Women and Physically Demanding Jobs

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Hi all. I think that the underlying assumption of Dr.Steiger's comments -
that it is *women* who are responsible for the trials men face of dangerous
work, the 'sissy' factor, and lack of numbers in professions like nursing -
again sidesteps the responsibility of men for the construction, performance,
and surveillance of masculinity and male experience. To imply that his
brother took dangerous work only when forced to by his girlfriend is to
replay an old theme of 'she made me' that disassociates men from the
decisions they make, and erases the impact of other men in those decisions.
The implication that men do not often enter nursing because 'nothing is
being done' to welcome them, possibly implicating female nurses and
feminists, is actually undone by the example of 'Meet the Parents' when it
is particularly the father (with the brothers-in-law) that ridicules the
male nurse, assuming he couldn't cut it as a doctor, or that he is some sort
of sissy. It is male surveillance here, not female.

To continually seek to find where women are primarily or exclusively
responsible for the conditions of men's lives only continues this ethic of
male non-responsibility. I do not believe that gender equality is possible
until we can deeply interrogate and alter this factor.

It could be said that to take the reverse must then be true - that men are
not exclusively responsible for the conditions of women's lives. Ok. But it
seems
to me that the complimentary ethic/paradigm of women's compulsory
responsibility for the welfare of men and children, social cohesion, and
morality creates a problem of responsibility without commensurate authority
or privileges, whereas for men it is the opposite. At that point, the
attention paid to women's/patriarchal system's effects on men's lives
becomes something different, with perhaps a different agenda and focus, than
to look at the effects of men/systems on women's lives.

(Someone please tell me if this is really worn ground I am going over here!)

And as for the garbage collectors: yes, my friend actively sought and has
had for a few years a job with the city doing exactly that. Good pay, decent
hours for her schedule, etc. She has dealt with all sorts of hazards and
probably could say much about the 'macho' effect Dr. Kimmel discusses.
She is petite, holds a BA and is currently doing an MA in Geography here at
UBC. She is also in a heterosexual relationship. Does that answer your
question?

Cheers,
Jen a
_______________________
j. l. t a l l e n t i r e
PhD student, History
University of British Columbia
Canada
jltallen  @  interchange.ubc.ca

Jen,

That most definitely is NOT my "underlying
assumption." [Nice try...]

As I've said repeatedly, and as Farrell says
repeatedly, *we*, male and female, more or less support
the system. Any analysis that blames men
and women exclusively, or even primarily,
is probably flawed.

Since most of your arguments are based on
your misattribution, I'll ignore them. But
a few comments are warranted.

Re garbage collection:
Perhaps your friend could tell you what percentage
of her co-workers are female, and whether they
share identical responsibilities with men.
Every rule has exceptions.

My wife was one of the
first female graduates of Oklahoma's licensing
program for spot welders, a job that was,
at the time, considered somewhat
dangerous for women. She got a job
welding air conditioner cases for Westinghouse,
and worked up to 2 weeks before our daughter
was born.

As for your analysis of "Meet the Parents,"
it is unilevel and hence flawed. [Note that
you haven't answered the question of
why there are no diversity initiatives
in nursing. You simply blame men.]
Go up one level in your analysis, and you discover
why the men ridicule the male nurse. Because
nurses are outranked by doctors, and men are
socialized from birth (by the same women
whose daughters reject them as mates if
they have no car and low earning power)
to seek power and status, competing
for the attention of women. It is
a complex dance, and it takes
two to tango.

James H. Steiger, Professor
Department of Psychology
University of British Columbia
2136 West Mall
Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z4
Voice and Fax; (604)-822-2706
EMAIL: steiger  @  unixg.ubc.ca

True, Jacqueline. To amplify your
point, one notices when visiting
poorer countries how many laborers
have suffered serious injuries. You
see lots of missing fingers, eyes,
etc.

But notice that it is men
who accept the tradeoff -- Money and societal approval
for danger. That's one of Farrell's points.
Our society, *male and female*, accepts
that tradeoff.

Our society finds the tradeoff with genders reversed
most unacceptable. Excuse me for being anecdotal, but I think
these are revealing anecdotes. A few years ago,
there was a rash of attacks (several apparently
perpetrated by the same team) on Vancouver cab
drivers. All the victims were men, and several
were slain brutally. Vancouver has a much lower
murder rate than most American cities of the
same size. These stories received modest news
coverage, as did several attacks on male
convenience store clerks.

Then, one evening, an attractive young female video store
clerk was abducted by a man at gunpoint. He foolishly
took her bank card to a machine, where his identity
was quickly established. For the next few days, he
fled, with the woman as his hostage. Ultimately,
the man, who never should have been released from
prison in the first place, killed the woman, then
killed himself.

