would do them. There's order and there's structure. The Master carpenter is the leader and the apprentice is the follower. She had a real problem accepting direction from a man.
This actually put her life in danger. She wandered out onto a staging that i had already begun to take apart. I looked up at her and in an even tone ordered her to get off the staging. She hesitated for about a minute and wouldn't move until i explained that the staging was about to collapse under her feet. That attitude of female pride & arrogance almost cost her life.
We got through that fiasco and then she started questioning why i tend to limit my work days to six or seven hours. I explained that it was to help keep the job costs down. That as a master of my trade i know how to work efficiently and can get an eight hours of work done in five or six.
What i didn't explain was that it's just as much about job safety. Over the years i've found that most accidents happen during that first hour of the day when you're not quite awake -or- during the last few hours of the day after fatigue has set in.
The final day of the project was a tough one. Another construction crew was scheduled to come in and re-shingle the roof the following day. Our part of the work had to be finished by the end of the day and that meant that it was going to be ten hours of hard labor. I didn't treat her any differently than any other helper but that was a day where we both had to work hard.
By 12:00 P.M. her shoulders were slumped forward and she was showing signs of fatigue. By 1:30 she had lost her concentration and production had slowed to a crawl. She kept making mistakes. By 3:00 she really wasn't moving at all but her pride wouldn't allow her to knock off for the day even when i said there's no shame in being tired.
She was a good prospect but it didn't pan out. After that experience i don't think i'll hire any more helpers at all. That one gave me some sleepless nights.
Wish i could offer something more encouraging babe but the idea that men and women are equally interchangeable on ANY job doesn't seem to hold true in my experience.
Good in theory .... maybe not so good when put into practice.
- Who do you prefer to work with? (sorry if its a repeat could not find a thread)
Overall I liked to work with the women; they gave more attention to detail and didn't bring their drama to work with them.
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