February 10, 2018

"But some who have observed or trained once-recalcitrant men cite small successes in changing perceptions about the nature of 'male' jobs."

"Ellen Bravo, a director of Family Values at Work, found that male firefighters in Kansas City, Mo., had adapted to changes they once dismissed as unmanly, such as wearing masks to protect against lung cancer or talking about grief after witnessing death and suffering. Jessica Smith, an associate professor at the Colorado School of Mines, studied the successful experience of women in a Wyoming mine in the 2000s during a time of hiring expansion, when women were not perceived as taking jobs from men. 'They redefined what it was to be a good miner away from this very hyperbolic masculine image,' she said. 'A good miner was someone who cared for their co-workers. They were responsible. These were issues that women could also embody.'"

From "The ‘Manly’ Jobs Problem" by Susan Chira in the NYT (which is mostly about the sexual harassment of women who take jobs that are traditionally done by men).

55 comments:

Bay Area Guy said...

The pussification of the American male continues.....

Matt Sablan said...

I have never heard any man say it was unmanly to use legitimate safety equipment, like masks, canaries, helmets and so forth.

rhhardin said...

Working in the care mines.

rhhardin said...

This nuclear facility has gone for 0 days without an accident.

Matt Sablan said...

"Many scholars I interviewed argued that fundamental changes are necessary, such as restructuring organizations to be less hierarchical and re-examining pay scales for men’s and women’s work."

-- Some jobs you can run by committee. But some, you can't. In fact, almost any high pressure, lives are on the line sort of work is best run, on the action space, by a hierarchy with a defined chain of command/leadership. You can have more rule by committee in the background, but needing a bunch of people to decide whether or not something is dangerous leads to the EPA destroying rivers.

Matt Sablan said...

“They redefined what it was to be a good miner away from this very hyperbolic masculine image,” she said. “A good miner was someone who cared for their co-workers. They were responsible. These were issues that women could also embody.”

-- ,,, This shows me a clear misunderstanding of "masculine" virtues. Pretty much if you read any literature from the 1700s to today, part of being a "good man" was caring for co-workers. Some of the strongest bonds between co-workers I've seen have been working around military folks who are deployed (male and female). Responsibility and duty have almost always been considered something that people of class and character had; NOT doing one's duty or taking responsible was unmanly.

The fact someone thought that men DIDN'T think responsibility or care for their team mates and co-workers was unmanly makes me think we're defining it in vastly different ways.

rhhardin said...

Women should be good working in caves, just a priori.

Let the guys hunt.

Matt Sablan said...

Now -- this isn't to say that those job sites aren't filled with men who say or do bad things. But, I feel like if the author accepts without quibbling that manly men (you know, like Ben Franklin, George Washington and others) don't consider *responsibility and care for others* as important virtues, maybe, just maybe, they need to re-evaluate their opinion on men, and people, in general.

Rusty said...


rhhardin said...
"Working in the care mines."

Thread winner right there.

rhhardin said...

About a decade ago I saw a crew of guys taking down a very tall tree, the worksite marked with actual "Men Working" signs.

bgates said...

Which of the following would get a writer fired fastest:

"...trained once-recalcitrant women..."
"...trained once-recalcitrant black men..."
"...trained once-recalcitrant Muslims..."

Big Mike said...

I have never heard any man say it was unmanly to use legitimate safety equipment, like masks, canaries, helmets and so forth.

@Matthew Sablan, I have never heard anyone say it, but I have seen many people fail to do it (wear safety equipment) when the boss is not around. That includes people sawing wood indoors without masks and stone cutters cutting a granite countertop and backyard patio without masks, men balancing on the top step of a step ladder, and other scary things.

Matt Sablan said...

I think that's more laziness though than thinking "Only women use proper safety procedures!"

Birkel said...

Men are just so problematic.
Who will rid us of these meddlesome chromosones?

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

If you do the job you are OK. That's all it is. If you can't pull your weight, you aren't OK. The end.

Roughcoat said...

Every day, more and more in-your-face man vs. woman agita. So tiring. So tedious.

I wonder how many of the men who contribute to this blog are tuning out. I am.

Roughcoat said...

Birkel @8:12:

Good one, mate.

Oso Negro said...

THE NEW YORK TIMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The world's finest, most truthy news source about actual working men.

Fernandinande said...

The NYT never fails to disgust. It is truly wretched.

I worked in an underground coal mine in Utah in the 70s, and they hired a couple of females.

Any "harassment" was done by the wives and girlfriends of the real miners, who didn't want their men showering with other women (separate showers, though). The real miners thought it was great to have some chicks around, even though they couldn't pull their own weight.

The work was dirty, hard and dangerous and da wimmin folk didn't last a week.

"The [women] redefined what it was to be a good miner away from this very hyperbolic masculine image,'

No, they didn't have positive effect on anything at all.

NYT (which is mostly about the sexual harassment of women

Well, that's true: the NYT is mostly about how women are pitiful victims.

Oso Negro said...

