Jobs for the boys
A decade or so ago, I got myself into what I believe the youth call “Twitter beef” when I called out a tech conference happening in London with an all-male speaker lineup. I posted a ranty tweet and a blogpost, then went to bed. I woke up the next morning to some understandably angry responses from the conference organisers, an invitation to appear on Woman’s Hour, and, eventually, international media coverage.
I learned a lot of things in the aftermath, including about right-to-reply, accurate use of statistics, and media scheduling challenges (I never did make it onto Radio Four). So I was a bit surprised to see essentially the same thing happen again this week with a conference whose organiser, um, invented fictional women speakers to avoid creating the dreaded “manel”.
I saw this story covered on the venerably ancient tech news blog Slashdot, which has a userbase of grumpy sysadmins who fear change. The prevailing opinion amongst the below-the-line commenters there was: why should the software industry keep pandering to women when they clearly don’t want to work in programming?
I’m not going to bother rehearsing the well-known rebuttals or even engaging with this fatuous argument: it belongs in the past (much like Slashdot itself; I’m not sure why I still read it). But it struck me that some people still really do believe that there are, well, boy jobs and girl jobs.
Wait, what did the doctor order?
Yesterday, my four year old son had an improbable accident at school involving a space hopper and a slide (it’s not as Evel Knievel-esque as you’re imagining, sorry). We took him off to children’s A&E and after a brief four hour wait, we put him in front of a doctor to clean up his eyebrow and glue it together again.
While we were waiting to be seen, I noticed this control on the back wall behind the hospital bed:
Initially I thought the “woman” symbol might refer to something female-specific, eg. gas-and-air controls for childbirth or something. Then I remembered we were in a children’s hospital. I looked closer and spotted the Red Cross emblem on the woman’s chest. This was a button to summon a nurse.
Admittedly, there weren’t any male nurses in the ward we were sitting in, though a male doctor ran our triage session when we arrived. But it made me think of my son’s nursery, where there were at least two male carers (of a staff of approximately forty) who have probably had to deal with prejudice, jokes and lack of identity for the duration of their careers. It made me wonder what male nurses might think of this button design.
To be fair, if you work in medicine in any capacity you must already be hardened to tough working conditions, aggressive patients, poor leadership and plummeting budgets, so getting upset about the semiotics of medical hardware is probably a diminishing concern (let’s save it for the handwringing newsletter writers, yeah?).
But it was another reminder of how this stuff permeates society: people making guileless assumptions about your interests and abilities, regardless of your individual preferences or experiences, and genuinely believing it’s true. Let’s not press that button.
Mini feels this week
In which I become a complete tool
I was coming home from the city earlier this week and had five minutes to make my train. I went to an obscure entrance to the (large) station and found all the customer gates closed (eg. so they were exit-only), with nobody in sight except a woman in train company uniform. I’d chosen this entrance because it was directly next to my platform.
I waved to her and asked if she’d be able to open the gate for me, explaining that my train was about to leave and it was going from the nearby platform. She told me she couldn’t allow me through. I showed her my ticket and explained that I wouldn’t have time to run all the way to the other entrance and still catch my train. No dice: she said her boss wouldn’t allow it. Getting frustrated, I said I’d happily speak to her boss and make my case, but please could she just let me through as I’d bought a ticket, my train was about to leave, and it would be a 20 minute wait for the next one. Still no dice.
I got angry and began to complain more vocally, exasperated at the knowledge that I was now going to miss my train because someone wouldn’t bend the rules to suit me. “If I let you through, I’ll have to let everyone through”, she said. “There’s nobody else here!!” I thundered, gesturing around. When she started to get a bit smug with me (eg. implying I should’ve managed my time a bit better, pointing out I couldn’t reach the ticket scanner from where I was standing etc) I lost my cool, called her a dick, and stormed off.
I walked the long way round and made it to my platform with a fun 20 minute wait ahead of me. As I type this now it sounds ridiculous—it was ridiculous then, too—but I missed my kids, wanted to just be at home, and was frustrated that someone couldn’t show me a little human empathy.
But I also felt like I’d just behaved dramatically out of character. I walked back around to where she’d been standing and saw her there. She gave me a look which was slightly trepidatious: perhaps “is this guy coming back to have another go at me?”. Instead I apologised to her for the way I spoke, and explained that I was tired, missed my kids and just wanted to go home. She accepted my apology and I went back to atone for my rudeness on the cold platform for 20 minutes.
Later that evening, I managed to badly reheat some food and gave myself (and my unfortunate partner, caught in the crossfire) food poisoning, which made for an eventful 12 hours. I considered this the universe’s way of making me pay penance, so now karma and I are even. Right?!
That’s all for this issue. I hope December is a great month for you – why don’t you give me an early Christmas present and subscribe to this newsletter below (and if you’re already a subscriber, thanks!) – or share it with anyone you think might enjoy it. Until next time!
—Matt