to think that all the people who have a problem with people using "girls" instead of "women"

[CartwrightMiss]

Should say "womanfriend" instead of "girlfriend"?

[gron]

So you are saying that because in the UK women aren't well represented in a small rang of blue collar jobs that require particular physical characteristics, they can't expect to be represented at th a cabinet table?

Eh?

Just asking, likeqbreeze- you're not a name changer, are you?

I also agree with LRD that you can twist the argument either way you want. In situations where women do the heavy lifting work (carrying water on their heads for miles), men presumably have a reason as to why they are too superior and why heavy lifting is women's work.

In situations where women do more heavy lifting, they don't seem to become equal in any political, economic or social sense by doing so. Presumably because doing more or less heavy work has not intrinsic political, economic or social benefit to the person doing them, only the benefit society thinks they are worth.

Mmm, good point freya

And there are no social barriers to women becoming miners, bin men (or bin women) etc, are there?

I'm sure a woman turning up to a strip mine in Chile and passing whatever strength tests are set would be just as likely to get the job underground with 32 men as the male candidates for the role.

I'm pretty sure that most refuse removal doesn't require lifting loads that the average woman and the average man couldn't be trained to lift, much of it is knack and a lot is automated. After all, fire fighters have to be able to lift people of all sizes.

'The last time I went for a job interview, I was pipped at the arm wrestling stage.'

Speaking personally, that's usually my best round.

Firefighters don't have to lift people of all sizes. It is dangerous to try and move people by lifting them, and used to lead to a lot of death and disability both to people being lifted and to firefighters. Firefighters now have equipment to attach people to harnesses and drag them, and usually more than one fire fighter does it. This leads to more people surviving fires. Hence the physical tests involve dragging a specific weight, not lifting people.

Firefighting has never been based on being among the strongest. Until fairly recently, there was both a minimum and maximum height restriction on firefighters in the UK. That meant the biggest (and therefore strongest) men were barred from firefighting.

The world's shortest firefighter is a dwarf. He's male.

Loads of points here to respond to. Will get to them when I have more time.
Meanwhile

www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/arbeid-sociale-zekerheid/publicaties/artikelen/archief/2005/2005-1825-wm.htm

whole lists of jobs where there are no women, or less than 1% of women in them.
Presumably there are jobs, well there are where there are less than 10% women in them.

Gosh, before I saw that statistic, I was a feminist, but now I know there are some jobs with fewer than 1% of women in them, I'm changing my mind. Men are superior after all, and should definitely keep calling those of us who prefer women 'girls' and those of us who prefer 'girls', 'yo bitchez'.

Those stats are from the Netherlands 2004.

Electrician is interesting because it doesn't involve much strength. My friend's DD finished top of her class (that sounds a bit American!) when she trained to be an electrician. She found it very difficult to get a job and was repeatedly told by employers that they didn't want a woman/girl. She did get a job in the end. I know women in construction who are getting self-employed businesses going and finding being female an advantage because various people due to age, religion etc don't want men entering their homes, which is a kind of reverse sexism I suppose.

It'd be interesting to see some stats on the actual size of the people doing various jobs, if they exist. I see mostly tall doctors and short builders. Surely the builders should be above average male height if any of this strength business was true?

There may have been no women welders, car mechanics or central heating installers in the Netherlands in 2004, Ilike, but I'm pretty sure we had some over here.

If there is a height bias with those two jobs, it might be related to their parents' income growing up rather than anything else. I don't know if it's still true, but certainly when my dad was growing up, children from poorer families simply were on average shorter. And doctors tend to be from rich families (again, less so, I know, but ...).

My dad works with female welders, so yes, they definitely exist. Have done these 20 years and more.

FWIW I worked for some time as a sheet metal worker doing spot welding and loading 60T presses.....

..... but I still don't understand why jobs performed by less than 1% women means anything.

it was dirty and I got quite a lot of cuts and burns...but I can say I did not require a penis at any time to perform the tasks

xpost :)

It was an equalities report, FS, they were just looking for areas of concern. We've had women welders in the UK since WW2. The highest-paid welder during the war was a woman.

Ilike's point seems () to be that, as soon as we have more women scaffolders & miners, all obstacles to full equality will vanish. Or, then again, it might be that women are inferior to men because not many miners are women. I'm not sure.

Thanks Freya, apologies for my error.

What I don't get is why women being (allegedly) less able to do various physical jobs has anything to do with inequalities between men and women.

Surely a lot of jobs that require physical strength are fairly low status compared to a lot of jobs that require very little physical strength. Eg. a female lawyer or professor or doctor is much higher status than a male workman or binman or welder?

Good. I can now see that people can see that if there is not much representation in loads and loads of jobs, that feminism [that is feminism that wants to be equal to men], needs to actually do the jobs.

clara.But how can women hope to be equal in society if they are not even there?

Both garlic.

I don't think equality means that there need to be 50% of women in every category of job. That's a ridiculous idea. Is that what you consider equality to be?

Being equal doesn't mean being the same.

There are lots of jobs where there is not much representation of men. Does that mean that women are superior? Your logic (or lack of it) is confusing me.