The Dan Chronicles

by one Subversive Female

Whither Women in Industry?

The concept that women are disproportionately represented in blue-collar jobs, and the many problems that are present in that socio-economic class with regards to feminism, have been so often repeated that it has become a cliché. Like most clichés, there is truth within these statements. But, why? As a member of this class, both a person skilled in fabrication and a wife of a blue-collar industrial worker, I’ve thought long about this issue and seen little popular writings on the matter by women actually in the class. The lack of present voice troubles me, and so I offer my own perspective, which is supported by no academic weight of authority or statistical analysis, and therefore falls only in the realm of anecdote and editorial. Nonetheless, it is my voice, and thus I offer it to anyone who cares to hear.

I operate my own small fabrication studio, spending most days in it with my torches, solder and cutting wheels, and when I’m working, I don’t give any thought to whether I can or cannot do these things because I am a woman. I use these tools, because they are the only way to fabricate the things I sell, which are pieces of art (usually jewelry). The leap from artistic fabrication to industrial fabrication is not insignificant, but neither is it unrelated, for the materials, methods and tools are very similar (identical in some cases). The underlying physics and chemistry is largely the same. However, the concept of a woman wielding a tool that generates sparks and temperatures high enough to fabricate metal and carbon crystals is tellingly easier to imagine when the context is to make womanly items, such as I do.

However, my husband often calls me from work to get my opinion on a machine that has broken, and I help him troubleshoot problems. He has said that I’m the only one who he can call when things go really wrong in order to think through the problem intelligently. Beyond the fabrication experience that I have, I’ve also independently studied electronics, optics and chemistry, and so when he tells me that he had to crack the BIOS on the Trumpf laser to test the I/O output to the coolant pressure sensors only to find that one of the chips was fried, I reply, “Good thing you had a spare motherboard. I thought the biocide wasn’t necessary in those aluminum tubes.” With a year of training in precision welding or soldering, I could easily do what he does. I don’t for a few reasons.

The most important reason is that I love my art work, and as long as I can make some living from it, it is my profession of choice. A second reason also prevents me: my disease makes me easily exhausted and I can’t work on my feet for long periods of time. The environment that he works in requires being on one’s feet all day, running back and forth around a facility that is thousands of square feet large. I do not have the health to do what he does.

However, a third reason also lurks that is a non-sequitur to my individual ability. Even if I did have the health and training to do his job, I would not want to take it, not even if my artwork stopped making money and I needed it. Not because I am a woman and the work itself intimidates me, but because the industry is overwhelmingly dominated by men who are steeped in patriarchal views of women and this creates a very real, very hostile working environment for a job that is already stressful and hazardous enough. This intimidates me.

When I visit my husband at work, if he isn’t attending me every minute, I am being leered at and ogled. That’s when I’m wearing my jeans and t-shirt that is streaked with a thin film of silicate dust from my lapidary. Before it was commonly known that we are married, several of the workers propositioned me in the break room while I was waiting for him to get off his shift. His boss still has trouble forming whole sentences when he speaks to me, so intently is his focus upon my breasts. Of the two women who work as machinists out of 500 employees, one is referred to as “the dyke bitch” and the other a target for constant blatant sexual harassment, and they are regularly derided by most of their male workers with impunity. Why the hell would I want to spend my time fighting all of that? Why would anyone? Working there isn’t an equal opportunity of choice I’m not making; it’s a choice I don’t equally have.

While the men who run such companies are quick to speak their support of equal opportunity to anyone who might talk to the media and they will point to their legal compliance with such policies, it is not even a guarded secret that this “crazy feminist idealism” falls completely outside of their actual practice. There just aren’t enough trained women demanding the jobs, they say. Women don’t have an interest in the field, they say. Women aren’t as good at hazardous duties, they say.

They say all of this with the straight faced audacity that can only come from a complete lack of care or understanding of the problem. If the CEO of my husband’s company knew that one of his best consultants for maintenance and repair of high-powered laser machines was a woman whose counsel he was getting for free, I would still only be some kind of fluke exception rather than a competent potential hire who their working environment has discouraged.