Blogger John Lynch said...
If you do the job you are OK. That's all it is. If you can't pull your weight, you aren't OK. The end.

2/10/18, 8:17 AM


And you, John Lynch, have articulated a great truth. But another great truth is that most organizations don't do a good job with the "aren't OK" category of performance.

Scott Gustafson said...

At most mines, a safety violation (including failure to use safety equipment) is a firing offense. There are no second chances.

Phil 314 said...

Jordan Peterson addressed some related issues in his BBC interview. There are certain job preferences that can't be legislated nor regulated away.

I bet even Woody Allen knows that.

Fernandinande said...

Scott Gustafson said...
At most mines, a safety violation (including failure to use safety equipment) is a firing offense. There are no second chances.


I remember a guy got sprayed in the face with high-pressure hydraulic fluid when a fitting broke loose.

The other miners didn't "care" and weren't "responsible" because there weren't any of those wonderful wimmin-folk around to "change their perceptions", so they stood around at laughed at the guy. The most masculine ones them threw chunks of coal at him because it was so funny that he couldn't see to avoid getting hit in the face. They were reveling in their masculinity.

The guy was lucky the shift-boss wasn't there because he was the most masculine miner of all and probably would've gut-shot the guy for fucking up production.

Gahrie said...

Shorter:

Women good
Men bad

Hey Skipper said...

[Matthew Sabian:] In fact, almost any high pressure, lives are on the line sort of work is best run, on the action space, by a hierarchy with a defined chain of command/leadership.

Speaking as an airline pilot, that is exactly right. I expect 320BusDriver will agree.

Which just might have something to do with the percentage of women airline pilots skyrocketing from 0% in the late 1970's -- when they were explicitly barred -- all the way up to 5% within 20 years. And staying there ever since.

Mark said...

Real men have not changed. What has changed, perhaps, is that these women are starting to see past their straw man, prejudiced caricatures of men to see what was always there.

Mark said...

I remember a guy got sprayed in the face with high-pressure hydraulic fluid when a fitting broke loose.

Why didn't you go help the guy?

cronus titan said...

In sum:

Why can't a man be more like a woman?

Sebastian said...

This all fits the old Althouse rule: any difference between men and women will be presented to favor women.

Counterfactual: an article on men in nursing celebrates the conversion of "once-recalcitrant" female nurses to men's superior way of doing things -- joking absurdly with patients about their dire conditions, bringing up sports whenever possible, roughhousing with youngsters within an inch of severing the IV lines, manhandling patients' bodies as they are more efficiently taken to the loo. Now that's caring.

William said...

Just curious: do many women join the volunteer fire departments? I don't know the answer, but the guess here is not a lot......I know women are always trying for a gig with the NYC Sanitation Dept. I don't blame them. It's a good job with lots of benefits. I have never yet seen a woman working for a private cartage firm, however. There are a great many jobs that are exclusively male. Most of them lack glamour or benefits.

madAsHell said...

Women good
Men bad


It's more of the critical thinking while watching porn.

buwaya said...

I have seen thirty years of pro-female discrimination in admission to a category of trade schools for physically demanding work. Women are indeed sought, specially recruited, and favored. However they don't last on the job.

Its a worse case than airline pilots. If, after all that effort over decades, the workforce in the trade is even 1% female I would be very surprised.

Bill said...

Women mine best in Plato's cave.

Michael K said...

Meanwhile the Mabus Navy is busy imploding.

That transgender training is going great, seamanship, not so much.

Sorry. Seapersonship.

LYNNDH said...

I am a Man, and was a Paralegal for a good number of years. One of the first in Denver. I had several atty's say things that were "sexist". Like why aren't you an atty' or from a woman atty' that did HR saying she expected more from me since I was male. The women paralegals had no problem with me. Actually one time a group of us went to lunch and when the check came it was placed in front of me. They really had a good laugh.

tljhound said...

45 years in the mining business, from newest and lowest on the totem pole to division manager, and I never worked with or employed a woman miner. Plenty of women performed jobs around and even in the mines so I heard lots of griping about disparity of pay but never heard one who'd been around long enough to have some real understanding of what a miner's job entailed express a serious desire to do it for a living.

Paul Zrimsek said...

If you're a certain sort of person, the satisfaction you get from making a difference in a good cause is impossible to separate from the sheer pleasure of giving orders to menials.

rcocean said...

Gosh, is there anything that women DONT improve?

Seems like the answer to every economic problem is more women or more immigrants.

Jupiter said...

"Many scholars I interviewed argued that fundamental changes are necessary, such as restructuring organizations to be less hierarchical and re-examining pay scales for men’s and women’s work."

That's an interesting coincidence. I have been thinking that fundamental changes are necessary, like restructuring the educational system to make colleges and universities more responsive to the needs of the economy, and eliminating bullshit disciplines, like Sociology, Anthropology, and anything ending in "Studies".

MikeD said...

Mark asked "Why didn't you go help the guy?". Because the story was BS!

Darkisland said...

For the ladies here:

Do you wear your safety gear?

Steel gloves in the kitchen?

