Women also generally lack math experience. Those who are good at math as well as those having trouble are often counselled, "You won't need it." They drop it, or develop an anxiety that reinforces the stereotype that women can't do math, and are thus excluded from hundreds of career choices, including many of the trades and technologies.

Kate Braid Men in groups will pick on the weakest, who may be the sole woman.

The positive side to all this is that once a woman has come as far as the classroom door for a training course in trades or technologies, she has already shown an extra dose of commitment. She is a student who often excels, at least in the study of theory, because she knows she has to try harder and usually does. This also takes its toll, but that is another story.

Language

The common assumption that trades and technologies are "men's work" is more than confirmed the first day a woman walks into a schoolroom or an airplane hanger or onto a construction site and discovers that the same man she had a pleasant chat with in the supermarket the day before, is now talking a different language. For example, men in these groups generally talk in short expository statements. "Last night, eh?" one will jab the other in the ribs and set off a chorus of guffaws.

Most men operate, in these situations, by terse verbal codes that exclude any issue that is personal or serious. Subjects such as home, children, and even news events, are not acknowledged. Only "the wife" may occasionally be mentioned in the nature of an excuse. "Beer?" one will ask. "Nah. The wife," the other will reply.

In fact, over time, many of us working in trades and technologies come to learn and even appreciate this language. In work that requires constant movement and loud noise, being able to talk in short bursts accomplishes conversation without expending time or energy. A terse style of language works, but it is a language most women do not know and were never taught. Men and women speak differently in other ways that are exaggerated on the job.

Men in trades and technologies are notorious for bluffing. Ask almost any trade man if he knows how to do something you are sure he does not. "No problem," he'll probably beam back. He'll even give you directions (of a vague but assertive sort) if you press him. But ask a woman and she might say, "Well, not really. I mean, I took a course in it once but I've never done it exactly..." And the man gets the job.

In another situation, when the foreman yells at a man, it is usually taken as a criticism of what he has done. Most women, especially at first, consider it as criticism of themselves. The foreman, meanwhile, can't understand why she's upset. Talk is also competitive, a constant comparison of work skills. I never heard a foreman (except a female one) say, "Well done!"

Humour can be the grease that keeps it all going, when you're doing work that is routine beside men you wouldn't pick in a thousand years to spend eight hours a day with. But most women don't know that teasing and practical jokes on a construction site are embedded in a tradition of "picking on" the apprentice. Women can feel attacked by this humour and often our instinct is right--some of it is meant personally. Men in groups will pick on the weakest who may be the sole woman, especially if she is new and insecure.

A difference in language that become strikingly clear when men and women work together is that the terminology of the construction site has evolved in the absence of women. The trades are full of a sexual vocabulary that includes the fact that materials are "erected." electrical connections are male, female or even lesbian, concrete is "laid" with a long thin "vibrator," things are "screwed," insulation is "rigid," a door is "well hung," roofing includes "hot rubbers," concrete nails are calculated to their "depth of penetration" and so on. Once I was working on scaffolding above an electrician who called to his partner, "Bring me some nipples!" Numbed by then, I didn't pay any attention until the apprentice at his side gestured frantically in my direction. The man spotted me and said, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! That's what they're called!"