Various woodworking fora have lately featured harrumphs and huzzahs about A Workshop of Our Own and their fundraising. Having taught woodworking to adult students for 18
years, I am confident the need is
real. Some of my female students come to class as a personal act of defiance against what they have been told they can do or be. One woman made her first ever cut on a table saw with her hands shaking, expecting to be struck down by lightning it seemed, and told me with tears rolling down her face afterwards that her father had told her as a little girl she couldn't do this. Just last spring a young professional in her 20's, a perfectionist all through the class, became angry instead of satisfied as she tacked on the back of her flawless bookcase - - - "My boyfriend who's picking me up in 5 minutes doesn't believe I really did this." (The other students assured the smirking jerk, when he showed up, that she had been the leader of the class, and they were telling the truth.) These are simply the two most dramatic recent examples of the female students who have let me know they are swimming against the current just by being in the shop.
If a few women now and then trust this smart-alecky bald guy enough to confide their vulnerability, how many have been in my classes and kept quiet about it? And how many never overcome the resistance they feel long enough to come to class?
As fathers, as brothers, as boyfriends and uncles and partners and husbands, our attitudes and words are powerful influences on the girls and women who trust us. Perhaps that dad was only joking when he told his daughter that little girls don't use table saws. Maybe he only meant the "little" part. Who knows? I feel supremely privileged that I got to be the one who showed his grown-up daughter how to use a push stick, and I was the one who got to see the look on her face when she finished building her own tool box. That dad lost out, big time.
So I say, if having a female-only shop is the way for some women to feel okay about making stuff, we have two possible respectable responses: contribute, or shut up and get out of the way.
real. Some of my female students come to class as a personal act of defiance against what they have been told they can do or be. One woman made her first ever cut on a table saw with her hands shaking, expecting to be struck down by lightning it seemed, and told me with tears rolling down her face afterwards that her father had told her as a little girl she couldn't do this. Just last spring a young professional in her 20's, a perfectionist all through the class, became angry instead of satisfied as she tacked on the back of her flawless bookcase - - - "My boyfriend who's picking me up in 5 minutes doesn't believe I really did this." (The other students assured the smirking jerk, when he showed up, that she had been the leader of the class, and they were telling the truth.) These are simply the two most dramatic recent examples of the female students who have let me know they are swimming against the current just by being in the shop.
If a few women now and then trust this smart-alecky bald guy enough to confide their vulnerability, how many have been in my classes and kept quiet about it? And how many never overcome the resistance they feel long enough to come to class?
As fathers, as brothers, as boyfriends and uncles and partners and husbands, our attitudes and words are powerful influences on the girls and women who trust us. Perhaps that dad was only joking when he told his daughter that little girls don't use table saws. Maybe he only meant the "little" part. Who knows? I feel supremely privileged that I got to be the one who showed his grown-up daughter how to use a push stick, and I was the one who got to see the look on her face when she finished building her own tool box. That dad lost out, big time.
So I say, if having a female-only shop is the way for some women to feel okay about making stuff, we have two possible respectable responses: contribute, or shut up and get out of the way.
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