It might not be immediately clear but the article is talking about Civil Engineering which is a little unreconstructed when compared to IT.
And to progress to Chartered status for civil engineers you must have experience working on site bossing the navvies around.
When I worked for Dar Al Hadnasha (one of the big civil consultacies) we had to send out female engineers to Italy on an exchange as in the middle east it woudl have been impossible for a woman to go on site.
I find this behavior disgusting but it is, I feel, the answer to the question posed by the author: "But they must leave at some point and see wives/daughters/sisters/mothers/random women in the street.. Is the point less about novelty or even sex, and much more about straightforward intimidation?"
It is pretty much about intimidation and resentment by some and a group dynamic that forces others to play along or ignore the situation. I can't speak to the situation in Britain but in my part of the world I can say that things have improved substantially in the last 15 or so years but there is still a long way to go. Contrary to what anyone might tell you though, it is not a case of "boys will be boys" - the fact of the matter is that the management and foremen can change the culture if they want to, I have seen it happen, someone in charge just needs to have the resolve to say it won't be tolerated and actually act on it.
Here's a simple way they could deal with that - create a new company (or even just a new department within the company), hire only civilised people, fire anyone who proves to be an uncivilised jerk, and slowly grow that department/company to take over the company/industry because it's not full of retards...
Complaining about sexism then using "retards" as a pejorative is just too ironic.
Maybe the OP used it to make a point?
That's already two steps up from Mad Men territory.
And beside the crudeness, which is more a social class difference than anything else, I don't see how this differs from the reports of sexism in tech. At least she's got the (albeit clumsy and inadequate) support of her employer. They weren't advertising job posts for "brogrammers".
Being less crude than construction workers is not exactly a high standard for tech.
It seems that no one knew which guys were the jerks before because they acted reasonably when women weren't around. I think the same thing happened in tech circles. There are some major assholes and even creepy stalkers that don't really show themselves until women show up, so they go unnoticed for years by the male majority.
The described behaviour of men in the article is pretty damn sexist, true. But how is it any different from how men in groups behave towards one another? Just replace all the sexist jokes with gay jokes or sissy jokes or just about any other type of jokes men direct at one another to establish pecking orders within groups.
Reading this, it doesn't feel so much like the terrible sexism it's portrayed as, but more like reading about a clash of cultures. This is how groups of men organise themselves. I understand it's jarring for women and that women do it differently, but still, all I see here are men treating a woman exactly like they treat other men.
By the sound of it, she's actually being accepted into the group. Hazing is always the first step.
You may want to consider hanging out with a different crowd...
Also, this is not "hanging out", this is the workplace. Different standards should apply. Bullying and intimidation in the workplace is unacceptable for any reason, and in this case it's both bullying and sexism.
Yes, I know this is how certain groups of men behave. It also happens to be the same men who's jobs are in danger of permanently disappearing, and this is exactly one of the main reasons nobody gives a shit.
They must find something to tease you about, whether it's being "gay" , your nationality or just the football team you follow.
Unfortunately in this case in the absence of anything else they chose to pick up on her being a woman.
And you may want to consider actually being more truthful about what you and your pals do do when you hang around.
(Not to mention the irony of 5 lines below, in your same comment, using language like "gives a shit").
>Also, this is not "hanging out", this is the workplace. Different standards should apply.
Only for puritan cultures, that hold a clear distinction between work and normal life/play.
>Yes, I know this is how certain groups of men behave. It also happens to be the same men who's jobs are in danger of permanently disappearing, and this is exactly one of the main reasons nobody gives a shit.
This sounds like a reason to actually "give a shit".
Not sure how you justify yourself, morally, to care (or pretend to care) about "sexism" and "male jokes" while at the same time "not giving a shit" about people being forced into unemployment.
Secondly, there's the fact that these jokes single her out. She's the only one getting sexual and sexist jokes, so that makes her a special target. If it were all those men making constant gay and sissy jokes to a gay man, you wouldn't think twice about calling it bullying. Hazing becomes bullying if one person gets singled out.
Bullying with a sexual component is straight up sexual harassment. Maybe it isn't meant that way, but that's exactly what it is. A lot of bullying exists because dumb people don't think about what they are doing. "It's just a joke," they say. But it's not. It's the same joke, every day, from everyone. This is exactly the kind of situation where an employer has to step in and tell everyone to grow up and leave it at home. And when I say they have to, I mean it's the law, and they're going to get sued.