This case attracted front page attention for
days, and continued to attract attention (through
the efforts of the woman's family) for weeks
afterward.

Meanwhile, attempts by cab drivers to obtain provincial
funding assistance for special robbery-deterrence systems
in cabs failed. The cab drivers wanted video cameras and
special radio equipment to be partially funded. The government
couldn't be motivated to help them. Yet
the Ministry of Women's Equality announced special funding
for cell phones for local prostitutes, and ultimately
this initiative was taken over by a private organization.

In a similar vein, when an extremely attractive female
police officer lost a leg after being shot during a drug
raid, the entire course of her recovery was followed for
weeks in the local papers. Although she did nothing
"heroic," (and indeed wanted no recognition as a hero),
she was widely lauded as a hero by administrators and
newspaper writers. From all accounts of the incident,
she deserved a purple heart, not a silver star.

On the other hand, when a gay
male Starbucks manager, Tony McNaughton,
was killed voluntarily defending an employee
from her knife-wielding husband, he received complimentary
coverage for a day, and was then quickly forgotten. He stepped
in front of a crazed man brandishing a foot long butcher knife,
which fits my definition of heroism.

When the murderer went on trial, Tony's heroism was again briefly
remembered, as the woman he saved tearfully recounted his actions, and
his
friends and partner remembered him as a strong, gentle man with
a love of life.

James H. Steiger, Professor
Department of Psychology
University of British Columbia
2136 West Mall
Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z4
Voice and Fax; (604)-822-2706
EMAIL: steiger  @  unixg.ubc.ca

At 04:00 PM 7/16/2001 -0700, you wrote:

>But notice that it is men
>who accept the tradeoff -- Money and societal approval
>for danger. That's one of Farrell's points.
>Our society, *male and female*, accepts
>that tradeoff.

Men are allowed/permitted/encouraged the option to accept risk in whatever 
form.  The lower class men become literal and/or proverbial cannon fodder.

What Jim has missed/forgotten/selectively ignored is that our society also 
rewards those who pursue risk.

Such as:  first man on moon, first man to reach summit of Mt Everest, first 
doctors to replace a human heart with an internal biomedical device

Conversely, one has examples like Jerrie Cobb (another awesome example to 
counter gender-based stereotypes): In 1960, Jerrie Cobb is a world 
record-breaking pilot and the first womyn recruited for testing as an 
astronaut.  She endured the same rigorous training the male astronauts 
received.  Based on her performance, she and 24 other womyn were 
recommended to the program.  Twelve of them passed, and with Jerrie, became 
known as the Mercury 13.

Throughout the testing, the womyn consistently performed as well or better 
than the men.  They used less oxygen, had more endurance, complained less, 
handled isolation better, and withstood heat, pain, noise and loneliness 
better.  Jerrie aced all the tests, including those with military jets and 
g-force.  She logged twice as many flight hours as John Glenn, and more 
than 4 times more than Scott Carpenter.  Her test results proved her more 
qualified for space flight than 98 percent of all astronauts tested.  Yet 
it was John Glenn that made the first orbit of the earth.

NASA abruptly cancelled the Mercury 13 training in 1961.  The womyn were 
left with no reason for the cancellation.  A year later, their case was 
heard in Congress and the truth was revealed.  NASA required all astronauts 
to be official military jet test pilots, but womyn were banned by law from 
military flight duty. NASA refused to waive this requirement for Jerrie 
Cobb, which it could have done based on her aviation experience and test 
results, even thought they waived some educational requirements for John Glenn.

Or Arlene Blum: In 1979, Blum organized the first all-womenÆs ascent of an 
8000 m peak, Annapurna (26,545 ft).  Blum had been climbing for years, she 
recounted expeditions during which she was restricted to remaining at base 
camps or other lower altitude (< 20,000 ft) camps solely because of the 
gender bias of the expedition leaders.  Two members of the team reached the 
summit, two died on a subsequent attempt.  The risk factor was 
real.  (Still better odds than the typical all-male/male-dominated 
Himalayan expedition).  In her book, Blum relates the telling response of 
another mountaineer who questioned why a group of women would want to 
ôsacrifice life on the same alter of egoism that causes men to join the 
Marines, shoot buffalo, drive fast carsàö.  Words that make me reminiscent 
for the pearls of wisdom (m)uttered by the former US Speaker of the House 
from Georgia regarding the concept of women not being allowed to serve in 
combat (risk) and the relation to menÆs innate biological proclivity to 
giraffe-hunting.

