I think women and men differ in the way they perceive threat in their environment.
My hypothesis is that women look at all the "Possible" threats they can imagine and see them as all equally dangerous. This is because if any of the threats materialise, it will have a catastrophic (probably terminal) impact as they may have children or a pregnancy and so escape is probably not an option. This makes them much more aware of the comfort and safety of their environment. This is where they stand or fall.
On the other hand, men look at the threats around them and always have in the back of their heads the idea that if some plan goes to shit, they can always run away. I think this fundamental assumption about escape being an option has allowed men to focus more on the "probability" of any given threat. They do calculations about .... if X happens, what are my options?
The assumption that escape is always a fallback means that the lethality of a threat becomes more nuanced... men can consider degrees of threat. They can "test" their ability to overcome the threat and if that doesn't work, then can fall back. Perhaps they can throw a rock at it and the bear will back away... but if not, run! So the threat is more or less threatening at different moments. If the bear is a long way away... its less threatening. If its close, its more threatening. If you are behind it, its less of a problem etc. This lets men work with threat as a changing, moment by moment calculation. It lets them work around dangerous equipment, situations and large animals.
This mindset makes you more conscious of the threats that are infront of you at the time, not just their possibility.
Back to the women, they need to see threats in a more absolute terms. If a threat exists in their environment (that they cannot leave), it must be removed. The threat may be a sharp edge on a piece of furniture that the children are playing on, but the woman knows about it and it exists as an absolute threat to the children. Its not about the probability of the child getting injured, or how bad the injury might be, its that the children and herself are stuck in an environment with a constant threat. Children have a way of exploring everything that an environment has to offer... the good and the bad. This is the nature of children. So even the dangerous stuff will instinctivly get explored. Thats a problem... so a woman has to see threats in their environment as almost a guaranteed problem at some point.
I think this is an issue with how workplace safety has blown up recently. We have a bunch of female staff who are working in small groups, sometimes isolated or late at night. Their perceptions of their safety is similar across a number of staff and seems to be a fairly common perception, but they are not very able to articulate any particular issues. They all have horror stories that they have heard about and some have had weird experiences that they can tell you about... but none have actually had any bad experiences specifically in the environments. I recognise their vulnerability, but there is no actual evidence of any of their fears having ever manifested. So, doing a "probablity" calculation in my head results in there being no evidence to support there being any threat.
However, if you look at the whole situation through the lens of "possibility", their behaviour makes sense. They see all the dark corners and quiet rooms and remember all the shitty drama movies they have seen and the scary stories they read on the social medias and they see the "possibility" quite clearly. If you see the possibility through an absolute lens, then they are completely correct that they are constantly under threat.
This does however create a problem. Essentially, we need to employ even more "protectors" (security guards) to babysit these groups anytime they are working late. There is some economy by sharing one security guard across a bunch of spaces, but I can forsee them wanting more at some point as the spaces are scattered around more and more.
This raises the issue of the indirect cost of hiring women to do these roles. If we have to hire additional staff to be "protectors" (male or female guards is not the point) does this change the cost of hiring women in the primary roles?
If we hired only men to do these roles and it came without this "safety tax"... what kind of conversation would that start?
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