Sweet Samson on ice skates, it's been a long time since I've posted
Well, we just finished our last real issue of the paper last night. My posting to this blog became sporadic at best when I got my own column, but since I'm finally graduating this semester, I really have no other outlet for my writing. I figured I may as well start things up again on this bad boy.
G.K. Chesterton once said, "Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese." In that same vain (meaning, simply, that it's a subject most people rarely address), here's a question I've been wondering about quite a lot in the last 24 hours: Why are women so grossly underrepresented in the field of construction?
Is it because women are weak? There are women in the military. There are women on police forces. Childbirth is, to embrace a stereotype, generally performed by women. I don't think the "women are weak" argument holds a lot of water here.
Maybe it's because male construction workers are (based on my assumption that everything I see on TV is true) pretty misogynistic. Maybe a lot of women would really like to be construction workers, but they're too afraid of being whistled at to pursue their dream. But then again, it's not as though being admired for one's personal appearance is a bad thing. I'd give my right arm or my brother to be hooted at (of course, I probably wouldn't receive too many catcalls with an arm missing), so obviously, it can't be that.
Or perhaps it's because all the women who would be drawn to that type of career are too busy having sex with other women to get out there and build a house and/or cook me a steak.
Come on, America. I thought we were progressing as a culture. I thought women were all "empowered" now, or whatever... you know, like Rosie the Riveter. But now I see that we're no different from the pie-in-the-sky (which, by the way, is a completely nonsensical phrase) days of Ozzie & Harriet and the Eisenhower administration. Men can be anything they want to be (including women), but women are still relegated to all those stereotypical, oppressed roles, like homemaker, secretary, administrative assistant, executive assistant, personal assistant, administrative secretary, executive secretary, personal secretary, stewardess, executive stewardess, any combination of the words "executive," "stewardess," "secretary," "personal," or "assistant" that I may have forgotten, and, of course, US Senator/Presidential hopeful. Damn these backward ways!
G.K. Chesterton once said, "Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese." In that same vain (meaning, simply, that it's a subject most people rarely address), here's a question I've been wondering about quite a lot in the last 24 hours: Why are women so grossly underrepresented in the field of construction?
Is it because women are weak? There are women in the military. There are women on police forces. Childbirth is, to embrace a stereotype, generally performed by women. I don't think the "women are weak" argument holds a lot of water here.
Maybe it's because male construction workers are (based on my assumption that everything I see on TV is true) pretty misogynistic. Maybe a lot of women would really like to be construction workers, but they're too afraid of being whistled at to pursue their dream. But then again, it's not as though being admired for one's personal appearance is a bad thing. I'd give my right arm or my brother to be hooted at (of course, I probably wouldn't receive too many catcalls with an arm missing), so obviously, it can't be that.
Or perhaps it's because all the women who would be drawn to that type of career are too busy having sex with other women to get out there and build a house and/or cook me a steak.
Come on, America. I thought we were progressing as a culture. I thought women were all "empowered" now, or whatever... you know, like Rosie the Riveter. But now I see that we're no different from the pie-in-the-sky (which, by the way, is a completely nonsensical phrase) days of Ozzie & Harriet and the Eisenhower administration. Men can be anything they want to be (including women), but women are still relegated to all those stereotypical, oppressed roles, like homemaker, secretary, administrative assistant, executive assistant, personal assistant, administrative secretary, executive secretary, personal secretary, stewardess, executive stewardess, any combination of the words "executive," "stewardess," "secretary," "personal," or "assistant" that I may have forgotten, and, of course, US Senator/Presidential hopeful. Damn these backward ways!
posted by Vaughan at
11:33 AM
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