STUART writes:

Regarding your recent post on feminism and plumbers, I’ve always liked this American promotional poster for plumbers from the 1930s. A bit over the top maybe, but there’s a lot of truth in it. 

My family were farmers but I trained as a plumber as a young man and am still licensed. It took six years to become fully qualified, which included training in gas-fitting, roofing and drainage. I’m 45 now and work as a project manager/estimator for a large Australian based engineering/property maintenance company. 

Maybe I’m influenced by my background, but I’ve always felt plumbers (and many other trades) are undervalued for the work they do. So much of this dirty, difficult and at times dangerous work goes unnoticed by many. And of course our cities and towns would soon fail without the essential maintenance of infrastructure, utilities and services of all kinds. 

For a long time I’ve thought that the men who design, install and maintain the ubiquitous (but unseen) sewer pumps in our cities should be lauded for their work. But of course they’re mostly ignored.   

My job keeps me in regular contact with many women employed in the wider property and facilities management industries. Many of these women are very competent, but some are in positions that really require a trade or engineering background or at least some sort of practical knowledge of construction, buildings and services. Unfortunately most don’t have this understanding and some of these women are employed in positions that require them to decide on important and expensive maintenance work. 

This disconnect is a never-ending source of frustration among men in my department and is a common topic of conversation.

Laura writes:

The trades were once appreciated for their larger cultural and spiritual significance through the system of trade guilds. We seem to have lost that understanding entirely. A fisherman is just a guy catching fish, a plumber fixes pipes. As I said earlier, civilization depends on plumbers.  Many people are in awe of plumbers and other tradesmen for their skill and the fees they command, but they don’t often recognize how difficult the work is or that their might be some aspect of it that remains uncompensated, a debt that deserves public gratitude. 

There will never be as many women with that trade and engineering background Stuarts mentions, no matter how much education is re-engineered. It’s easy for Gloria Steinem to say, let’s just make women into plumbers, but from early childhood this mechanical bent is rarely present in girls.

Lawrence Auster writes:

Speaking of plumbers, the “Mystery Plumber” may be the brains behind the containment cap for the BP oil spill.

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