Just a Rant!!

Not really. We're just more than happy to share.

I wouldn't use the word 'encroaching'. Women are realising that they can do jobs that they once assumed only a bloke can do. Why they assumed that is another matter. Perhaps they were conditioned to assume that, who knows. In any case, successful business is about having the right person in the right job. It can be difficult enough to find the right person. It would be a lot more difficult if you were to automatically exclude 50% of potential applicants, as you'd be doing if you used gender as a selection criteria.

In my line of work (IT), it is a bit male dominated. It so happens that in my current job I have a female boss, and I can say quite honestly that she is the best boss I've ever had. She has sound business sense, knows how to win the respect of her team, and is not afraid to get stuck in and actually do work herself. I find this quite refreshing compared to what I'm used to. I've always wished there were more women in my line of work. Purely because I've never understood why it is male dominated. Its not hard manual labour, its not dangerous. I think its nice to have some sort of balance. All male banter is good for a while, but jokes about beer and women become pretty boring very quickly.

Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't. That's not about gender, that's about people. As a bloke, tradition would have it that I'm better at mending cars than any woman. Yet I'm quite rubbish at that, whereas I've seen women working as mechanics in garages. That doesn't mean that women are proving themselves better than men at being a mechanic, it just means that that particular woman is better than this particular man at being a mechanic. If my car had a dangerous fault, I would rather entrust it to a woman that knows what she's doing than attempt to fix it myself on the basis that I am a man with a Haynes manual and a set of spanners.