Comment by grepLeigh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grepLeigh | Hacker News Reader

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Well, you do hear about those things (welding, house building, firefighting, policing, the military).

For example, the United States Marine Corps is slowly integrating some basic training and has a few co-ed companies [1]. This was such a far-fetched idea in the 90s that Ridley Scott made a movie about it starring Demi Moore (G.I. Jane, 1997).

Firefighting is another excellent example [2]. 7-11% of firefighters in the United States are women (depending on how volunteer vs. career firefighters are counted). I remember that statistic because StackOverflow's female respondent rate hovers around ~5%. "Women are more likely to run into burning buildings than what I'm doing now" is the kind of gallows humor that gets me through the day.

There are also advocacy groups for other gender/work minority combinations, like male nurses and caretakers.

[1] https://www.hqmc.marines.mil/Portals/61/Docs/FOIA/Reading-Ro...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_firefighting

Edited: typos

Better examples probably would have been garbage men, roofers, welders, plumbers, etc. It's only a problem when the job is perceived to have some amount of status. No one fights over opportunities to unclog toilets or shovel fertilizer. The military has (rapidly declining) prestige, firefighting is considered exciting and heroic, etc. Then a demographic split becomes an opportunity to shake down the organization for DEI consulting and make-work sinecures.

Personally I don't care as long as any prospective firefighters can quickly carry a 200 pound unconscious person out of a burning building. For some reason, I suspect that pool of qualified candidates skews male.

> Better examples probably would have been garbage men, roofers, welders, plumbers, etc.

And... if you were following any of those fields, you'd find gender inclusion is also an issue. Tech definitely gets more attention in a tech centric forum like HN, and usually (because $$) gets more attention from the general interest press, but the issues are everywhere, with fairly similar discussions.

GI Jane was about a imaginary Navy special operations unit that was a stand in for the Navy SEALs. There are still no female Navy Seals, and it is still far-fethced except for the generally declining standards across the armed forces.

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