From: BRANDT_JOBST/HP1900_01@HPLOMG.HPL.HP.COM
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles
Subject: Re: women working on bikes
Date: 4 Sep 92 01:41:42 GMT

Akkana Peck writes:

> For me, independence is the major incentive, but there are plenty of
> people who don't mind, or even prefer, being dependent on others.
> If your wife never rides solo, and always has you with her, then she
> never has to worry about getting stuck because she doesn't know how to
> fix the bike.  If she enjoyed mechanical work, she'd be doing it already.

This discussion interests me because I think the same reasons keep women
away from machinery that keep men away.  I believe it is for many (most)
an inborn mental condition.  I speak for myself and others whom I see as
skilled in mechanical things and I believe they mostly started the way I
did -- by myself.  My father was not a mechanical type although he tried
at times to fix things.  He never showed me anything about the subject
yet I chose to disassemble my coaster brake and "overhaul" it even though
it didn't need it.  I found such riddles of the way things fit together
some sort of natural phenomenon when in first grade.  My younger son
liked to disassemble and assemble a spare Sturmey Archer 3-speed when he
was in kindergarten in contrast to his brother who didn't even look at
this sort of thing other than as a curiosity.  When I was a child, others
thought this was odd, and so I had no one with whom to share my enthusiasm
about the mechanisms I discovered.  My older brother wasn't interested
nor were the younger two as they grew older.

My mechanically skilled friends that I met during and after college can
all tell similar stories.  I have a few bikie friends who are good at these
things but most men even in engineering don't have a natural talent for
machines although they can work on them with average results.  People like
the Magliozzi Bros. of "Car Talk" are classically through and through
mechanical men who at the same time have social and a modicum of comic
skills.  There are men who work with machinery every day and still have
little feel for how and why a machine must have certain features.  They
are not good designers and have little perception of the machines they
work on.  They could not give a reasonable critique of their subjects.

So I think that with the relatively low number of truly skilled mechanical
men it is not hard for me to understand that women, who are in many ways
substantially different from men, are not mechanically inclined.  Women
have skills in many things that few men do well and I see no challenge in
this as I believe women should not with respect to, for instance, mechanical
aptitude.  I also don't believe for a moment that there are many latent
mechanically skilled women who have just not had exposure to the proper
environment.  I am certain that I could not be a good electrical engineer
even though I understand the basics.  Mechanical trivia and a feel for
machinery has always been natural to me and I never felt lost in front of
a machine that I could observe.  Not that I believe I could repair every
machine that I meet but given the appropriate equipment and introduction
I would not feel at a loss for understanding.  Electrical stuff leaves me
cold and I don't need to do that because there are others who do that with
exceptional skill.  I don't.

In my design experience I have worked in a wide field of mechanical things,
I have never had the opportunity to work with a female mechanical engineer.
Not that there are none but I never came across one.  We had "draftsmen"
who were women but they didn't design nor did they care what the "machines"
did.  The were similar to many men who are draftsmen, they put lines on
paper, they did it well and beautifully.

I think there is an aversion to accept that nature passes certain traits
along over which we have little control.  We observe it in animals and
birds but we deny that it applies to us.  I can understand that this can
lead to difficult questions for which I have no answers.  Therefore, I
resign myself to this apparent fact and leave it be.  I am grateful that
there is a demand for what I believe I do best, else I might strive to
become someone I am not and could not achieve to any success.

jobst_brandt@hplabs.hp.com