That this is a good example of the difference in the genders

[walkswithmydog]

en.mogaznews.com/World-News/915265/First-woman-to-join-infantry-regiment-quits-after-two-weeks.html

Doesn't this just show that there is no such thing as gender neutrality, there never has been and never will. Women aren't suited to certain roles, and vice versa.

@corythatwas when I got my office, the first thing I did was install my eau de cologne collection. Standards and all.

Though I notice that at least one poster has hinted at suspicions concerning that last bit. Same occurred to me, MrsDV, same occurred to me.

Genvonklinkerhoffen and you keeping your colleagues in mind and safe is beautiful,it makes the unbearable a wee bit more bearable
Cheers to all of you

Women are working in all the industries you refer to all over the world. The numbers may be small but many men do not hard manual/physical work either; and some women seek out such employment

www.theguardian.com/money/2009/oct/24/refuse-collector-trash-culture

www.goconstruct.org/construction-today/diversity-in-construction/women-in-construction/

www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-women-idUSKBN16E23P

There are hundreds more examples if you look

Woman i know has an MSc in water engineering and hydraulics
Regularly travels to developing world. She’s v skilled

Lol! Goady fucker alert!
Mind you, if OP is correct maybe we can kick all the high flying businessmen / politicians / CEOs etc. out of their cushy office jobs and set them on to some hard physical labour that they are better suited to. Then we can have their high-earning jobs instead! Win win.

@BaronessBlonde

Are you joking?

What physical observable differences in my list are you unaware of? It'll take me five minutes to cite my statements.

I'd like to see the OP try to argue their case with these women

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27sProtectionn_Units

In areas where there are low numbers of one sex or another, there's actually a mix of sex and gender factors to greater or lesser extents. The case the OP mentions, sex may be relevant because women tend to be smaller and less muscular than men and that may matter in roles which still demand the most physical strength (mechanisation is reducing the number of such roles, of course). But 'gender' was also a part - she was 'othered'.

In the Israeli army case referred to upthread, it appears that the problem lay not in the sex of the female soldiers, but in the gendered attitudes of the men.

The beauty of an equal society would be that physical differences wouldn't be a problem: women physically unfit for e.g. active service would still be rejected, just as they currently are- and as unfit men are and have been throughout military history.

So Alice would pass the test and make an excellent soldier while Katie was rejected and Anne decided she wasn't the right fit to apply. Meanwhile, on the male side, John and James and William would all decide to apply, John and James would pass and William would be rejected. But once they had got in, they would all be treated the same way. Any problems for the army here? Or for the construction industry? Or any job you can think of?

All it would mean is that the women who were fit, whatever their statistical percentage, would not have to contend with the added burden of sexist prejudice.

And hopefully such a society might also lead to larger numbers of strong and physically fit men taking on physically taxing jobs as carers of the disabled or sick. Because it is a little difficult to explain at the moment how women manage to do such a large percentage of those jobs despite their statistically smaller frames.

Women aren't suited to certain roles I'd like you to say this to the woman who manages my flock of sheep. She is very skilled and physically strong. However she isn't as strong as my DS. That's just a fact. Mechanisation has meant that more jobs are more accessible to women now and that is true in farming. But there are jobs that men can sometimes do better because they're stronger e.g. fencing.

Until recently in history, having a baby was the most risky physical job, and one which carried the highest mortality rate. Yet women did it.

Any evidence for that?

corythatwas In a country which had conscription would you apply it to women too?

The OP won't be back! I strongly suspect he underestimated the wit and intelligence of mumsnet contributors!

Yep my friends son has just left been army after joining up as a young recruit.
This hadn't been newsworthy t hough.

I'm glad it's been mentioned that women did work in the mines. As well as young children until laws were made banning it. In the case of children rightly so.

Banning women from mines caused a lot of financial hardships for family's who were reliant on that woman's wage, despite it being much less than the male miners.

It's a complete myth that women working is a modern concept.
Unless you was upper class or upper middle class, both men and women needed to work just to be able to put a roof over their heads and food on the table. In many cases you would have been considered fortunate if you didn't need to send your children to work.

It was really only after world war one and two when men came back from war and there was a severe lack of jobs and money, that it was encouraged and seen as desirable for women to stay home. Despite the fact women had been doing the work perfectly well while the men were at war.

Take a look at tribal communities, In many cases its women and girls who do the hard and undesirable work.

IMO women are suited to a vast number of combat roles within the military: RAF fighter and helicopter pilots, Royal Navy helicopter pilots, warfare officers and warship commanders, and gunners, engineers, logistics, some undercover/SF type roles (Special Reconnaissance Regiment) in the Army.

But infantry soldiering is something else entirely from a physical point of view. In Afghanistan the loads carried on combat patrols were so heavy they were actually distorting young mens skeletal development. Holding a rifle, Carrying 10 stone on your back for 8 hours in 50° celcius, constantly dropping to one knee to scan with your weapon and then standing again, is crippling effort.

It's brutal stuff and quite unlike anything else out there. So I see both sides of the argument. Women perform fantastically well in variety of tough combat roles and can be as ruthless as their male colleagues when they want but, speaking realistically, the Infantry is probably a step too far in terms of the physical requirements demanded.

building site labourers bollocks! I worked on building sites from I was 16 until my 20s. Loved it and although I wasn’t as physically strong as most of the men, I was still able to adapt to the work and pull my weight.

Back in the good old days there would just be 3 jobs or so in the suitable for girls list

Hold on a minute

this was the first woman in the UK in the infantry, it was all over the press a few months back

@ruthlessrooster Are you saying that women can't do that? Just checking.

Anyone who has ever played hockey at school will know that the idea women are too frail for manual jobs is quite ridiculous

Here is an incomplete list of some of the SOE agents from WW2: observe the physical effort, physical courage, tenacity, etc:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_SOE_agents

I am related to a member of the Resistance (not quite 15 when the war broke out) and someone who farmed for forty years, daily, arduous, back-breaking work. Both female.

Love,y flounce, OP. I hope you were wearing a crinoline.

Google "women mining UK" gives us a host of links, here is the first:

www.balmaiden.co.uk/womenuk.htm

"Female Employment at the Coal Mines
It was not uncommon for them to employed underground, which was made illegal after 1842. They were certainly employed underground in the collieries of Scotland, Cumbria, Northumberland, Shropshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire. In Scotland and Northumberland they often carried coal in baskets on their backs, to climb stairs out of the mine. Elsewhere, they hauled waggons on all fours, by means of a chain around their waste, through low passages. In Silkstone, near Barnsley, women and girls died in a mine explosion in 1805, and a further seven (9 to 17 years old) died in a tragic flooding of the Moorside Pit in 1838. In 1841 there were 2350 women employed in the coal mines of the UK, one third of them in Lancashire. After 1842, the women and girls worked at the surface, pushing wagons from the pit head to the sorting screens, or sorting coal at the screen themselves. In some mines the latter continued until the 1930’s."

This is yet another area where history is rewritten to fit the views of whoever wants to make an argument

Women's roles being written out of history in general is an issue and always has been.