On 28-Oct-09, at 5:49 PM, Bike City wrote:
Hello everybody,
I've been mulling over a lot of ideas lately about overthrowing the
male domination of bicycle co-ops, collectives, recycleries, mechanics, and the industry in general.Are there any non-males out there who would be interested in
discussing strategies to whoop the shit out of male privilege? I'd like to set an email list up for this purpose, but in the meantime, please email me: the.attica@gmail.comThanks, andrea
While the tone of this makes it sound like there's some sort of
conspiracy (and maybe there is and no one told me about it), as a
male I'd personally be interested in what you come up with.
In my other life I'm a musician, and we generally have a history of
non-discrimination; you can be male / female / white / black /
disabled / whatever - we don't care as long as you can do the gig.
Based on that, I've been kind of surprised that our shop has never
been able to recruit an experienced female mechanic. Women are of
course involved with our shop, both as staff and as customers, and I
would say at least half of our bike purchasers and a third of our do-
it-yourselfers.
I guess the lack is due to so few women mechanics in general. And is
this is a cultural thing (usual suspects of "women are less likely to
be mechanically inclined / do not want to get their hands dirty",
etc.) or is it deeper than that? Is there a bias? Is there gender
discrimination? I imagine that there is, though the idealist in me
is appalled at that.
If you can change the status quo I'm all for it!
Mark