Quick Hit: Women rock heavy winter machinery
From a local Detroit TV station, a story about how female snow plow drivers hold their own.
Thanks to Cody for the link!
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This is awesome, a story about women from my area!
Driving a snow plow is totally my dream job! Living in Wyoming you see the plows all the time, and the trucks kick ass. Whenever I get all stressed out by my job I fantasize about driving a snow plow for a living. In grad school whenever we got stressed out we would all make plans to become mail carriers, but that fantasy has been displaced by the snow plow one since I moved here.
You should definitely come drive plows in Seattle then, we need drivers bad!
What's the first memory you have of being told there was a dream job you couldn't pursue because of your gender?
I grew up in Seattle, and then lived in SoCal for several years, which is exactly why being a snow plow driver never occured to me. I hear there's a massive shortage of snow plows in King County, too.
I remember my first grade teacher correcting me when I said I wanted to be a lawyer. All the other girls had said they wanted to be a mom, so she said "you want to be a lawyer and a mom?" I suppose I should just be happy that she implied it was possible to do both. And I almost did go to law school, but got a PhD in Philosophy instead.
I know this wasn't directed at me, but I was thinking about the question for the last two minutes and I can't think of any time anyone told me I couldn't do a certain job because of my gender.
However, often when I tell people I'm a math major they say "oh, so do you want to teach?"
I'm not sure if they can't imagine anything else anyone would do with a math degree, or if they just assume women would want to teach. Anecdotally it seems like the girls get this comment more than the guys but its hard to really tell. And it complicates things that I do, in fact, want to teach. But that doesn't mean there aren't a million other things to do with a math degree.
It was certainly directed at anybody who had a response and I encourage anyone to reply.
Mine was when I was talking about being a nurse. I think also interesting to remember when you started internalizing the norms. I think for men the internalizing is not at all about restricting career choice but rather it's about teaching the norms so gender biased careers are reinforced and a new generation can police the status quo.
While I'm glad that the news station devoted air time to a woman who has entered a male-dominated field and demonstrated that she can do the job just as well as men, was there any need for the newscasters to sound so surprised? The point of the piece was to demonstrate that she's defying stereotypes, but I felt like that point was completely lost by the attitude of the reporters--"Believe it or not, this WOMAN can DRIVE! A big truck, too!" Did anyone else get that vibe, or was it just me?
It seems to be the norm for reporting on this kind of story. Puke.
I agree Naomi, it bothered me too. I started to get into it, but then decided I was just going to focus on the positive side of this one. So many battles to fight! Thanks for your perspective.
While I was waiting for the bus in downtown Madison WI last Friday after a snowstorm, there were several city workers clearing the square with Bobcats and those things with big brushes on them (sorry, I have no clue what those are). When I realized that every vehicle was being driven by a middle aged woman, I totally wanted to raise a power fist, but realized they would probably think I was insane.