STEAMing ahead: We might be in construction, but can be feminine too!

A smaller ratio of them just happens to be women. What? I hear you ask.

Try airline pilots and train drivers — not public facing, nor scrutinised until the female voice announcement distinguishes gender. And bus drivers — who are clearly visible.

Not being an expert, I’m risking a gender-specific browse in one snippet of the modern workplace and hopefully, the point will become clear.

Historically female roles, male nurses and personal assistants have pretty much stepped across the gender divide; less so as nannies and nursery nurses.

The gatekeepers have eased off the kicking and screaming, as women have pushed back resistance, making the hard-earned entry into the wider quotidian workforce. I’m referring to the sciences, finance, the environment, the arts and technology and usual traditional male-dominant — or even elitist professions.

I’m isolating education specifically. I might be wrong, but it’s one of the few professions with a balancing scale where gender is concerned, and might even be female-dominant. Nevertheless, in senior positions in the UK, an imbalance is very apparent across ethnic lines.

The barriers were lowered in Britain during the last major war; just enough for women to assume the male workplace, but these barriers were quickly reinstated, as veterans eased back into their traditional roles. Put simply, they wanted their jobs back. Well, it was only to be expected that if you fought for your country, on your return — alive, you deserved the right of re-employment and your place as bread-earner.

The state reshuffled and women were generally relegated back to their place in domesticity. Quite an ask after keeping the country functioning and achieving major milestones in every area from food production to armoury to construction. Take the completion of London’s Waterloo Bridge within time and budget as an impressive example. The fight to regain their newly found status and equality has been cranking up ever since, with various degrees of success.

Take the case of Ilya Espino de Marotta, a key managing engineer in charge of the Panama Canal Extension Project — which was completed in June. Ms Espino de Marotta wears girly pink safety apparel, possibly a lighthearted irony that misleads down the road of stereotype. Take note, this highly respected woman is nothing other than a skilled professional in her field.

http://iwforum.org/meet-woman-re-engineered-panama-canal-iiya-espino-de-marotta-iwf-panama/

This article on Crossrail, London’s current major rail project is another example of women working confidently within an engineering/construction domain. “Almost a third of the workforce constructing the £15 billion east-west link are women, compared with just 11 percent across the sector.”

Their portrayal in this photo shoot for British Vogue (see image) seems to whisper — we might be in construction, but can be feminine too. Don’t get me wrong, they look elegant and stylish but women engineers and such, (or men for that matter) do not live in safety work gear 24/7 in pink or otherwise. Can this progress not be positive for what it is?

Here’s to an advanced gender-neutral world in the STEAM professions and others. There’ll be no need for statistics, a classy photo shoot — or this observation?

Credits: Jonathan Prynn Consumer Business Editor, London Evening Standard, 4 October 2016/British Vogue, November 2016 edition.

International Women’s Forum.

STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics. The Arts very much up there with the rest!