The problem with blue-collar jobs and women is deeper than merely the girls-don’t-like-heavy-things argument, even though this is as far as most men and even women are willing to consider it. The social pressures against following such professional paths restrict a woman from all sides, such that even when she becomes competent in spite of the discouragement from necessary training, working in these environments is prohibitively difficult for a woman in respect to herself, her family responsibilities, and her potential within the capitalist framework.

The social costs of this endemic sexism are greater than the obvious exclusionary policies of most of the industrial trades. The industry propagates sexism far outside the realm of its own doors, well into the lives of the women who share a family with their employees. These costs are often misunderstood in terms of their root cause, and as such, require a radical feminist perspective perhaps more than many other aspects of our patriarchal society, though it is one of the least-understood contributors to it, largely because women are so absent.

Pneumatic Drills are for Boys, Knitting Needles are for Girls

The concept of a tool is such a basic human element upon which our species’ progress has depended so entirely that sound arguments have been made for this being a main account for much of our distinctive forebrains. When a problem presents itself to a human which cannot be solved with our bodies, we immediately search for a tool. Tools, in themselves, have no gender. They are merely things that we use to maintain our dominance in the hierarchy of the biological ladder.

The cultural pressures that direct women and men toward different tools, symbolically transferring gender upon them, limit our potential to solve problems. When a woman’s car breaks, it is her cultural training that gives her a sense of helplessness to fix it, not a lack of ability for a socket wrench to work properly in her feminine hands. It is the same cultural stigma that causes a man to shy away from a sewing machine when his shirt needs repair, leaving him with a similar helplessness to fix the problem.

This was not always the case in our society, as exemplified by feminism’s brief and perhaps unintentional victory during the World War era, which was quickly surrendered in the post-War western world after men returned from the battlefield and demanded the economic privilege of the jobs that women had filled during their absence, returning us more vigorously to the staid cultural hypocrisy of gender-proscribed tool use.

Consequently, this fabricated co-dependence does not manifest the same for woman and man. Men are socialized to believe that a woman in her entirety is yet another of his available tools, and thus all of her “feminine” talents are at his disposal to solve his problems, preventing him from seeing his inherent helplessness. Conversely, a woman’s socialization teaches her that men are the masters of solutions; they are the mind behind the tools. A woman is taught to rely upon him to decide how best to utilize tools, including herself, making her constantly and acutely aware of her helplessness.

The tools that are relegated to the domain of the female are those whose utility is closely related to the household duties proscribed to the feminine agency. These then become part of the whole of the tool that is woman, like so many attachments on the vacuum she is expected to push. Male ignorance of these tools is easily understood in such a framework, for he has no need to do more than ensure that she has her necessary attachments for her function to be of service to him. He is socialized to only use these tools himself if he lacks a female tool to use them for him, which is the ideal solution. This socialization is so strong that he is made to feel that his very self as a male is threatened by the use of such “feminized” tools.

When women become competent with tools that can solve problems beyond their use as a domestic tool, the dependency upon the judgment of her master is negated, giving her a freedom of independence that threatens her previous agency as a tool for men. Thus, there is a great pressure of discouragement against this education from the patriarchal culture, funneling her away from that which would liberate her.

While men are on average physiologically stronger than women, it is for this very reason that tools are so useful to a woman. Men use a wide variety of tools to buttress and bolster their strength, giving them the ability to lift cars, airplanes and entire buildings, should they wish it. It is no argument at all to say that women cannot manage the physical requirements of tool usage; she can simply use the same tools that a man would, or should these fail to provide her with adequate power, new ones could easily be conceived that would account for the strength differential between the genders, which is, in respect to lifting loads, a slight difference indeed.