Middle to upper class womyn traditionally have not been 
permitted/encouraged the freedom to risk in modern western 
civilization.  Womyn (& men) in subsistence societies or colonialized 
areas, or lower class positions have not had much choice.

Margaret E. Kosal, Ph.D.
Department of Chemistry
School of Chemical Sciences
University of Illinois
600 S. Mathews Ave. 38-6
Urbana IL  61801

phone: 217.333.1532
fax: 217.333.2685
email: nerdgirl  @  s.scs.uiuc.edu

Greetings:

Read Christine Williams' "Still a Man's World:  Men Who Do Women's
Work".  She persuasively shows that male nurses are put on a glass
escalator.  They make more money and have more authority than female
nurses.  Male nurses do not need affirmative action.  Far from it.
This is one more example of the complexities of patriarchy.

Kathleen Trigiani
ktrig246  @  airmail.net

*********************************************
"Out of the Cave:  Exploring Gray's Anatomy"
http://web2.airmail.net/ktrig246/out_of_cave/
You Don't Have to Settle For Mars&Venus!

> True, Jacqueline. To amplify your
> point, one notices when visiting
> poorer countries how many laborers
> have suffered serious injuries. You
> see lots of missing fingers, eyes,
> etc.

I don't think you have to go to "poorer countries"  (although I
notice you are in Canada, so perhaps the U.S. with the absence of
socialized medicine, etc. could be seen as "undeveloped.")
>
But notice that it is men
> who accept the tradeoff -- Money and societal approval
> for danger. That's one of Farrell's points.
> Our society, *male and female*, accepts
> that tradeoff.

I'm not sure it is a question of "accepting a trade off." Working class
people must take the jobs that pay the most money in order to survive. My
point is that what society is accepting is that working-class people's
bodies, minds, futures, are expendable. Consequently, I think that
obscuring the class issue in favor of gender polarities is
counter-productive.

As far as macho behavior on-the-job is concerned, obviously construction
sites (like wall street bankers, lawyers offices, and academic
departments, I expect) can be scenes for displays of machismo. For
working-class men, though, I see this behavior as maintaining a level of
self-expression and control set against the exploitative circumstances of
their work. To compare you could look at various studies of working-class
women employed in assembly-line jobs, where hairstyles, manicures, and
other "feminine" displays are used to maintain a similar level of
individual control (Karen Hossfeld's essay "Their Logic Against Them" is a
case in point.)

Jacqueline Ellis.
jellis  @  bates.edu

This topic came up in my Women's Lit class this past spring term, and was
taken care of quite well by one of the students--a non-traditional male
who serves in the Air Force Reserve in a firefighting unit.  He says the
women in his unit do all the same tasks, but do adapt what they do.  The
prime example he gave was rescues---he usually plays the victim because he
is the biggest, tallest, heaviest guy in the squad.  Dragging him by
herself,(which is better anyhow), the smallest woman is able to get him
out of a burning building faster and safer than any of the guys trying to
carry him.

Virginia Bemis        vbemis  @  ashland.edu
Associate Professor of English
Ashland University    Ashland, OH 44805
(419) 289-5120

As a member of the nursing faculty at a college in New Jersey, I'd like to
jump in on the comments re: male nurses.  Male nurses are frequently put on a
pedestal; it's as if they can do no wrong.  It's no accident that they get
paid more than females for the same position and rise from bedside nursing to
management in relatively no time.  The "nurturing" is still left to females;
the "business" end is left to the males.  Female nursing students frequently
resent their male colleagues who seem to get the attention of their faculty
with little effort.  Louise

Marg,

We were talking about general issues,
and you shifted from the typical to the
extraordinary, where the rules certainly
do change.

For the *vast majority* of men, the main "reward" for
accepting physical risk is to be considered normal.
For every man who climbs Everest, there are
more than 10,000 injured on the job.

It is, to say the least, ironic that you
bring up an isolated incident in which
[granting the assumption that
your details of Cobb's history are accurate],
one woman was denied a chance to risk her life for great
glory, in the middle of an era in which
tens of thousands of men were killed in the
Viet Nam conflict, simply doing what was
legally necessary for them to be considered
normal, loyal American citizens.

My hunch is [seeing as this was the 1960's]
that if Cobb had been nominated to take that
initial risk, all hell would have broken
loose, with women complaining as much as
men that the risk should be taken by a man.
Remember, this was before NOW existed.

But you are correct. Having the "honor"
of being the risk-taking sex occasionally
bestows benefits.

Remember who got all the attention when the
space shuttle blew up? As I recall, it was the
woman school teacher. Christa McAuliffe. The name
pops right up in memory. What
was the name of the male chief officer on
that flight?  (It is appended to the
letter.)

