http://www.gloucestercitizen.co.uk/Thom ... story.html

Just when we think we've heard everything in the "society of blame assignation," this comes along.

Yes, it's Thomas's fault and the fact that it has historically been an almost exclusively male occupation for its first 140 years has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Steve

Well, if he were in the USA he would be branded a racist. Too many people with not enough to do.

180 years in England,
about 170 years in the USA..

if you go "pre-steam" you could even say 200 years..

and yes, what an insane and ridiculous story..
made up nonsense disguised as news..which we get a lot of these days.

Scot

It will be interesting to see what effect this has on Thomas.

Poor Thomas works hard pulling Annie and Clarabel who go along for the ride.

I have just been informed by a young lady that the Strasburg is not that far away from her grandparents' house and that she is willing to take the entire rest of the term off from the second grade to qualify as a driver. What I find worrisome is that neither her mother nor my significant other have voiced the expected objections.

The Honourable Member from Where-ever does have a valid point about the stereotypes but to blame it on Thomas??? Oh, excuse me, this is the House of Commons, long noted for its polite, intellectual discourse.

GME

I was basing 140 years from the 1830's when railroads as we we know them now really got started to the 1970's when women started to join train crews in an everyday, non gimmicky way.

Steve

to who ever who wrote the article doesn't know a damn thing. I loved Thomas for much of my childhood which got me interested in trains. The main reason that the number of women working on the railroads are low is because in my guess is choice. Remember women weren't really in the workforce until WWII and after the war was over hundreds of thousands of workers were laid off in the 1950s. A number of women have joined the railroad industry and preservation but not in the large scale. From the 1950s to 1970s women were stay at home type people. I think that women don't join this type of industry is because they don't want to risk getting injured or dirty or whatever the reason is it's been sort of a guys thing since the beginning but always willing to get any new crew to keep this industry going. I think the reason why there aren't many female characters in the Thomas series is probably because they just don't sell or attract readers. There are one solid female character in the series named Emily. Know before you write an article do your research. You could think otherwise but that's my two cents.

but we have the habit of relating to our steamers as the ole girl...hmnnmnmn

There are several reasons for the railroad to be a male thing, none of it is "stereotype" or such.

In over 200 years of railroading there is not one single female invention that comes to my mind, and I have given up believing in these stories of "8000 years of patriarchy" preventing women from having their hands smashed in link-and-pin-coupling or laying tracks at night in the snowstorm as they allegedly always wanted to do. Men rather took those jobs to keep their wives off those risks, not to suppress them.

I like to present two links to scientists who have found out the reasons behind "typical male/female jobs".

One is former feminist Warren Farrell who found out that the gender pay-gap has reasons in the individual choice rather than discrimination. In brief, women tend to choose safe jobs in closed rooms in part-time, whilst men do have to take the risky but better-paid jobs to keep up the family's needs. Such as railroading.

Here he explains the pay gap by simply asking the academical audience about their personal professional choices. Farrell by the way reveals that people have taken these so-called typical male/female jobs without having been forced to do so.

So if few women choose to work hard as train drivers it is their personal choice. Its OK whatever they decide, but neither "Thomas" nor "men" nor "stereotypes" are to blame for it.

The other guy to know is the Norwegian Harald Eia with a very simple approach, asking questions to scientists of all kinds, finally defacing those gender-people who tell us that all differences are just trained. Nope, the differences are inherent in all of us!

Eia meets a professor who researched on new born babies, the males rather looking at moving objects, the females rather at faces on the first day of their life. He found out that the dosis of testosterone in the womb makes the differences in what we will be interested in - and not the colour of the romper suit or the toy you give to the child.

Here is the story, which, after being on TV, has led to public discussions which brought to an end a good bit of gender-budgeting in Norway.

There is a celebrated female locomotive driver in Germany who is featured in the media quite frequently as a woman who has "conquered a male domain". She has restored a WWII electric loco, founded her own RR comany and drives trains.

All the media coverage point out how courageuos she is et cetera - they just don't tell the one thing to the viewer:

That she became interested in trains at a time when she was a boy.

Mike

Hrrrumph. Slow news day, had to find something to fill the space. . .

Railroad scheduling, or the lack of it, in T&E service is a huge reason for a lot of women to avoid it as a career. If a young woman doesn't have or plan a family, she might try it, but even then, the expectation is that she will care for aging parents or siblings and be available at a moment's notice. We're going through this right now with my niece and nephew, both (not locomotive, the other kind) engineers. Their mother is sick, and nephew's family had planned a trip to California, so they went. Niece is in Georgia but was expected to come up and deal with the crisis.

