There's an interesting comment piece in today's Indy. It mainly deals with gender roles in the workplace (so arguing from the WISE / MICE point of view1), but could be applied more widely:
Instead of fighting for gender equality, let’s forget gender altogether
The inequalities between men and women in the UK speak for themselves but the endless competition and bickering between the champions of women’s rights and men’s rights hinders progress towards equality.
[...]
Much like class and race, ‘gender’ and the series of characteristics associated with it create an oppressive sense of ‘acceptable’, or hegemonic, behaviour, desires and thoughts. Human beings do not fit into neat boxes and the injustices that this notion creates need to be addressed by the Western gender equality movement. It’s hard to be a woman, but it’s not that easy to be a man either and the problem will only be solved by mutual acknowledgment of this.
[1] Women Into Science and Engineering / Men Into the Caring Environment.
Comments
'The Indy' has a valid point
Despite the progress in the Western World, we are still beset with stereotypes. Men and women are often forced into, or vilified for aspiring to, roles that society dictates as appropriate for a particular gender. And those who seek to live a life without gender have long struggled to do so.
In the rest of the world, of course, life can be much harder as regimes are wont to use opression and, sometimes, extreme violence to maintain the historical standpoint.
I am frequently thankful to be an Englishwoman. Life may not be perfect but....
Susie
In another universe ...
... when I worked for a living I regularly interviewed both graduates (on the 'Milk Round') and undergraduates as potential company trainees or for university sponsorship. I conducted the interviews with a personnel officer (as we called them in those days) and I did the techie stuff (we were a very big engineering company with a world wide reputation).
I was always eager to encourage female applicants but it was difficult. In the case of undergrads I was looking for some real interest in practical engineering and design the candidates had been involved in as personal interests and hobbies. Things like like building radios or computers, or taking bicycles to bits and repairing them; a bit of woodwork or DIY. I would even have been happy if they showed an interest through what they read. Very few female applicants seemed to have any real interest in the subject and seemed to be applying to our company because it was either local or on their list of places to apply. It may be that things have changed in the last 20 years and females are interested in engineering, I hope so, but they certainly weren't then.
Graduates were a little better and one of the brightest graduate engineers I took on was a very pretty girl. I grew very fond of her because we shared a birthday and she was just old enough to have been our daughter had we started a family as soon as we married :) I know she was a lot cleverer than I am. However even she wasn't that practical but electronic engineering had got to be more keyboard oriented than circuit design so she excelled without needing to wield a soldering iron or wire-wrap gun very often.
I think it's a good idea to ignore gender but I suspect there will always be jobs which tend to attract more from one gender than the other.
Robi