graylion said:

Friend of mine was an activist in the CCC, founded the Haecksen.

Yeaaa... ok... IT... these guys are often really special. The members of CCC are even more special than average IT. Normal men often don't like them. Of the CCC members I met I don't remember liking any or even taking them serious.
BTW my sister who has a degree in bio informatics is a CCC member. She dislikes most of the other members as well. Allthough not because they are sexist but because they are unpleasent people.
But IT is not all of STEM. Its only one part. Its also not really blue collar.

graylion said:

In a CCC lab she got told "go away and menstruate"

Out of context that indeed sounds bad. But I would ask why, what the trigger. Just the fact that she entered the room? Or did she do or say something? Was there an argument?
Out of context a lot of things sound sexist, racist or whatever.

graylion said:

And that was this side of the millennium. Things have not changed all that much.

I have not witnessed such things the other side of the millennium. Not even in the army and the tone and the manners there have been pretty rough.

If this still exists in Europe I feel bad for you guys.

I know in the US the experience has mostly been tilted more towards what schnuersi describes though where the women wash out in spite of the men who wind up working with them having given up on "true equality" a long time ago, (true equality as in we expect just as much out of you as we would a male team mate) fear for their jobs and more endless meetings, and thus try to help carry the workload of new female coworkers which is somehow still not enough.

Schnuersi brings up a good point that is going to become a real issue if the west ever actually does try to ramp up production to meet the true level of need we're seeing.

It's debatable to outright not possible for us to ramp up certain things at all when every year we're actually losing capability and have been for quite some time now.

As an American I can't help but feel like this is wildly suboptimal considering china has penciled in a war with my country in the 2030-2035 time frame, sent us our save this date RSVP cards, and a second note reminding us that we're getting a war around that time period whether we want one or not.

I'll be blunt and just come right out and say we all lied to ourselves/allowed ourselves to be lied to about the whole "end of history" thing and we appear to be heaping another lie to ourselves on top of that with this new "rules based international order" thing.

What concerns me, and I believe should concern other people is that apparently our people in business and politics have been lying to us and themselves so long they accidentally started believing it themselves and are making decisions from that mental reference frame while other parties in other nations are not making the same mistake.

It's not hard to see that this is coming back to bite us hard already and will only do so more and more going forward.

Sadly I don't have any brilliant solutions for how we shake ourselves from this stupor but it should be becoming obvious by now that the consequences if we don't will be very real and very unpleasant.

I kinda hope that people here who I have butted heads with in the past are now starting to see a little bit where I was coming from and why I seem so insistent about certain things.

I have no doubt that we can rise to the occasion and situation we find ourselves in however. The trick is we just need to put one foot in front of the other and start doing it 

roguetechie said:

the men who wind up working with them having given up on "true equality" a long time ago, (true equality as in we expect just as much out of you as we would a male team mate) fear for their jobs and more endless meetings, and thus try to help carry the workload of new female coworkers which is somehow still not enough.

My educated guess is, with the workforce and skilled labour problems the US have now as well this will change.
If you are part of a group that is in high demand but limited supply there is no need to be afraid for your job. This is a problem for people who are easy to replace.

I figured this out years ago. On average in the last two decades I changed the workplace every 5 years. Once I have been layed off. Every single time I got new employment within days and every time I did improve myself.
The last change is now a little more than two years past. My old employer still has not replaced me. The position is still vacant. I did warn them that this would happen during the last salary negotion, at the end of wich i gave them my letter of resignation because they would not meet my demands. The look in their faces... priceless.
I still get job offers on a regular base. Often from people who know me. Who worked with me, former customers and even former employers. But since I am now a civil servant and working for the MoD, which is sort of a dream job for me and the payment and extras are really, really good, I was not tempted... so far :D

I know that there are people who are cautios and affraid but this is not a good state to be in. Neither for the employee nor for the employer. Because the employers will only get mediocre workers with mediocre motivation and skills at best. But they will nod and smile and say yes all the time. For the employees it will lead to unhappyness and content.

I am allmost the other extreme. Never afraid and allways loud. I do say my opinion. Often even if not asked and I will not bend over or stand in for BS. If you piss me off, do your crap yourself. One of my catchphrases is: i told you so. I once said to a female coworker if you don't perform and I have to do your work, I demand your money. I will not work for free. Once I said that out loud everybody else chimed in. Guess what: all of a sudden the coworker did perform. In my experience its mostly about the proper motivation.

I do see more and more backbone and confidence in the workforce. Especially blue collar production workers. They now know they are allmost impossible to replace. So they take less and less BS. My guess is this will impact a lot of things related to "equality".

In the US employers haven't quite caught on to this yet, it will happen but hasn't happened yet.

There's wisdom in teaching the young to be valuable. If you're valuable you have nothing to fear.

schnuersi said:

There also is a significant reluctance of women to work in STEM and especially the blue collar end of the spectrum.

Jordan Peterson has brought up this issue several times. 

Basically, "Men are interested in Things, Women are interested in People."

This is observable in children (baby boys wanting toy cars, baby girls wanting dolls) to topics of conversation (men discussing cars/guns/games women discussing other people) and then this is represented in employment choices.

Women is egalitarian societies (Norway, Sweden, etc) where they are free to choose anything they are interested in are overrepresented in People related high end fields (Medicine / health / law) whereas Men remain the backbone of Things related jobs (engineering/product design/architexture).

At my off-farm job, we, and several other local manufacturers literally have started giving tours to 4th-grade classes to encourage kids to think about getting into manufacturing when they're older.

schnuersi said:

Out of context that indeed sounds bad. But I would ask why, what the trigger. Just the fact that she entered the room? Or did she do or say something? Was there an argument? Out of context a lot of things sound sexist, racist or whatever.

She had booked time in the lab, Guy was hogging the computer. She pointed out that she had booked the lab time.

graylion said:

She had booked time in the lab, Guy was hogging the computer. She pointed out that she had booked the lab time.

Yea that sound pretty much like the sterotypical IT guy.

Direct action and threats of violence usually work. Since these guys usually are not very physical most woman can use it against them as well.
Super effective and immediate solution... pull the pug out of the socket. An asshole needs and deserves to be treated as such. ;)

schnuersi said:

Direct action and threats of violence usually work. Since these guys usually are not very physical most woman can use it against them as well. Super effective and immediate solution... pull the pug out of the socket. An asshole needs and deserves to be treated as such. ;)

And women get conditioned very strongly against violence and confrontation. Ask me how I know? I have trained women in martial arts. 

graylion said:

And women get conditioned very strongly against violence and confrontation.

I would said most people get nowadays. But one needs when to confront and when to walk away. A case like the one you described IMHO is one where confronting the the ONLY option. If not you will get stepped on by people all the time. If you are not willing to stand up for your own rights and interests why should anybody else.

Or, to roughly translate a germay saying: if the smarter allways give in, the dumb will rule the world.