Working with tools can present a hazard to human health and life, which is another argument often cited against women learning competence in industrial-grade tool usage. However, this again falls alarmingly flat when one considers the daily risks that a domestically-bound woman takes with tools such as gas and electric range ovens, hot irons, poisonous cleaning agents and sharp cutting utensils, for which she is rarely provided more than the merest protection against. By comparison, the safety regulations and equipment provided to the average blue-collar industrial worker are many orders of magnitude more protective against their present hazards.

Of course, no amount of protection can prevent industrial accidents, which can and do result in the loss of life and limb. Nevertheless, there is no reason why these dangers are increased when those tools are placed in the hands of a woman, and similarly, no reason why a woman’s fingers are less hers to choose to risk in the solving of problems than a man’s. Still, the concept of a woman retaining injury in a high-risk job is nearly unthinkable, though it makes no objective sense. But when we consider the cultural framework already discussed, her fingers are not her own; they belong to men in her context as a tool, and a tool cannot choose to risk itself.

When a woman chooses to resist her cultural proscription as a tool, and becomes full in her own agency as a tool-using human, she presents the most absurd kind of threat to the patriarchy, much like the robot who suddenly gains self-awareness and demands its rights to sovereignty. Men are ever searching for our “off” switch in an attempt to regain control over the independence that threatens the system upon which they so entirely depend, even though that very independence of woman would make them less helpless as they learn to see women as full human beings rather than tools, and all actual tools as equally valid choices in the solution of the problems that occur in the course of a life.

Breaking down such a system to liberate humans from our gender dependency in relation to our use of tools is a daunting proposition, for which feminism is a vital part. Only by teaching young women that they are not tools in their agency will women gain the self-confidence to begin relying upon their own judgment in the solution of problems. It is then that women will begin to more often reach for tools that have been traditionally considered male to solve their problems, releasing both sexes from bondage. Only when more women are using tools competently can industry – a place that has too long been permitted to grow without her voice – have the potential to represent both genders more equally.

I Can Weld. But Then, What?

Nevertheless, being able to utilize tools for problem solving does not remove from woman her fundamental biological obligations to the species. While tools can certainly be used to assist her with this problem – the lowly tampon is one such tool – her body will still betray her as it strives to preserve the species, and in this betrayal lies a large obstacle toward her socio-economic independence, her freedom of choice in profession, and especially her ability to compete in a blue-collar industrial job.

In our current system of naked capitalist greed where they who can sacrifice the most independence wins, the woman is at a disadvantage, for she has less independence to tender. A portion of her physical self has already been claimed by the species, leaving her with a smaller remainder to enter into the fray, where a man’s role in the propagation of our species makes no such egregious demand upon his biological person, and this advantage will always work against the woman in a system that relies upon the sacrifice of one’s independence to compete.

Women are never without their disadvantage, even when they do not elect to have children, for their bodies are ever reminding us of our debt to the species; however this burden becomes prohibitive when a woman does bear a child. While tools exist to assist a woman with this charge and allow for the redistribution of labor regarding children, one cannot give up the work of nine months of gestation and birth which are hers to have uniquely, and which will always remove her from the workplace for a minimum period of time. Neither then do children rear themselves, and few jobs in the industrial industry are paid adequately to provide for a means of childcare that would allow a woman to compete effectively.

In an economy that will always do the least for those who can compete the least effectively, the ability for a woman to perform the skills necessary for a blue-collar job becomes almost immaterial if she cannot meet the labor demands of the industry. The average shift of a blue-collar worker ranges between 10 and 12 hours, not including commute times, which can and usually do add 2 or more hours to a working day. This allows very little time for even the most basic of human needs, such as hygiene and eating, before a worker must sleep to regain the energy expended upon an often exhausting job. It is not uncommon for blue-collar workers to spend one or more weekend days working, as well.

