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.

I'm now a soft-hands, academic-type but worked in a metal fabrication shop all through my schooling. Your read is very accurate. I still get her perspective though, because even as a male, white, straight, married guy in a shop full of the same I found it exhausting.

Another anecdote: my straight white male friend who isn't a tough guy left a job (building commercial ACs) as an electrician because the whole business was full of dudes bullying whoever they could. Plus the management just didn't care about worker safety, and the workers took it as a point of pride that they were ruining their own health. Toxic as hell. He found a different job with less machismo bullshit and more safety and is much happier. But that job is also overnight shift; if he was a single parent that'd be nearly impossible, luckily his wife can stay at home with the kids. This is in rural Virginia, not a ton of jobs around.