this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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Politics
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You have a point that jobs should match the employees and generally speaking men are larger and more muscular than women, but you do know power tools exist, right? You also realize that output is not purely about physical capacity but also mental and emotional buy in? And that construction isn't purely about nailing boards in place but doing things in the right order at the right time with the right tools and planning appropriately?
I think you're making too many broad generalizations here and over stating the importance of gender on job performance. I think there are more salient points to be made about job seeking strategies between men and women and how that should affect hiring strategies and gender disparities in certain fields. Women tend to prefer more work flexibility (malleable hours, flexible vacation time, ability to make time to pick up kids from school etc) than men and women tend to be more risk averse than men and this is reflected in the jobs they choose and are recruited for.
Even with power tools, an average man can work faster than the average woman for many tasks. They're going to be the exact same in an excavator where there's no physical component at all, but when it comes to using a jackhammer an average man is going to be able to position and control it far more effectively than an average woman. Power tools make those differences smaller or non-existent for SOME tasks, but they do not make things equal in most tasks.
I realize construction isn't purely a strength thing, but it's a major component for most workers and even a 5-10% efficiency difference is quite significant across an entire industry. Construction is just a single example though, there are hundreds of jobs that have significant physical components. From the original comment about electrical Lineworkers, all the way to washing dishes in a commercial kitchen.
The ability to lift 40-50% more weight around on average comes in handy a lot.
I don't think I'm overstating the importance of physical attributes in terms of job performance, we're not talking about office jobs here. In physical jobs, someone's physical attributes will drastically change how fast someone can work, and often how safely as well.