Obsession with gender equality in job place (not gender war pls)
The title sounds a bit provocative but thats not the aim. Looking to have a mature discussion . Really dont know how to phrase it better. Anyways so it got me thinking after I saw a post from a woman who had just started an internship and posted it in the Nairobi tec subreddit. She mentioned that she was shocked to find out she was the only woman there and felt she was put of place.
It also doesn’t seem to be an isolated case. I often see discussions where women complain about being one of only a few women in a workplace and argue that there should be more female representation. Similar debates have happened in politics and many other fields. I mean we even have a female rep but tbh the hardly ever do anything meaningful that i know off. If they have feel free t share.
What’s interesting is that my own experience has been the complete opposite. Around 99% of my classmates in university were women, and today about 99% of my colleagues are women as well. The field I work in is heavily female-dominated.
During Uni, I never really felt out of place, and neither did the other guys. The same has been true at work. Recently, we were in a meeting when one of my female colleagues told a story about shopping. Her husband likes a particular brand of jam, but she thinks it’s too expensive, so she buys a cheaper one and serves it at breakfast. Apparently, he never notices the difference. Our boss immediately looked at me and joked, “These are the kinds of struggles that await men in the future.” My boss and i don’t particularly get along so i wondered my he choose the small talk with me.
At that moment, I looked around the room and realized that my boss and I were the only men in the department. There were about 15 people there, and everyone else was a woman.
The funny thing is that it had never really occurred to me, even after three years of working there. It was more obvious at university, but I never consciously connected the dots and realized that my work environment was basically the same.
All in all, I’ve never felt out of place, and I’ve never felt the need to have more male colleagues around. It’s not because there’s some special advantage to being surrounded by women, and it’s definitely not because of dating opportunities. I have a GF and I never date at work and I barely talk about my personal life there. I show up, do my job, be friendly and go home.
So I’m curious: are there any other men working in female-dominated fields? Have you ever felt like you needed more male colleagues around? And women why must you have other women at the workplace?
Personally, I don’t really understand why the gender balance itself matters so much. For me, what matters is whether the people I work with are competent, hardworking, and pleasant to be around not whether they’re men or women. This is despite the fact that it would be obviously easier to have male colleagues because I work in healthcare, and that means if someone falls pregnant or they can’t come to work because of period pains, all of which are very understandable that means that the rest of us have to carry the load. And let me tell you Maina, working with the pressure of working understaff where human life is at stake and errors possibly leading to you losing your license or worse jail is no f joke. I think this obsession will eventually lead to just hiring people regardless of whether or not, they are actually qualified enough to do the job .