On the other hand, when a space capsule fire
killed a bunch of astronauts, you barely heard
about it.

You've given me an anecdote, now I'll give you one.

Bob Kennedy was a classmate of mine at Cornell. Not
at all a low class guy, Bob was dynamic, handsome,
athletic (captain of the Swim Team) and smart (straight
Dean's List). Bob graduated high in his class, went
to Med School, and was killed in action in Viet Nam.
I suspect Bob had utterly no ambition to be a soldier.
He accepted the risk, probably because he felt he
had no choice. Who got the rougher deal, Bob or Cobb?


James H. Steiger, Professor
Department of Psychology
University of British Columbia
2136 West Mall
Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z4
Voice and Fax; (604)-822-2706
EMAIL: steiger  @  unixg.ubc.ca

P.S. (Dick Scobee...I had to
dig it up from Life's internet site on
the Challenger disaster which,
by the way, is built entirely around
Christa. Go take a look, at

http://www.lifemag.com/Life/space/challenger.html

It is a most revealing exercise in gender analysis.
Notice how, besides the men,"unmarried astronaut" Judith Resnick
barely gets mentioned.)

Kathleen,

I haven't read Williams' analysis,
and I'd have to see if it "obscured"
the relevance of other factors besides
gender in its analysis. For example,
certain personality and intellectual
traits predict success in large organizations.
Did Williams present data on prior analysis
of entering male and female nursing students
or workers on IQ, Achievement Motivation,
and other relevant characteristics? If not,
the analysis would be of little value,
perhaps useless.

In any case, the issue of "diversity enhancement"
in the nursing profession, i.e., the need
for more men to achieve "gender balance" in this
profession, is a logically separable issue
from the status of the people within the profession,
once they enter.  If "diversity" is truly about
achieving balance, it should work, in the case
of gender, both ways. If it doesn't, then we might
expect it is simply a ruse designed to disadvantage
white males.


James H. Steiger, Professor
Department of Psychology
University of British Columbia
2136 West Mall
Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z4
Voice and Fax; (604)-822-2706
EMAIL: steiger  @  unixg.ubc.ca


Kathleen Trigiani wrote:
>
> Read Christine Williams' "Still a Man's World:  Men Who Do Women's
> Work".  She persuasively shows that male nurses are put on a glass
> escalator.

For some information on ways that women accept the tradeoff of safety for
survival, see the documentary "Zoned for Slavery."  It shows the real
physical effects of sweatshop labor on women and girls (who comprise
virtually all sweatshop labor).  They go blind, lose the use of their hands,
suffer malnutrition, are raped, beaten, forced to ingest birth control pills
and forced to have abortions.  All of this happens beginning in early
childhood to about 30, at which point they are then physically unable to
continue working.  Also, check out information on women and girls working in
sex industries all around the world, trading safety for survival.  Currently
in Amsterdam, the girls "for sale" in the windows are from eastern Europe
and parts of Asia.  The "customers" are middle aged, middle class western
men, particularly Americans.  It seems to me that any exploitation is a
function of class, race, gender, age, national origin, political conditions,
and so many other factors.  It's the least powerful in any situation who
have to make more dangerous sacrifices (to their bodies, minds, futures) in
order to survive, usually.

Marnie Enos Carroll
Switzerland
marnie.carroll  @  urbanet.ch

>
> I doubt you'll ever see women lining up for garbage
> collection positions. They tend to exclude themselves from
> this type of work. If Michael has evidence that (qualified)
> women are being "excluded" from garbage collection, I'd
> like to see it. How many people in this newsgroup know any
> woman who ever applied for a garbage collection position?

Well, I can't speak to garbage collecting, per se, but I CAN relate examples
of women who _tried_ to apply for positions in the construction industry and
were simply told that they couldn't.  Not that they couldn't do the
work--that they couldn't apply.  The response to their mere existence at the
site was a smirk and nod toward the trashcan.  "Go ahead, turn in that
app--we'll put in the Circular File."  You won't find records of this
exclusion, of course--since the gatekeeping was done before any of it could
become "official."

