Comments on: Women in Lighting

By: AdrianH

AdrianH — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:55:56 +0000

“And to mingle in techie society, to be accepted as part of it, your average woman will, at some point, have to behave like your average bloke. Sometimes worse; will have to prove themselves to be one of the society, and it’s a man’s society. The word we’re heading for is macho, or machismo.”
(Pity I can’t italicise this). I’ve actually had this conversation with a close friend who has recently got a full-time job as a pastry chef in a major tourist attraction in Bath, and the atitude is very similar and ‘blokey’. Fortunately she’s no shrinking violet, and has done volunteer work in Africa, walked Kilimanjaro, worked in Youth Hostels and hotel and pub restaurants, so dealing with blokey blokes is doddle compared to snotty customers bitching about the bill or the quality of the meal.

By: Catherine Hill

Catherine Hill — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:51:17 +0000

I can see where you’re coming from, I’m a bit like that myself. I don’t tend to think much about my position on gender until I come up against something (either in my own experience or via friends/the media) which gets me thinking.
I had my first gender-based challenge about a decade ago when I was barely in my teens (girls apparently weren’t supposed to like computers back then).
Usually I see what my gut instinct is and then examine that in a more rational fashion to see why I think that way. I think of it as feminism-by-instinct. I don’t call myself a feminist as I suspect that I’m a very lazy/uneducated one, and that doesn’t seem fair on all those people who work at it. Also my attitude to gender is largely affected by the fact that so many ‘girly’ things don’t interest me at all.