To lol at the feminism threads....

[Hannah4banana]

Seriously are people constantly looking out for a way to be offended first world problems!

Hopping, even. Damn.

No worries :)

I agree that, ultimately, we should be fighting for equal opportunities for all. Sex, skin colour, ethnicity, sexual orientation, whatever.

It's decreed that the industry will benefit massively just from binning half the men and replacing them with women, but i struggle to see any actual evidence to support this.
Who decreed this? Hilarious. You seem strangely angry about women in tech.

Roadwork is appealing - I've always wanted to drive a steamroller!

There are calls for more women doing building work.

www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/2015/may/19/where-are-all-the-women-why-99-of-construction-site-workers-are-male?

And at least one association.

www.nawic.co.uk

Such interesting opinions. Definitely more enlightened although I have no clue about the acronyms. Ive Been called a few Choice names but lucky I have a thick skin. Plus the amount of people that reported me as an unfounded troll. Cheers for that! I'll always have my own opinion, as I've stated umpteen times it's made me think but no way will I identify as a label ever!

If you really want more women to break into traditionally male dominated areas of work, you also have to ensure men can access more traditionally female areas. It just won't work otherwise.

Lweji

Interesting, but hardly on the same scale as the "drive" to get women into jobs in STEM. Also i doubt these women are the ones doing manual labouring jobs.

Devi

I'm not angry about women in tech at all, i'm saying that I haven't seen any evidence that if you make half the workforce female, there's some massive boost in quality or productivity.

If you really want more women to break into traditionally male dominated areas of work, you also have to ensure men can access more traditionally female areas. It just won't work otherwise.

The push is really for more equality of access.
The STEM drive is more to get women more interested in the area. Not so much that they (we) can't access it.
If men want more access to female dominated fields, then they should work towards normalising men in those fields and making more men interested in them. You can't expect women to do that job for you too. :)

Hmm. I don't think we need evidence of a massive boost of productivity or quality to justify trying to break down gender barriers to careers (both stereotypically male or stereotypically female). But the evidence is there that more diversity has a positive impact on the bottom line of companies, if that's what will persuade you.

Still interested just who decreed that half of men in tech need binning to "make way" for women. Sounds bonkers to me.

I didn't mean women have to do it for us, I meant 'you're' as in anybody.

But as I say you cannot get women involved in male areas without getting men involved in female ones. It's simply not possible. All the men that would have worked in tech that are now replaced by women have to do something else.

It's like if you've got two house each full of different groups of people and want to average them out, people are going to have to move over from both houses. Not everyone who wants to can fit in one.

And how would you get more men involved in female dominated areas? :)

And how would you get more men involved in female dominated areas?

In the same way that we get more women in male dominated areas. Look it up. :)
Bringing down stereotypes, offering trials, you may even want to raise salaries, which are usually lower for female dominated professions (!).

Tech is a huge growth industry so there is space for both men and women. And why should it be more important socially to find jobs for "All the men that would have worked in tech that are now replaced by women" than to provide opportunities for talented women to be able to access a lucrative growth industry in the way men do?

"I haven't seen any evidence that if you make half the workforce female, there's some massive boost in quality or productivity."

Well, there's a natural spread of abilities/skills/aptitudes among the population, for each profession. If any profession is dominated by one sex, it will mean that there are people in that profession who are less good at it than the more talented members of the other sex would be, if they were all equally able to access the profession (once systemic barriers have been removed etc). So if you give more men access to female-dominated jobs, the better men will start to take the places of the less good women, and the overall quality of the population rises.

Devi men in a sense need 'binning' to make way for women. That's fine I think though. Why after all should men get all the jobs in tech? But that means that the men whose places are now occupied by women need to do something else.

The problem we're confronted with (and this problem is bigger than feminism) is that jobs are disappearing. According to Mark Carney 15 million UK jobs could be automated out of existence. That is going to mean armies of graduates scrabbling for a relatively small number of jobs in tech and STEM.

There will not be enough jobs for them all.

Sorry puntasticusername that's actually nonsense! As part of the 1.5% of females in my role we do a bloody good job. What's your personal experience?

I'm sorry, Hannah, I don't understand how what you just said disproves my argument. Could you rephrase?

How about best person for the job gets it regardless of gender. It fuels bad feeling when white males are overlooked for posts to tick a box and that is completely wrong!

Once upon a time the industrial revolution also removed many jobs and created others.

Automation should be similar. It's a challenge for men and women alike. If no sex is associated to any type of job it can only be good for all, surely.

But men have an important role to play and they should go after those jobs they want or need.

For example, why didn't you confront that pub owner and asked why you couldn't work there? Women have had (still have) to do similar things to break barriers.

Tech is a growth industry but the number of jobs available in it will diminish as more and more intelligent algorithms are developed. Watch and see.

Totally agree lweji, if you want something go for it. Dont hang back. Its there for the taking!

The industrial revolution removed jobs but created more - engineers, factory workers, train drivers, steel workers etc etc.

Digital automation just destroys jobs without replacing them.

I could have confronted her but what good would that have done? Why would she have cared?

Work as we understand it will not exist in a hundred years time.

How about best person for the job gets it regardless of gender. It fuels bad feeling when white males are overlooked for posts to tick a box and that is completely wrong

The best person for the job..do you think that there is no bias in applications? In getting enough experience in the first place? In recruitment bias? In recruiters recruiting people like them?

If a group DOES suffer discrimination, should there be positive discrimination to get them into work? There are groups who do sufferdiscrimination in the work place. Who don't get interviews. Who get rejected at interviews. Should it be a free for all?

"How about best person for the job gets it regardless of gender."

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Glad we agree!