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From: regard@ttidcc.UUCP (Adrienne Regard)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.politics
Subject: Discrimination and AA
Message-ID: <514@ttidcc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 1-Jul-85 11:56:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: ttidcc.514
Posted: Mon Jul  1 11:56:59 1985
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>Until quite recently (sometime in the 1970s) most men's jobs in this
>country were blue collar jobs involving dirt and risk.  My father used
>to work on high steel, and the tales he told of industrial injuries
>are pretty stomach turning.  I can see why few women would have gone into
>his line of work (although I'm sure the macho bias of my father's
>co-workers would have prevented it anyway).  I suspect that the move
>away from blue collar jobs in America is part of the reason that women
>are getting a fairer shake in the workplace.
>Clayton Cramer

Go back a little earlier, Clayton.  When the men were still underground
mining coal (a dirty dangerous job) it was women and children who ran the
factories (another dirty, dangerous job) for far longer hours than the men
who made steel.  And the tales of industrial injuries were so horrible that
safety regulations had to be changed -- by law -- and enforced.  By the
time your dad was working, conditions had altered remarkably for the
better, and still weren't as safe as you or I would expect.

Depending on how far we want to look into history, we discover that men
haven't any special claim to the dirty and the dangerous.  Depending on
which countries one wants to investigate, we discover differing levels of
male dominance.  Historical anecdotes are interesting, and sometimes
illustrative, but one finds it easy to get off the track when relating
a policy, or a hypothesis, to personal experiences.