Are there any women here?

Hi boys! As pointed out, I am one of the girls around here. I've been visiting the forum for the past 7 years and joined about 5 years ago.

I believe most women simply don't have the technical/hands on inclination to work in most mechanical fields, I think it's mostly a question of interest. If you take a look at jobs/interest that are most traditionally feminine, they tend to be "people" related and most traditionally masculine occupations are more "object" oriented jobs/interests. Boat building is particularly technical, can be a very solitary occupation and often pretty physical. Then there can be cross overs in interests (and mix matches of interest), seems like I fall in that category...ohhhh well. At school we were 2 girls for 60 boys, I studied in mechanical engineering technologies (fun times attending school in a class of guys).

Maybe...and sometimes I think it may not have been a bad thing if there had been someone in our couple to slow us down on dreams and projects. Life could be so much simpler. Unfortunately (...or maybe fortunately) Mark and I feed of each other to get into crazy endeavors.

Here's for fun, using this weeks boring task to have a bit of audio/video fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HU4oT-oOqs

cheers,
Murielle

 

-Hm ... must be something going around!

Wow! You really like to live dangerously! The other ladies are going to want to wash your mouth out with soap!

I'd have to disagree with you about lack of inclination however. When I started my first job (near the middle of the previous century) there were no women in my workplace except for typists, secretaries, receptionists and tracers. When I emigrated (to Ottawa) it was much the same, except for a female engineer who started around `75. However, by the time I retired my colleagues included plenty of women engineers and department heads, although at that time the department heads were still limited to Manpower -chuckle- Records and the copying facility. The last one was officially known as Reproduction Services, a title that the new head insisted on retaining; she was smart enough to know that even more scurrilous comments would result if she allowed it to be changed! I think it is more a matter of cultural expectations than inclination.

I do have a question: do women call their boats "he" ...?

 

When you get into the way the human brain works, there become some interesting differences between men and women, which contributes to their lack of building interest.

An obvious lesson can be seen in the inferior-parietal lobe, which is substantially larger in men and likely why we seem to excel at mathematics, compared to women (also left hemisphere domination among men). This coupled with the fact that socially, at least in this country, women have been taught that 4" is actually 6", combine to pretty much screw them over in regard to visualizing basic measurements accurately.

Women have a denser parietal region, which restricts their ability to mentally rotate objects. This difficulty with spatial ability or to visualize 3D dynamics can be overcome, but is another hindrance.

Physically, there are a few construction differences which tend to hold back women builders as well, such as the connections between the two hemispheres, which are much higher in women. This generally places most men in a left hemisphere mode and approach problem-solving from a task-oriented perspective, while women typically solve problems more creatively. This philosophical/analytical hemisphere orientation is what makes few artists among men.

Then of course are the social regimentation of the sexes that predetermine much of the way we act. Boys are taught to suck it up and ignore the pain, while girls tend to the injury and are taught to cope, cooperate and communicate through the issue. Women tend to focus on communication and solutions that work for the group, talking through issues, and utilizes non-verbal cues such as tone, emotion, and empathy. Men tend to be task oriented, more isolated and less talkative. This lack of understanding in emotional issues is one reason men and women have difficulty understanding each other.

I could go on, but I suspect this is well past the definition of the original posters questions. For what it's worth, I personally know 4 women boat builders and 2 of them frequent another discussion forum, that I'm a member of. Here, well who's to say, but I thinks that Lubber has chased them off.

 

but women are nicer to sleep with

 

I'll keep that in mind when I see a 400 pound, drull covered jowl, laden babe walking by Wardd. In fact, I'll pass along your phone number . . .

 

- except the ones who snore -

We are getting away from the original question. How rare is that in this (male-dominated) forum?

"are there any woman designer/builder out there "

Why shouldn't there be? A former next-door neighbour of mine built furniture, so the building part is not beyond possibility, and it seems to me that designing a boat requires, to a greater degree than most challenges, a tendency to consider a problem as a whole rather than break it down into compartments, which seems to be a male approach. It has always seemed to me that a woman looks at the whole thing, all at once, often leaping to unexpected insights that a mere male has to labor long and hard to find. The male approach works well for challenges where the "compartments" do not interact to an excessively complex degree, allowing detail work to be undertaken sooner, but I would have thought boat design (at least small boats which might - like Athena from the forehead of Zeus - leap from the creative mind fully formed) would have been an attractive calling for a woman.

Of course, noting the oft-repeated bitches of our esteemed and almost universally male designers about the difficulties if making a decent living from boat design and the utterly unrealistic expectations and demands made by their fiscally well-endowed but mentally-challenged customers, perhaps the women have enough sense to stay out of the business.

 

there may be but it's not spoken about in polite society

 

women do not suffer from testosterone poisoning, so they rarely get into the business.

 

"perhaps the women have enough sense to stay out of the business."

...I reckon that is more like it.....have a look at your finger nails, are they black and dirty from Sika, or cleaning out bilges, or scraping down old antifoulings, or clearing blocked heads......now tell me why women would want to do this sort of crap we do every day for a living.....I too would rather make beads, or sew clothes, or do "nice" things if I was of the fairer sex......fortunately I am not, so my bike and I are happy with each other, even though my nails may not be as clean as the pillion passengers...

 

As I eluded to above, women tend to shy away from mathematical and mechanical oriented thinking. These leaves engineering fields wide open for men. It's not a flaw, it's just the way they are physically made and socially indoctrinated.

 

Interesting thread... the next question... How many of you guys have woman that would be happy for you to get rid of your boats?

 

....nup, my one likes boats, we have travelled many miles on them and lived many years on them, so no, my one is not "anti boat"....but I do understand that many of them are...

...years ago, I had a business on Sydney Harbour, and was selling a 42 footer we had bought , just to fix and sell. The man and his wife inspected the boat, she asked me who did the work, I replied I did, and she then said that I knew what a woman wanted.
This puzzled me a bit (as I thought i knew nothing about women...still do), anyhow, i asked her directly what did she refer to. She said I put in a new toilet and new galley stove...the two things that will sell the boat to her. I replied, well yes, then she said to me, he will buy any boat that i let him, i thought about that comment, it is Sooooooo true. I guess he wants a new boat, and being hen pecked, must please "she who must be obeyed"...he WILL buy anyboat as long as she is happy.......good to remember this FACT for those that play with boats.....

 

Darn was that the problem all these years...

 

Well off course Lubber, everyone knows this. Why else do you think they put in mauve colored headliners in production craft.

 

nice girls don't build boats