In reply to planetmarshall:
"if a person wants to a job, and they are physically and intellectually capable of it, then I think they should be afforded the opportunity to do it and not be discouraged at the outset. Is that not reasonable?"
Yeah of course, the problem is when industries are being told "you must hire more women, we need more women". What if women just don't want those jobs? If there are numbers of suitably qualified and experienced women applying for jobs in mostly male industries, and still not getting hired, then there's grounds to say that there's a potential problem. However, if women aren't applying in the first place or aren't even doing the necessary types of degree/courses needed for a specific industry, then I think employers are being given an unfair amount of responsibility.
If the reasoning for this is because of how society raises women and social attitudes, then this is hardly the responsibility of a rope access or engineering firm. That would be an incredibly complex issue that would need addressing from childhood through schools and parenting and would be far outside of the scope of companies simply being more inviting to women.
I think the example of the number of women applying for MIC dropping off significantly, expresses this perfectly. As far as I can tell there are absolutely no barriers to continuing on to gain this qualification, so do women just simply not want to do it? If so is that a problem?
Anecdotally, I'm a tower climber, and very few women seem envious of my job compared to men who mostly comment that they would like to do what I do. The reasons cited are normally the cold/rain, the physical nature of the work, long periods away from home, and fear of heights. The prospect of not being treated fairly, not feeling like that kind of role would be accepting to women, or lack of opportunities never gets raised as an issue.
I'm not saying these issues don't exist (for any gender) in many industries, and yes there are examples like the North Sea rig mentioned above that prove the point, but in my experience these are minimal. In fact a woman I used to work with always got her own hotel room while all the blokes had to share, so it's not all bad! (Intentionally glib before anyone takes that too seriously!).
As I said, until we see women actually applying and being rejected from roles, it's very hard to tell if there are obstacles in their way. It seems unfair for the responsibility to always be placed on employers and industries to somehow solve a problem that may not even exist, and if it does could be largely down to social attitudes and upbringing.
Post edited at 09:20