I was
organizing the junk in the basement last week when I ran across
a
"class" photo from about 15 years ago. I use "class" in quotes
because it
was a photo of a group of us who were going through the Lincoln
Electric
week-long welding familiarization course. No, we didn't become
welders that
week, but it gave us hands-on experience with techniques such
as MIG, TIG,
and stick welding.
Why was
I taking it? At the time, I was editor of Gases & Welding
Distributor
magazine and the people at Lincoln were generous enough to
offer me the
course for free. My managing editor and I took advantage of
it. I'd had some
welding experience from the aviation construction and maintenance
course I
took in college, but that was with oxy-acetylene welding.
This was with the sparky kind.
What surprised
me about the photo, looking back on it from 2009, was that
it
was a group of 15 guys. So what? No women, that's what. Not
that the field is
flooded with women welders – the only one I ever saw was Jennifer
Beals as
Alex Owens in Flashdance, and I don't think I was supposed
to notice
her welding techniques.
But,
we've come a long way since 1983 (Wow! Was the film that long
ago?),
and we expect to see more women in the workforce. According
to a statistic
I heard, women are reaching parity in the workplace, and because
of the
recession, might even become a majority as more men as displaced.
So, where
are they in the machine shop? There are a number of women-owned
or women-operated shops out there, just go to www.WomenOwnedShops.com
to see some of them, but in my visits to shops around the
country, women on
the shop floors are pretty scarce. What's your experience?
This all
begs the question as to why there aren't more women cutting
metal
out there. Sure, machining isn't considered a "girlie" profession,
but I thought
that barrier was broken back in World War II when women took
the place of men
who'd gone off to war. Shoot, there are now a ton of women
in the armed forces.
They're not on the front line, but danged close. So what's
keeping them from
working in machine shops?
I'd think
that the women's liberation movement would have considered
machining
as a prime area of equal representation. But, it doesn't seem
like that.
It could
be that machining is still considered a dirty profession.
No, I don't mean
shop walls covered with Ridgid Tool Calendar pin-ups,
I mean dirt-under-the-fingernails, greasy-hands dirty.
But,
that's all changed. Most shops, while physical workplaces,
are kept
pretty clean. No one get sprayed with lubricant anymore, or
at least not very
often. I don't think that matters. We, as a society, still
have a skewed view as to
what machining entails and that reputation keeps women away.
Too bad,
I'm sure a master machinist makes more than an elementary
teacher with
a master's degree.
From anecdotal
evidence -- that means jawboning with shop people -- it seems
that women are involved with machining and manufacturing,
but on the white-collar
side. Rather than come up from the bottom as an apprentice
and working their
way into the head office, women are doing the reverse. There
are more than a
few women buyers, engineers, and programmers. That makes sense:
a person
doesn't needs strength or stamina to work a phone or a computer.
And, as
machining gets more and more automated, it's little wonder
that women are finding
a place in manufacturing someplace in the shop besides standing
next to
a vertical machining center.
What
do you think is keeping women out of machine shops?
And,
on the other side of the coin, would you want women on
the same floor as you?
You can send me your thoughts at Pete@MachiningBusinessNews.com
Pete Nofel is the editor of Milling Around, a column about
the machining and
metalworking business at www.RedHotTypewriter.com/wordpress
and the soon
be launched Machining Business News website.
