I would be interested in going a bit deeper into that claim. First of all, assuming that this statistic actually means that men dominate the dangerous (and therefore higher-paying) blue-collar job sector, I think some good questions to ask are: why are men much more likely to be working those jobs? And why are these male-dominated jobs so dangerous? Do they have to be dangerous, or is there a culture within the industry that makes those jobs more dangerous than they need to be? And is any of this a function of patriarchy?

First of all, I'm glad this is in the labour and consumption forum rather than the feminism forum, because I want men to feel like they can participate fully without censoring themselves or being told off, as long as they are trying to talk about this respectfully. After all, if heavy and/or dangerous factory and construction jobs tend to be male-dominated, then it's likely that there are probably more guys on babble who work or have worked in these industries.

So, why are more men employed in these jobs than women, and does the patriarchy have anything to do with that? Well, I think you probably know my opinion on that - I think it probably does. I think there is probably not only systemic discrimination against women when it comes to hiring, but also a working environment where women are not quite as welcome as The Boys. I think this can also be felt both inside and outside of the workplace, especially if the company is a big fish in a small pond (in other words, one of the only big employers around). I know a few guys, great guys all of them, who work for a company in a small town. I was asking one time about what kind of qualifications you have to have to work at this plant, and the talk was all about what "the guys" have to be able to do. I challenged that, and was told that not too many women can do the job.

I think that probably there is actual discrimination in hiring, but also I think that if women in the community hear this kind of gendered talk from the folks who work at the company, that they might be less encouraged to even bother applying for jobs that come up there, because they might figure that even if they manage to get through the interview, they won't get any respect on the shop floor.

Why are some of these male-dominated jobs more dangerous, and does that have anything to do with patriarchy? Someone in the other thread was talking about how in some places, like construction sites or laboratories, there's a "macho" culture of not wearing safety gear and taking shortcuts out of a desire to not appear wimpy. I would be interested in hearing from others whether they think this is so. Personally, I think it's not just a "macho" thing, but a stoic thing - to prove to employers and everyone else that we can get the job done without pissing around with niceties.

As a former blue-collar worker who worked in a bakery (which isn't as dangerous as a plant or a construction site, but had large equipment with moving parts, very hot walk-in ovens as well as heated appliances, lots of heavy lifting, and lots of safety and sanitation rules), I saw constant corner-cutting, as well as pressure to either conform to the corner-cutting myself (which I did), or look the other way when I saw others doing it (which I also did). It was not just peer pressure from the other workers - it suited the manager as well that we did that, because we got the work done that much faster and with less overhead costs. And of course you always wanted to look good in front of everyone else. You didn't want to be the slow one.

For me, this had roots in patriarchy, first of all because the jobs were divided on gender lines with the women getting the lower-paying jobs (retail and wholesale packing, and light baking of ready-to-go product) whereas men got the higher-paying jobs (baking and delivery truck-driving). It was a male boss who decreed this split - there would be no male retail staff (I guess we women were much more easily taken advantage of) and there was only one female baker and no female delivery staff - because they got paid twice as much as the women, even though we retail and wholesale folks did just as much heavy lifting and worked much longer hours than the delivery guys, and we did just as hard and skilled work as the bakers.

Do the more dangerous jobs HAVE to be more dangerous? Well, obviously washing windows on a scaffold is going to be more dangerous than using a cash register no matter how closely you follow safety regulations. Anyone can screw up. But I'm betting that in many "dangerous job" industries, it's that cutting of corners and sometimes refusal to be innovative and make more ergonomic ways of doing repetitive tasks or heavy lifting that makes those jobs more dangerous - for everyone. Is it possible that part of the reason why there is a reluctance to be innovative is not just cost - but possibly because it might be threatening to men who don't want to see heavy jobs being made into something that does not require brute strength to do? I don't know. I don't think that's a new idea, though.

I also wonder about whether men or women are more likely to be injured on the job, and what counts as an "injury". I believe that way more men are killed on the job, but I'm curious about how many women as opposed to men are injured at work, and what kind of injuries are factored into that (e.g. blake 3:16 mentioned sexual and physical assault in the other thread - I wonder if they consider that when tallying up workplace injuries).

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Originally posted by Michelle:
I would be interested in going a bit deeper into that claim. First of all, assuming that this statistic actually means that men dominate the dangerous (and therefore higher-paying) blue-collar job sector, I think some good questions to ask are: why are men much more likely to be working those jobs?

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I'd like to challenge the first assumption, i.e. that dangerous jobs are necessarily higher-paying ones. I can name at least two jobs that aren't high-paying at all yet are considerably dangerous: farming and the forest industry. These are well-populated jobs in my region, and I have heard too many death anecdotes over the past 10 years.

Just curious - are you sure forestry jobs don't pay well? I've always heard there's good money in it if you can stand it.

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I'd like to challenge the first assumption, i.e. that dangerous jobs are necessarily higher-paying ones. I can name at least two jobs that aren't high-paying at all yet are considerably dangerous: farming and the forest industry. These are well-populated jobs in my region, and I have heard too many death anecdotes over the past 10 years.

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Originally posted by brebis noire:
I'd like to challenge the first assumption, i.e. that dangerous jobs are necessarily higher-paying ones. I can name at least two jobs that aren't high-paying at all yet are considerably dangerous: farming and the forest industry. These are well-populated jobs in my region, and I have heard too many death anecdotes over the past 10 years.

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Further to that, here's an earlier thread I started that received no feedback:

The other question I had was about the nature of the workplace fatalities. Are any of these due to men having heart attacks on the job, or strokes, or falling asleep at the wheel? If so, that's not necessarily work-related, it's just that men are more at risk for these incidents.