When you can't be sure where you'll be twelve hours from now, it's hard to have any kind of life off the road. Were I physically able to work, I'd probably go to the coal mines, even with the insane hours at the moment (some are running seven days, 12 hours, and you don't get days off--nice on payday, but good luck doing even absolutely necessary chores without going short on sleep.) There wouldn't be any more time off than there is on the railroad, but I'd be twenty miles from home at most.

As for women doing clean work, it's a matter of perception. The majority of nurses and veterinarians are women, plus a lot of doctors, and I wouldn't call either career clean or easy. Most of the nurses I know have trashed their backs before they're fifty, and I knew a vet who was killed when a cow fell on his chest. Doctors don't usually have to lift patients, but the stupid hours and high stress are no bargain.

The difference may be that women know how to become nurses, veterinarians and doctors. If you want to work on the railroad, and no one in your family has for a generation or more, you do all the legwork yourself. The other jobs around a railroad would be open to women and more practical because of scheduling, but once again, a welder or machinist needs to know where to look for a railroad job. Tech schools in our area seldom mention the possibility.

The other factor is that women tend to be more cautious about jobs that come and go. Part time is fine if a woman can afford it. Unpredictable part time with probable long layoffs is not, especially for women who support a family.

Work in a clean, air conditioned locomotive cab today isn't like it was in the days of steam. The heaviest thing you lift is your grip. You have a private toilet a couple steps away. Martha Stewart could train to operate a locomotive without getting her nails broken on the job, and do just fine.

Individuals are different, and no generalization abut gender, hair color, shoe size or favorite pizza topping selection is worth a damn when it comes to careers. You either have the interest and ability or you don't. There may be genetic differences that encourage people in different directions, and some may lean towards one gender more than another, but I have had the pleasure of working with a lot of very good women in railroading and in other industries and found the stereotypes to be irrelevant - competence is what matters.

dave

This is true for a lot of families and it often is a matter of personal choice, beginning with the choice of a partner.

Who will get the girl - the guy who tells her he will care for the baby and stay at home - or the guy with the good job? The trade-off for women marrying up (which is the tendency) is being with the family and having less-paid jobs rather than being specialized in the job and having to work full time as men tend to do.

BTW, did you know there was a man shortage in the US? Yes: women in very high paid positions have problems finding partners, because they still refuse to marry down. The male professor will marry the beautiful young nurse - the female professor usually won't.

This is true, and it is true for both men and women. This often is the male trade-off for having a family and being able to finance it.

You are absolutely right, there are hard female-dominated jobs, too. Yet, whilst most veterinarians and nurses may be female, I tend to believe that most women are not veterinarians and nurses but rather to be found in offices and closed safe rooms.

Please do not get me wrong, this is no criticism at all, this is just a description of the situation, and as long as people make their own choices, they have to live with the trade-offs without calling it "stereotype" or whatever is en vogue on the market of gender-budgeting.

Funny, I heard of state-funded programs specially pushing women in technical professions. I believe every girl knows about such jobs and makes her own choice, unlike two generations ago.

See the Eia video, another female scientist found out that the more gender-conscious the countries are, the more women chose the typical "female" jobs. Whilst the soviet women had to work on tractors or in the steel industry because they had to work, or whilst women in the third world just have to take the one job available, the western women often do have multiple choices. And often enough, they choose not to let the male partner stay with the baby but have the quality-time themselves, so they choose adequate jobs. Less pay, more time. A fair trade-off.



Yes!
See the Harald Eia vid from minute 25, where he interviews the evolutionary psychologist Anne Campbell. She researched and found out exactly what you said. Indeed women tend to go on the safe side in closed rooms, seeking help with others (=in the office) while men rather go out alone (in the cab of the truck or locomotive). It is a biological fact, there are differences within the brain structure. If they were to be wiped out by ideology, this would have happened long ago.

No one ist to blame for this, so there is no need to force one or the other gender into or out of certain jobs.


And still most women prefer other jobs. As I said before, no one to blame.

Amen.

And this is why so many state programs nowadays aim on replacing the job criteria from competence to gender?

Hope this will stay away from the RR preservation scene. They already had one "girls day" on a german museum RR, which meant that boys were excluded. What a nice way to show the main group of volunteers how welcome they are.

Mike