While these shifts common to the industry do provide a worker with overtime, this apparent excess is not in fact excessive at all, but provides the worker with a wage that becomes livable, and without it they would not be able to support their families. With pay ranges for industrial jobs from $7 an hour to $15 an hour on average, the opportunity for overtime becomes a necessity which is quite often taken for granted in the worker’s mandatory schedule, not presented as an option. Because the average 40 hour work week occurs between the first and fourth days, making the fifth working weekday entirely overtime, the loss of one day’s work creates a significant financial shortfall for the worker because companies are not obligated to legally remunerate lost opportunities for overtime. This, in very real effect, obligates the worker to these long hours in order to maintain their livable wage that depends upon the overtime.

These laboring time requirements, far more than the hazardous or physical requirements of the job which have already been demonstrated irrelevant to gender, are prohibitive to a woman’s equal opportunity within the industry. These restrictions are patent if she a single mother. Neither does marriage offer the opportunity for solution to this problem, for the standing general sexism of the patriarchy mandates that husbands refuse the sacrifice of their careers in order to take up more responsibility for domestic duties; and it is this sacrifice that would allow a mother to work an industrial trade. Thus, there is no place in the industrial trade for a woman to pursue a lifetime career, assuming (as most companies do when considering female hires) that at some point she will want to have children.

While gaps in income between the genders are certainly another discouraging element of the industry, one need not reach that far to find economic pressures against women, for as has already been stated, child care is a substantial financial burden which is often outside the reach of a blue-collar worker’s pay. Child care is an essential element of the ability of a woman to continue her career in industry, and in many cases, the hours of availability for such childcare facilities do not exist to accommodate a woman working a 10-12 hour shift, even if she could afford to pay. This also accounts for why so many wives of blue-collar workers confine themselves to jobs with work schedules that allow them to care for the children themselves, or simply do not work at all.

So long as the industry requires the inordinately long hours of labor from their employees in order to effectively compete in the capitalist economic system, and offers pay scales that allow the worker to only maintain themselves enough to work more, the industrial workplace will remain hostile to women and overwhelming populated by men. The company that chooses to hire an equal number of women takes a risk of almost certain loss, for they will not compete as effectively as the company that relies upon men, whose independence can be more fully proffered to the production of labor than a woman’s.

The criticism, therefore, of the lack of women in the industry lies not just in the superficial artifices of culture that psychologically dissuade women from receiving the training in tool usage, but in the greater patriarchal attitudes toward women in relationship to child-rearing responsibilities, and also the capitalist-industrial system whose greed remains indifferent to the potential of women while demanding such a large sacrifice of the independence of its workers.

Moreover, the blue-collar industry furthers sexist roles by rendering those men who work under such demands of time and labor with so little remuneration unable to assist as fully with domestic duties as they might otherwise, often relegating those duties out of necessity to a woman. This accounts for why these environments continue to breed sexist attitudes among the male employees, who, having traded a crippling amount of their independence to the industry, are almost entirely dependent upon their wives for all other domestic responsibilities.

Such a dehumanizing state of co-dependence and lack of agency is, in fact, the naked reality of the lives of these men; a fact which their misogyny and machismo obscures. That these industries often do little to mitigate the rampant sexism among their workers is certainly to their advantage, for it would not profit such a company for their workers to begin examining the high human costs of their sacrifice objectively.

The day that women are more often employed with torches in hand working in industrial environments is the day when many of feminism’s greater goals will have been met, and these environments will no longer demand the ridiculously inhuman costs from their workers. In this way, feminism represents a real threat to the cold greed of capitalism, and a greater respect for the human condition.

The Struggle for Feminism in the Blue-Collar Class

As it stands now, with little exception, women who are involved in the blue-collar class are most often the wives of such workers. Their lot is frequently cited as one of the largest obstacles to the greater goals of feminism, for many wives within such family units take jobs that permit them time to care for children and perform domestic duties, the burdens of which are not equally shared by their husbands despite the fact that the woman’s income is often vital to the economic survival of the household. As stated, it is equally common that these wives will, upon the birth of the children, abandon the job they may have held, and devote their entire agency to domestic labor.

