I noticed this morning that once again, consideration is being given to allow women to fight in the front line in the army. I have no confirmed view on this apart from regret that anyone should have to do this and give full rein to their 'killer instinct' as it was described this morning. However, I do firmly hold the view that women should not be barred from any profession, history teaches us that before the days of industrialisation women were an essential and hard working part of the peasant farming community. If the man was incapacitated at crucial times of the year like ploughing and sowing crops or harvesting there was no argument about demarcation, the women just got on with it. All this changed with the advent of factory work when concepts of the family dictated that wherever possible, men should do the work and women stay at home to look after the family unless poverty dictated otherwise.
My mind goes back to 1985 when as part of my work at Ellenroad Engine Trust I ran a course on steam engine tenting for the volunteers. It was like night school on steroids and I went through every aspect of boiler firing and running the engine with particular stress on safety. Two of my keenest students were ladies, Joan Smith and Thelma Wright and they got to the stage where I threw them in at the deep end one weekend and told them to come to the site at 6AM. When they arrived I told them they were in charge and all I would do was follow them round and observe. They had to start from scratch, fire the boiler up, raise steam, prepare the engine for running and run it until closing time at 4PM. I'm happy to report that they didn't put a foot wrong and were completely successful. I was also happy because I think that this was a first, two women running a 3000hp steam plant on their own.
What I hadn't foreseen was the trouble this would cause. One male volunteer objected so vociferously that when I told him he would have to get used to it he resigned. On one occasion I heard an old male visitor telling them, as they ran the engine for the public, that they should be in the canteen making tea not doing a 'man's job'. I took him on one side and quietly informed him that he should think again. Joan's day job was as a nurse on violent wards and often she was alone on the night shift with some of the most dangerous people you could ever meet. I reckoned that if she was fit for that responsibility she could be trusted with the engine!
My point is that we should be very wary of knee jerk reactions, often based on sexism, about what women are capable of.... After all, Lucrezia Borgia had a pretty well developed killer instinct!
Joan and Thelma in 1998 running Ellenroad Engine.
