Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Nov 30, 2015 16:42 UTC (Mon) by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
In reply to: Ubuntu Community Council election results posted by rsidd
Parent article: Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

I've recently accompanied my wife to a midwifery conference. 5 days, at times 5 tracks, so you can guess the number of presenters. Maybe 150-200 attendees. As far as I know, there were exactly two male presenters and one male selling stuff in the lobby. The organisational staff was 100% female, so some of the heavy lifting (in the literary sense) was done by the man selling stuff and a companion of an attendee. But I didn't hear anyone complaining about the gross gender-unbalance. There were no "outreach for males" talks - they didn't seem to be interested in this. On the other hand I did not experience any negative feedback like "what's this man doing in here" - I mean it was pretty obvious with the 3 months old baby in my hands :-) So it definitely wasn't hostile environment despite the female:male ratio.

I agree that is very important to keep conversations nice and communities nice - because it's nice to be in a nice environment and it feels bad to be in a hostile environment. I just don't think that "amount of females in a council" is usable metric. The amount (or rather lack) of hostility would be more useful.

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Nov 30, 2015 17:32 UTC (Mon) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] (3 responses)

So you're suggesting that software engineering (and free software in particular) is an intrinsically male-oriented activity in the same way that childbirth is intrinsically female-oriented?

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Nov 30, 2015 19:34 UTC (Mon) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (1 responses)

> ... in the same way that [assisting] childbirth is intrinsically female-oriented ...

So just which aspect of the job makes you think that males are incapable of serving as "midwives"?

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Nov 30, 2015 23:25 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Go back not that far, and most midwives were men ... (okay, they were probably called gynaecologists ...)

One only has to go back to the end of the Georgian era, and look at Princess Charlotte. Heiress to the throne, she died in childbirth, and her midwife was a man. And that was the norm for that era (amongst the gentry, who had a professional midwife, as opposed to the vulgate who relied on local help ...)

Cheers,
Wol

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Nov 30, 2015 21:19 UTC (Mon) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

It's actually the client of a midwife who needs to have female genitalia, not the midwife. Small feminine hands are useful (e.g. for manual placenta removal), but not required.

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Nov 30, 2015 20:59 UTC (Mon) by gioele (subscriber, #61675) [Link] (9 responses)

> I've recently accompanied my wife to a midwifery conference. 5 days, at times 5 tracks, so you can guess the number of presenters. Maybe 150-200 attendees. As far as I know, there were exactly two male presenters and one male selling stuff in the lobby. The organisational staff was 100% female, so some of the heavy lifting (in the literary sense) was done by the man selling stuff and a companion of an attendee. But I didn't hear anyone complaining about the gross gender-unbalance.

The gender issue is a well known problem for male midwives and there are people complaining about it: https://imcbcd.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/on-midwives-pay-p...

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Nov 30, 2015 21:24 UTC (Mon) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (5 responses)

As far as I understood, the root problem is the low salary, the lack of men is a symptom. And the solution is not an "outreach" program or introducing quotas, but a payrise (and some cultural changes).

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Nov 30, 2015 22:32 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

Not really. For a long time nursing had been among the few accepted "women" professions (along with seamstresses, secretaries and so on). In Russian and some other Slavic languages the word "nurse" even translates as "medical sister"!

So there's a natural bias there. It's slowly swings towards equilibrium, though.

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Dec 1, 2015 2:49 UTC (Tue) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link]

"So there's a natural bias there. It's slowly swings towards equilibrium, though."

Not quite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Nov 30, 2015 22:39 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (2 responses)

I think you have it backwards, the pay is low as a consequence of it being a female dominated field, other female dominated industries have the same pattern, such as teachers. In the case of teachers there is good salary data going back hundreds of years, so you can see the wage drop when it went from male to female dominated during the industrial revolution and the effects of various labor initiatives in the fight to bring wages back up. It's not unreasonable to expect to see similar discrimination in nursing or midwifery, when wage discrimination is shown to be a real force.

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Nov 30, 2015 23:38 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

And I think you can see that happening again - with doctors!

The GP profession is becoming more and more female-dominated, and working conditions appear to be declining. Political meddling certainly is become much more prevalent. The current pay dispute seems to be a case of the politicians saying "the typical doctor will not be worse off" (money, that is), while the doctors are complaining that firstly some of them will be badly hit, and probably more importantly that they WILL be much worse off in their work/life balance.

I think my classic example is - I think it was David Cameron - saying that "People should be able to see their doctor of choice, when they want" !?!? Does that mean he expects doctors to be on call 24x7? (That's not "a doctor will be available", it's "YOUR doctor will be available"!!!) No wonder doctors are getting well upset when politicians make wildly stupid comments like that!

Don't forget that, all the evidence is that once people are earning "enough" (dodgy definition, I know, but basically such that people feel comfortable) more money is NOT all that attractive. What's on offer to the doctors is "we're going to give you more money, but you won't be able to enjoy it because you'll be burnt out" - I'm not surprised that they're not falling over themselves to accept the offer ...

Cheers,
Wol

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Dec 1, 2015 17:47 UTC (Tue) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

I'm not sure. There are many man-dominated fields with low pay. Midwifery is a female-dominated profession since the dawn of times, and although in the last few hundred years in the western world men started to work in the child birth business, they work as obstetricians, not midwifes. I don't know if there was ever a decline in pay.

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Dec 1, 2015 11:02 UTC (Tue) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (2 responses)

It sounds like midwifery should be billed by the hour in addition to fixed payments for some services, similar to many other expert services. Having a fixed fee is not very fair if patients differ wildly from each other, and creates incentive to push the most difficult cases to someone else, or to do a haphazard job.

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Dec 1, 2015 15:52 UTC (Tue) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (1 responses)

That would only change the structure of the income, not the amount if income. Of course, the rates could be raised to achieve higher income, but that would mean higher prices for most of the clients. Also I'm not quite sure if it's good idea to pile on an additional stress factor ("how much I'm gonna pay for this?") onto the mothers in the last few weeks, days or hours of the pregnancy. Remember, childbirth can take anything from 20 minutes to 61 hours...

Ubuntu Community Council election results posted

Posted Dec 2, 2015 11:07 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Of course in places with reasonable health care systems (i.e., not the USA), your health insurance will cover the cost of the midwife. That should apply whether the midwife is paid per hour or per baby delivered.