Also, the less direct sexism the writer faces show that she is not being treated like the men. The assumption that she is lost or trespassing because she is a lone woman on a building site is pretty sexist. Sure, women working on building sites are rare, but so are women getting lost on building sites. The whole asking if she was "fit" e-mail conversation was cringe inducing - and completely not how a man would be treated.
Men do not typically fear sexual violence from each other.
Not that the men on that site were necessarily going to rape the engineer, but it was certainly orders of magnitude more likely than them raping each other.
For the record I understand your point and you might be right, she may well be being accepted, but I don't think it's really reasonable that she should just feel OK with it.
EDIT: and tbh in an ideal world men wouldn't have to face "hazing" (bullying) either. It's a pretty poor justification for women having to cope with a worse variant.
Women do not typically fear sexual violence from men either. Any woman I've ever asked "Do you really live in constant fear from rape as the internet activists suggest" has answered with "Not really, unless I'm going down a dark alley alone at night it doesn't really cross my mind"
But y'know, going down a dark alley alone at night, I'm pretty damn on guard myself and I'm a guy.
For the record: I have always felt americans (and anglosaxons in general) are orders of magnitude more afraid of the world than any other people I've ever spoken to. Men and women alike.
EDIT TO YOUR EDIT: > EDIT: and tbh in an ideal world men wouldn't have to face "hazing" (bullying) either. It's a pretty poor justification for women having to cope with a worse variant.
Ideal or not, hazing and bullying has worked for countless millennia to distinguish those you can rely on in a tight spot from those you cannot. The more dangerous the circumstances, the harder becoming accepted by a group seems to be. It's just how humans are.
Just replace all the sexist jokes with gay jokes or sissy
jokes
What kind of fucking zoo do you work at?
In blue-collar workplaces constant ribbing and bullshitting is usually a way of keeping low stress and friendly.
To the rest of us, consider it a form of play.
All the jokes and insults you listed are extremely problematic and most certainly also deserve our attention (though that is most certainly not a valid criticism of this article, no single article has the obligation to mention every problem).
Turns out I dismissed the popup window automatically because 100% of popup windows are trying to sell social media experience extravaganzas and must be removed to see the actual content.
Turns out this blogging software shows its main content as a superimposed popup/lightbox thing.
So, if you end up reading the wrong article, perhaps you clicked close on the popup before it loaded.
I knew immediately by reading the domain that it was going to be a feminist leaning blog, and that's totally fine. Perhaps that's what their content is based on. Unfortunately there's lots of examples of men being jerks, so they have a massive grab bag to pull content from.
> If you don't like it leave
That's always the easy answer, and it's unrealistic and unfair. You don't know the conditions of the author. Maybe they have a boatload of debt or are in a situation where they need stability. Moving jobs is always a risk because there are things like probation periods. Even if you are good at what you do, a probation period is still scary, even more so if you have dependents.
Just because someone treats you like shit, and you're a woman, doesn't mean it's sexism.
1. Maybe they treat her like shit because she's new, and the feminine stuff is just one reason to rag on her. If she was a tall guy, they'd probably make fun of that too.
2. Maybe they treat her like shit because, for some reason, despite all this, she hasn't actually asked them to stop -- just complained about it on the Internet
A lot of people will get angry at me for this, because sexism is a very real problem.
But not everything is fucking sexism.
One wonders how things would be different were roles reversed--indeed, what sort of talk was common on factory floors during the world wars?
Do women freely express their opinions of men among themselves? Certainly. But it is my desire and care to avoid overhearing them.
"A female council boss has been suspended for biting a 24-year-old junior employee so hard that she drew blood through his underwear.
"The worker was taken to hospital, after the incident, for a tetanus injection.
"A colleague called the bite a horseplay that got out of hand."
http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/boss-bites...
At least in my experience.
When I responded with "I don't have a banana", she said that sounded like a personal problem and I was asked if I had one every day for months. What I can tell you from that experience is that women can be far raunchier than men - and in this case, I think they had a contest running to see who could make me blush or fluster me the most.
I've been part of the minority in other cases (race, country of origin, gender) and I think that much of this behavior is really related to crowd dynamics. Would the men described in the article behave that way if their SO was present? In any case, this female engineer shouldn't be hazed in this way and while it probably doesn't count for much, I'll still say "I'm sorry" for the behavior of my fellow men.
Let's all try to be a bit more civilized ... and especially here on the Internet!