While there are many, many instances of individual husbands in these families openly behaving in a sexist or even misogynist fashion, the system of the blue-collar socio-economic class itself is inherently patriarchal, often cultivating sexist gender roles within both parties whether they would approve of these roles or not. Such an environment makes the adoption of feminist principles a constant matter of struggle for both the wife and husband, even when they enthusiastically and willingly wish to apply the values of feminism to their lives. It is perhaps not unreasonable to state that women who occupy this class as wives are functionally handicapped from making the free choice to become fully realized feminists in large part due to the practices of the industry to which their husband’s are employed.

Companies schedule regular overtime because they know that the production demands will require that much labor from their workers and it is less expensive to pay existing workers overtime than it is to hire additional workers, distribute raises to bring about more livable wages, and demand fewer hours. That these companies take for granted that their employees will have a partner at home to take on the requirements of domestic duties becomes obvious when one realizes that the overwhelming majority of male employees of industrial trades are married. In this way, industrial companies not only foster active sexism within the lives of their employees, but moreover, they depend upon it, thus rendering profit from the subjugation of the wives of their workers.

A woman in this class might eschew bearing children in order to maintain a greater hold on her independence, but this is not a free feminist choice, rather a strategy for survival against the many overwhelming restrictions that her class will bring to bear upon her when she does have children. It is equal to say that only the more privileged classes ought to have children, for women in those classes are better able to maintain their independent agency on balance with the responsibilities of child-rearing, and this will not do. Bearing a child should not forbid a woman from a feminist framework, or else feminism can only be understood by the privileged and the short-lived generation of blue-collar class women who do not breed. We must, instead, look to how women of the blue-collar class are restricted by their socio-economic position, and how feminism can help them to better regain their agency without asking her to sacrifice her ability to have children.

As has already been mentioned, women of families of blue-collar workers are often forced by the demands of her husband’s job to perform more of the domestic work. It is easy to say that she just ought not do it, that she should demand more of her husband, but these principles will not apply in practice. The reasons for this are complex and intertwined within the patriarchal capitalist system itself, and are not merely abstractions that can be reformed in the minds of those who occupy this class to solve the problem.

A common domestic duty that falls to women in these households is that of feeding the family, which can involve two or three meals, often prepared to feed three or more people. While the obvious retort to this duty would be for the workload to be divided and then an equal portion transferred laterally to the man, this is not as simple a solution as it often seems to those who are given to viewing the situation from a more privileged class.

The first obstacle to this solution is the matter of time which, as has already been discussed, the blue-collar worker has significantly less of on average. The typical family might be fed twice a day between 6am-7am and 7pm-8pm, and the worker often returns home around 6pm-7pm, and then needs to go to sleep by 9pm-10pm in order to get enough rest for shifts that can begin as early as 6am. This also does not account for those employees who work “swing” shifts and “graveyard” shifts, entirely destroying the rhythm of a typical American worker’s day, and for which other planning must be made. Due to the polluted environments of most industrial jobs, most workers spend a longer-than-average amount of time on their hygiene upon returning home, as well, further cutting into the time they have to contribute to domestic duties.

One solution often presented is the idea of using convenience foods or dining out to provide means for the workers to prepare a meal for a family quickly, but this is an equally unsatisfactory solution, as most convenience food within their budget contain high amounts of preservatives, fats and high fructose corn syrup, all of which nutritional science suggests have deleterious effects on health. Persons occupying the blue-collar class cannot be expected to choose between health and independence, for again, this is no choice at all. Thus, a healthy meal will require the use of raw, unprocessed foods within their budget and consequently more preparation time.

Given these limits, a household must also decide what kinds of foods they will eat, and which foods they are competent to prepare. Most average meals that provide basic balanced nutrition without dependence upon convenience food will require a minimum preparation time of at least one hour; longer if more portions are required for larger families. While a raw vegetarian diet may offer a solution to a blue-collar family in terms of preparation times, this choice should also not be one that is made under socio-economic pressure. Meat should not be the domain of the privileged, particularly when many lean meats have redeeming nutritional value.