The cases I'm thinking of happened in Germany in the 80's.  It was typical
for people to leave the Army and, because they had security clearance, get
work with a company that installed HVAC systems at secure sites all over
Europe.  None of the men who got those jobs had any experience doing that
kind of work--they just had the security clearance, same as the women (it
costs nearly $100,000 to get someone a top secret clearance).  But none of
the women ever managed to get those jobs.  All the men did.

p.s.: what, exactly, are the "qualifications" for garbage collecting?
--
Sheryl LeSage
English Department
U of Oklahoma
sjlesage  @  ou.edu

Am I correct this time in saying you are explicitly pointing at women as the
cause of this example of a condition men face? -("...men are socialized from
birth (by the same women whose daughters reject them as mates if they have
no car and low earning power) to seek power and status")
Men are socialized by women - thus they ridicule other men, based solely on
what their mothers taught them to do. There is no 'two to tango' here in
your example. Women are to blame, men have no responsibility. This seems to
be a good example for my discussion of the ethic of male
non-responsibility/female compulsory responsibility.

I made no argument with the fact that things are complex, and that both men
and women participate in systems of inequality. However I did point out
areas in your argument that presented, to me, implications that women are
responsible for the conditions men face. And you give me another one here.
Is there any case then when men play a significant or originating role in
the socialization process? Do men ever have responsibility for their
actions/surveillance of other men? Are there no fathers who say - 'be a man,
son'? No men on the playground, in the locker room, the office, or the bar
defining and performing masculinity?
Is there always a woman at the 'next level' of analysis? Is pointing out
that men might have some active/responsible part to play in their own lives
and those of other men [forget women] necessarily 'blaming men'?

I do not know why, or if there is, a lack of diversity initiatives for male
nurses. I did not 'simply blame men' but noted men had a strong part to play
in resisting such initiatives; I wonder now whether you think men have no
actual responsibility for creating them, or if they do not happen, that
feminists/women are to blame.

Cheers,
Jen a
_______________________
j. l. t a l l e n t i r e
PhD student, History
University of British Columbia
Canada
jltallen  @  interchange.ubc.ca

<snip>
Go up one level in your analysis, and you discover
why the men ridicule the male nurse. Because
nurses are outranked by doctors, and men are
socialized from birth (by the same women
whose daughters reject them as mates if
they have no car and low earning power)
to seek power and status, competing
for the attention of women. It is
a complex dance, and it takes
two to tango.

 Mon, 16 Jul 2001, James H. Steiger wrote:

> I doubt you'll ever see women lining up for garbage
> collection positions. They tend to exclude themselves from
> this type of work. If Michael has evidence that (qualified)
> women are being "excluded" from garbage collection, I'd
> like to see it. How many people in this newsgroup know any
> woman who ever applied for a garbage collection position?

  I knew a woman who graduated with a degree in engineering (with a high
GPA) in the late 1980s. When she investigated the U.S. Army as a possible
means of furthering her professional development and saving for graduate
school, the only line of work the U.S. Army dangled before that
engineer was janitorial work.  She declined. How many male engineers would
have been given that as their sole "opportunity" by the Army?

  Later, in the early 1990s, two of our linguistics students at UNR
investigated what career opportunities the military might have for them,
with their foreign language expertise, again so that they could put their
lives at risk while earning money for graduate school.  The woman had a
higher GPA than the male and had already been working as a translator for
one of the major casinos in town, booking reservations for non-English
speaking customers.

  The male student received a red carpet welcome from the U.S. Army.  The
female was treated as if she was as welcome as last week's tomato
sandwich.

  Also, Astronaut/Senator John Glenn is on record opposing women's
participation in space exploration.  He has no opposition to women's tax
dollars supporting the U.S. space program, but he believes the boys shouldn't
have to share the toys.

Betty
________________________________________
Betty J. Glass, Humanities Bibliographer
University Library/322
University of Nevada, Reno
1664 N. Virginia St.
Reno, NV  89557-0044

(775) 784-6500 ext. 303
(775) 784-1751 (fax)

glass  @  unr.edu

>I doubt you'll ever see women lining up for garbage
>collection positions. They tend to exclude themselves from
>this type of work.

Au contraire, there has been a history of heavy-handed retaliation and
ridicule directed against women trying to break into "male" defined jobs. I
don't know if you consider garbage collection a trade, but in the trades,
women have repeatedly faced life-threatening sabotage from male coworkers
who mess with their ladders, equipment, or give them dangerous
instructions, or else trainers fail to tell them key information regularly
given to male hires. I've heard horror stories in person and many of them
have been written about in Tradeswomen magazine. What is amazing is how
many women persist and succeed in jobs they weren't "supposed to" do by
upbringing and the surrounding culture. Garbage collection is stigmatized
but women do plenty of messy, stigmatized jobs. Since garbage collection
has become more automated and upper body strength is less key, women have
started into the field, just as they have any field where the pay is better
than in"female" jobs.

Max Dashu   <maxdashu  @  LMI.com>
<www.suppressedhistories.net>
Global Women's Studies