Safety glasses when hammering a nail to hang a picture?

Steel toe shoes when mowing the lawn?

Why not? Are you showing how macho you are?

I've spent my life in industrial plants. Getting people to use their safety gear takes constant reminding and supervision. It is not about macho, it is about comfort and convenience.

John Henry

Darkisland said...

Fernandistein,

If there had been a woman there when the guy got sprayed, this never would have happened.

She would have nagged and hectored the guys until they did something.

Troop casualties are down since women got on the front lines.

When a guy got hit, his buddies would just figure "not my problem" and leave him lay.

Now women troops don't let that happen. They can't actually carry the guy out themselves. Not strong enough. But they can shame other guys into it.

John Henry

Darkisland said...

Occupational death rate by gender is 13:1

13 women die from work related injuries for every 1 man.

Not only that, women get paid less too!

John Henry

Jupiter said...

Darkisland said...

"Now women troops don't let that happen. They can't actually carry the guy out themselves. Not strong enough. But they can shame other guys into it."

I'm sort of surprised that they don't have separate wars for men and women. That's what they do in sports, because women simply can't compete successfully against men in sports. I guess war is a lot less demanding than basketball.

Darkisland said...

I meant to add above that it doesn't seem any easier to get women to use proper safety gear tham men.

John Henry

chuck said...

> restructuring organizations to be less hierarchical

Well, there's an unexpected argument for keeping women out of the workforce.

n.n said...

#SheKnew #SheEnabled #SheSacrificedOtherWomen #SheProgressed

Female chauvinism is a clear and progressive threat to women, men, girls, boys, and babies, too.

Ann Althouse said...

“I have never heard any man say it was unmanly to use legitimate safety equipment, like masks, canaries, helmets and so forth.”

Might not say it, but might refuse to use it without talking much about why. Too unmanly to blab about safety. You just do things your way.

My grandfather wouldn’t wear a safety mask and died of emphysema. The word “unmanly” was probably not anything he ever said. I’ve heard other stories.

Mark said...

Might not say it, but might refuse to use it without talking much about why.

Sure, they might refuse all that. But not because they think it more manly. It's because they are idiots. And real men would think them idiots. And would tell them, "Man up. Put on the effing equipment."

ccscientist said...

Women constantly think that the job men do is easy and they should get the same pay as men doing those easy jobs, but curiously do not want to do those jobs. Have you ever seen a female roofer? (Some) women seem to think they should get paid just because they exist. Men seem to understand the relationship between effort and pay, and seek out overtime or hazard pay.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Every day, more and more in-your-face man vs. woman agita. So tiring. So tedious.

I wonder how many of the men who contribute to this blog are tuning out. I am.


It seems like it's getting harder to ignore. It's not a problem for me in my vocation (homemaker) but my husband who has to go out into the world to provide for us occasionally encounters a troubling level of hostility from millennial and gen-X women in the business world. He is a consultant and recently was in a meeting with a marketing department filled with twentysomething women when one of them interrupted him to spit out, "Of course you would think that. You're a man." He just held her gaze with a frosty stare for a long time and then continued with what he was saying, but it bothered him. There was no pushback from anyone; this is evidently an acceptable thing to say in a business meeting in the year of our Lord 2017.

Just this last week he was in a different meeting with C-suite staff including the female, very highly paid CEO of a large retail organization. One of the male execs made a point using a sports metaphor, and the CEO said "That's a sexist remark," leaned over to the HR person in her retinue, whispered in her ear, and the HR person walked over to the sports metaphor guy, spoke quietly to him, and they walked out of the room together. The dude was fired on the spot for his "sexist" metaphor.

I think guys are right in this environment to be defensive and concerned. Just remember that not all of us women are that way and many of us are as bothered by this as you are.

Darkisland said...

Jim and Joanne both work on the line for same pay and benefits.

Both make $20 per hour.

Joanne works 40 hours so she can get home and take care of the kids

Jim works till 6 eacH day getting time an a half.

Jim earns $1300/week

Joanne earns $800/week.

OMG!!!

The woman only earns 61% of what the man does for tje same work!

UNFAIR, I TELLS YOU!

But it gets worse:

At the end of the year a promotion opens up and Jim gets it because:

1) he has shown himself to work harder, or at least longer than Joanne

2) he has 500 hours more experience.

Jeez, women really get screwed in the workplace, don't they?

John Henry

Darkisland said...

Wr shoulx also mention why he works all that OT.

It's necause he wants to add a deck to the house, buy an rv for family vacation, save money for kids college or...

In other words usually to help improve the family quality of life

Joanne doesn't work the OT for similar reasons

So she can pick the kids, prepare family mealz, schlep kids to soccer...

Making a better life for her family.

John Henry

Darkisland said...

Oops.

In my example Jim only makes $1100

Joanne only makes about 72% of what Jim makes.

John Henry

Bad Lieutenant said...

Yeah, your math throws me. What were their work shifts and worked hours again? Working till 6 as you describe, seems to imply only 1 hr OT per day. Plus assume 8-5 with an hour lunch, or what?