Tomorrow is Women’s Rights Day. To mark the occasion, I’d like to share with you my daily gratitude for technology and what I would call women’s right to tools.
We are often relegated to gendered jobs and gendered tasks because of unfounded stereotypes, of course, but also because of differences in physical strength.
So it’s true that digging trenches with a shovel takes strength. That’s why, in the beginning, building and civil engineering could only be a man’s job. But today, we dig with mechanical shovels that can be controlled with a joystick.
That carrying parcels on the back of a man takes strength. That’s why port workers have always been men. Except that today, containers are moved with cranes that can be controlled with a joystick.
To load a vehicle with your arms, you need strength. That’s why truckers used to be men. Except that today, we load with pallet trucks that can be controlled with a joystick.
And so on and so forth.
Further to these jobs in the field, all the office jobs that stem from them have by extension also been categorised as male jobs. And that’s one of the reasons why we live in a society where the professions of engineer, architect and so on are strongly associated with masculine skills.
And that’s why we still think that women are less gifted in technology, maths and science.
And it’s the same in everyday life. For many gendered tasks, attributing the ability to do them to men goes back to the time when strength was indeed required, but when in fact the tools were limited (and unfortunately still often are today).
Developing the technology, developing the tools, is what means that today the physical difference between women and men is no longer discriminatory. And wherever this physical difference creates obstacles, it’s not because ‘it’s a man’s job’, it’s because our society has chosen not to develop the right tool, the one that meets all the needs, including the needs of half of humanity.
The limit to technological invention is a societal choice.
So thank you to all the ingenious men and women who invent the tools of humanity. Thank you for continuing to dig and innovate for all bodies. You may not think about it when you’re tinkering with your gears, designing your machines, calculating their drive effects, but you’re working for gender equality in a very powerful and very concrete way.
See you soon.
Lucile