However, this assumes that a given household is aware of the importance of nutrition and the many hazards that are presented by the commercial foods targeted specifically toward their socio-economic class, and furthermore that they have the skills to prepare these foods. Should they lack such an awareness (which is quite common) or skill, the expense of the convenience foods upon which they may rely will hamper their budget and their health, further contributing to the decline of the entire family’s well-being, as more work must be done to replace the excess expenditures by people who often begin suffering serious health complications due to their diet.

Thus, it is often for practical reasons that the woman of the household takes on this responsibility, and the man will only contribute to this duty during his days off. Even if the blue-collar worker wishes to contribute more (rarely the case given the prevalence of sexist attitudes among them), to do so is an active daily struggle against the restrictions placed upon him by the demands of his job – a struggle which can only mitigate, not remove the problem – and it is often far too easy for sexism to take root and linger in a family in this fashion. When one factors in the other responsibilities of domestic stability which are all fraught with similar complexities, it becomes far more obvious why such classes tend toward the gender roles which the industrial capitalist system is constantly pressuring them to oblige.

A radical restructuring of the labor practices and working conditions of the industrial trade with a more feminist framework in place would be the most effective solution provided by the party most responsible for the current destructive bias that now exists. Encouraging the employment of women in these positions would increase the available labor pool by as much as 50% allowing companies to cease the overworking of employees, pay a more livable wage without the need for overtime and discourage the sexist environment which too often translates directly into the lives of women who share families with male employees in the form of repression of her agency. However, for such a strategy to be adopted, all companies in our economic system would be required to comply simultaneously under pressure of law, and such legislation has little current interest or support and many vested interests pitted against it.

Given that it is unlikely that the industrial trade will relent their demands upon the workers voluntarily within the current patriarchal social environment, the solution to the problem of the sexist pressure on such classes may lie with the woman herself, and in this way feminism plays a vital role. Should the woman elevate to a higher economic position, her excess income can provide the ability to utilize services that will relieve the household of such domestic duties and allow her to recapture more agency. However, again, this is not merely a matter of academic concept, but of practical implementation, for both time and money are required of her to advance in the professional choices that are available to her.

The support of the feminist framework for a woman attempting to make such an investment is key, for rendering such an excess of time and money is an epic exertion on her part, which will be discouraged constantly by the daily pressures of her life. A woman must first be aware of the options that are available to her, such as government grants, scholarships and other educational opportunities, and this can be far more prohibitive than it appears at first blush, for the process of obtaining such assistance can be well outside of her range of experience.

The more privileged classes of feminists can provide support for their analogues in the blue-collar class, by reaching out into these communities and taking a more proactive role in providing women with the information that they need to understand their options. It is also important that women of greater privilege understand that the choices a woman in this class makes are not made in the same context of that of a woman of greater privilege; her gender role is as much due to the socio-economics of her position as it is to any psychological and cultural conditioning she may struggle with, giving her a formidable two-part obstacle to overcome. Overcoming the psychological conditioning of the patriarchy only to discover that one is still consigned to functional sexism is a deeply dejecting realization, and so a solution to both one and the other should be explored in tandem.

It is also important that a woman in this class attempting to regain her agency is aware of the support options available to her, such as local feminist groups and online discussions (in some cases, she may not have access to this). However, it should also be understood that she has no copious amount of free time to expend in travel and meetings, and a more privileged feminist would do her a great service by crossing the divide to come to her. Isolation is one of the key reasons that women do not overcome their bondage, as they are often only in the company of those to whom they are responsible.

Radical feminism has not only a place among the blue-collar class, but an absolute necessity, for without it women of this class are too often consigned to spend their lives without realizing even the smallest amount of their potential as an individual, victims in the silent war against the patriarchy whose names will not be recalled, rather than effective participants in it. It is only when a significant number of women of this class are empowered that their voices will be heard, and their perspective upon the many problems of class in our society is one that can only be useful to the overall goals of feminism and, consequently, an increase in the quality of life for all members of this class.