[ 25 October 2005: Message edited by: brebis noire ]

Yesterday I had occassion to employ the services of a pest control service to eradicate a serios flea infestation in a duplex apartment I'm having refurbed for a landlord client. When the technition arrived, I was a little surprised to meet a mid-twenties young woman. (I don't know if that surprize was based in some gender stereotyping, or just a result of all of my previous telephone contacts with the outfit having been with men.) Anyway, we attended to the required paperwork, including her giving me the safety warnings literature about how no-one should be in the unit for at least 4 hours after the pesticide application, etc., etc. and I got the other tradespeople out while she did her prep work.

I was then astonished to see her start spraying without any protective gear whatsoever, no rubber suit, not even a dust mask, let alone a respirator. When I questioned her about it, the respnse was "Well, something is going to kill me anyway ..., if it isn't this, it will be cigarettes or cheeseburgers or avian flue or ..."

Brebis, I've never met a wealthy lumberjack either - when I was talking about high-paying, I was thinking in relation to other blue-collar work. All the male-dominated blue-collar jobs have to do is pay better than blue collar jobs that are mostly dominated by women (e.g. waitressing and retail clerk jobs, which usually pay around minimum wage) for it to drive the average male wage higher than the average female wage, I would think. At the bakery, none of us workers were getting rich, that's for sure. But I was bringing home about $400 every two weeks, whereas the drivers were bringing home between $700-800 (and for working much shorter hours than us, too). We were all hurtin' units income-wise, but we women were a lot worse off than the guys there.

But there's something I didn't know - I didn't realize that so many people were self-employed as lumberjacks. I guess I kind of figured they were all working for big companies. I didn't know you could make a go of it in that industry as an independent.

I couldn't find a good list from the links posted in the other thread that break down deaths by occupation, with percentages for each occuption. Was I just missing it? I'd be interested in seeing that, since brebis and shaolin have mentioned that many workplace fatalities occur in lower-paying occupations.

Another profession that's been singled out by accident insurers is large animal veterinary medicine. When I was working, scary accidents were always a possibility. I remember once being at the top of a 15-foot ladder in a rendering house, alone, doing an autopsy on the muscles of a cow carcass, with a very sharp knife. I was thinking: 1. this must be against the standards of the worker's compensation board 2. I don't have a union that will back me up on this 3. if something happens, I hope somebody finds me before I die.

Re: Michelle's friends' comments about women not often being able to do jobs in industry. I posted about this a few times before, but I learned a lot this summer, so here I go again When I worked at a pulp mill this year, I found that of the few other women that I worked with, most very very hesitant to ask for any sort of physical help. The guys at the mill helped each other out all the time, but I think the reason for the women being hesitant had two parts. First: Every time we ask for help we re-inforce the idea that we can't do it on our own. Second: We already get asked left-right-and-centre if we need some assistance to open the elevator door or put the hose away or lift the so-and-so, which wouldn't be so bad, but then you realise that none of the guys open the elevator door or roll up hoses for one another.

In certain setting, the attitude towards safety gear is really changing also. In the mill, anyone not doing the 'lockout' procedure is reported to the OH&S people, and safety gear is absolutely mandatory in applicable areas. The labs there are a bit of a different story, because although we wore glasses, wearing gloves caused more of a risk of dumping chemicals all over the place than they prevented getting chemicals on our hands. I think that before this judgement of 'macho rulebreaking' is made, it's pretty important to see if there's a reason behind the rulebreaking.

It's kind of sad- I saw far less regard for the health/safety of the employees in workplaces generally considered to be "safe" than I did at that pulp mill. At one place, I had to clean with cleaner that I was very allergic to (or be sent home- and not come back), and buy my own bandaids because they wouldn't supply them. At that same place, the manager constantly pushed safety limits when we were moving/lifting/storing things in the backroom, and it was not uncommon for one of us to go home with a messed back (which was made worse by the mandatory raised shoes). It's far too early for me to do any serious thinking about this, but I am left wondering how many men in relation to women feel that their job is at risk for bringing up safety issues? In my experience, the men have never shown hesitation to do so, and the women have (in settings other than the pulp mill) typically shown a lot.

At first everyone is careful (men and women); after they become comfortable with it most people (men and women) begin to take shortcuts, even when they know better, even in situations in which it costs them nothing to take a few seconds to be sure (ie half way up a multi-pitch climb is a bad time to stop double checking things, but you'd be surprised how many experienced (in fact especially how many experienced as opposed to novice) climbers do it.

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... When I was working, scary accidents were always a possibility. I remember once being at the top of a 15-foot ladder in a rendering house, alone, doing an autopsy on the muscles of a cow carcass, with a very sharp knife. ...

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Originally posted by retread:
I doubt disregarding safety rules has much to do with patriachy or gender ... I think its just human nature. Sort of the familiarity breed contempt concept applied to safety conditions. No scientific studies to site, just observations from working in jobs like tree planting and landscaping in my youth, and time spent leading groups in mountaineering and rock-climbing.

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Originally posted by deBeauxOs:
Sorry, but my inner Monty Python just took over when I read that. How did the cow get there? (Pitchez la vache? )

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Hee. It was hanging from a meat hook (suspended by its arse.)

[ 25 October 2005: Message edited by: brebis noire ]

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... in some places, like construction sites or laboratories, there's a "macho" culture of not wearing safety gear and taking shortcuts out of a desire to not appear wimpy.

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I've done a small amount of construction supervision. Some folks did take shortcuts with safety, but I found that it was more of a problems of familiarity (with the inherent dangers) breeding contempt.