Men At Work!
Last month, there was a power cut in my road. Fortunately, it didn’t last long, although I had other problems that made the day a living nightmare. Yesterday, there was another power cut, only this time it lasted much longer which meant I had to sit in the near dark then the dark dark. I ventured out in the early evening and saw a van parked down the street with work going on further down. I asked the van driver when the power was likely to be switched on only to be told this van belonged to the gas company. Walking up to one of the workers I asked the same question and received a qualified if disappointing answer.
The problem wasn’t an electrical one, a gas pipe had fractured or something of that nature, but before fixing that, the electricity had to be turned off for obvious reasons. I would assume this problem was related to the earlier one. The power was restored much later by which time I had bought some torch batteries from a local shop, some radio batteries from the Sainsbury’s hypermarket at Bell Green, and eaten a chicken and chips supper in the local kebab shop.
The people working on this problem had one thing in common. The van driver was or appeared to be Asian or some such, the other one I spoke to, was black, and all or most of the others were white, but they were all men.
This is still a man’s world, always has been, and until the robots take over, always will be. True, there are now many more women in positions of power, and they are not all diversity hire liars like Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves or morons like the American Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but whoever makes the policy and issues the diktats, it is men who carry them out.
Apart from emptying bedpans, men do all the dirty jobs, the undesirable jobs, the dangerous jobs. The diagram below is for Great Britain (presumably England, Scotland, Wales plus the Isles of Wight and Man).
Of these fatalities, 95% were of men. There are undoubtedly similar figures for other countries, including those still ruled by the mythical patriarchy. The sisterhood should bear that in mind before they whine about sexism in the workplace or the mythical gender pay gap.