Only 5.3% of US welders are women. After years as a professor, I became one

What comes across from the article to me is the class barrier more than the gender one - basically it's a posh person finding out what the "real world" looks like.

Shop talk and banter are fairly universal. Any difference is going to be a target. Thin bloke who doesn't look strong enough? Ginger hair? Tall guy, short guy? Weird tattoo, etc. Definitely the one black guy or the one white guy is going to get shit. But is it malicious? Almost certainly not.

The other thing, which in my experience is relatively common worldwide, is that working class communities are more accepting of male-female dynamics. In academia and in highbrow society the tendency is to basically sanitise every social interaction. When you're in an environment where that isn't happening then you can't suddenly ignore it any more.

> But is it malicious? Almost certainly not.

Honestly, it often will be malicious, or will quickly become malicious if you don't take it graciously. And why should you? It's not acceptable to make fun of people for being skinny, ginger, shy, black, white, female, or any other things that the in group considers non-standard for whatever weird reasons.

> if you don't take it graciously.

That is the point of the banter: to see how you handle stressful situations.

Women don't understand this, but nearly all men do.

Why? For every accident, there are around twenty near misses. For every near miss there are several situations that could have gone bad very quickly unless the person on the spot remains calm and acts rationally.

It is essential to know how you behave under stress in most blue collar work. They're not being assholes for fun; they're doing it to save lives.

The banter is not a cunning safety plan.

And even if it was and watching sport or going down the pub was in fact an extremely safety-conscious environment compared with the sterility and politeness of, say, the aerospace industry, it's not entirely clear how encouraging people to either escalate or laugh off would help them deal with actual danger which generally requires neither of the above...

It's not about the social actions, it's the traits they represent. Are you quick-witted? Do you freeze or overreact and lash out, behave erratically? Do you stay calm? Can you think fast enough under pressure to choose to say and do things that result in laughter or de-escalation, or escalate in a way that shows you're communicating on the same level (i.e. tease back, but not overdo it and insult the other person)?

If I can't stay calm and think rapidly under mild social pressure without threat of bodily harm or lost lives, I personally wouldn't feel honest in telling my teammates, "yes, if you or I are in a situation with risk to life or limb, you should trust that I'll handle it appropriately and protect myself and/or you."

People have tried to study groups like Medal of Honor recipients, and found that they have a wide range of different backgrounds and personalities.

Our assumptions about who will succeed in the most difficult situations don't seem to hold up.