Evolving gender roles in our societies

My interests have always been a science. I tend to be the fixer around the house...but I love my high-heeled shoes.

That was before myself and the rest of us. Beatrix Farrand did the work, and the woman who did the first Disneyland, Ruth something. I was told about about her, but even then I didn't want to do disneyland for a thousand reasons. Of course now I can get her.

Beatrix Farrand - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrix_Farrand
Ruth Shellhorn, 97; landscape architect for Bullock's, Disneyland
Obituaries

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/nov/12/local/me-shellhorn12

I started studying in 1980, so the world was moving along.
Years later I was semi involved in zoo design, as a person in the firm, not working that. But I showed up in my good if severe dress at a meeting, no memory of what I said.
One of my memories was being accepted as an acolyte person for low money at a then primo firm (this went under and was subsumed later, recession, but never mind.)

I was in my early forties, had run labs in another field. I was accepted to help, and that included filing to help the secretary, coffee making, photographing sites, and doing six foot drawings in 30 or 45 minutes. The boss said, who is this woman? Alas, 90% of the firm was let go, but the recession abated and I remember a lot of those people. Maybe I should have pushed but by then I was working elsewhere (that worked out).

One was the woman who dealt me stuff to do. She always wore high heels to meetings, including some but not all site visits.
I never could do that, high heels kill me re high arches. Plus, just not my way. But she was great, so glad I met her. She taught me go ahead.

Long time friends have degrees in arch history. I just love both of them, except when I'm annoyed (we do this with each other).

Landscape architecture is doable.
In my grading class, I cried in my back yard trying to figure out the questions. Turns out the teacher, usually good, was off that day and the main question was wrong.
I was right that time and studied more. I guess it matters if you can bear puzzles.

Grading, of course is an issue, but when I first learned it, it was less freighted.
I later got to be good at it. It's a curve, and it isn't all gardens.

No sense of dimensions, I understand that you don't understand that, and I've run across it - most some not getting language stuff, but some totally not getting space.

Forces too. You can't design a structure without a minimal sense of how weights will play out. So she knows architecture is out. Landscape seems not totally impossible at least...

So, maybe not.

What does she want? I can see garden design or arch history (or related). That is a plowed field but maybe not entirely.

I gave a lecture or two (I am not a lecture person, christ my high school set a fire alarm then) but can stand it if I have to.

No advice except for her to think what she really likes.

That was a dumb post, I could dissect it for bad. Sorry, sorry.

I need to be quiet.

Trying to recover from being an idiot -

I can see garden design. That is not as simple as it may seem and involves both knowledge and creativity - and some science savvy, which needs to be learned.

Ok so there are girly feminists in the US too? ;-)

Not the most logical type but I like them...

Sorry, I missed the idiot part. :-) As I said, she knows that it's not just about creativity, that there is a technical side to anything, and that she stands little chance on that side... It never hurts to be realistic. So don't you worry about giving it to me in a blunt way. I'd rather get real advice than tell her to waste years and good money on a pursuit that won't work...

Coincidentally Oli this morning my BH volunteered to get out of her new vehicle, and pump gas

That's progress... :-)

Read this this morning:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/09/everyday-sexism-condemns-sexual-advances-mysogynist

"If directly propositioning somebody for sex is automatically condemned as misogynist, as the campaign appears to assert, then the movement risks being highly counterproductive to the feminist cause and playing into the hands of the sexually repressive, patriarchal ideology that feminism strives to counter."

What the author hasn't got yet, is that modern feminism has become sexually repressive, in the main. It is not like that of the 60s anymore. Modern feminists don't throw away their bras and hope for free love these days. They have become established, mainstream, married or wanting to be, conformist, and sexually repressive.

Thanks Oli, I'll have to mull it over

I have to go back and reread, I think I've changed my take on it after a day's thought.

Back in a bit.

Ok, I reread. If I can organize my various thoughts it may lead to some routes to look at.

I don't know about european (or other than u.s. schooling in it). Great land design people have shown up all over the earth with all sorts of their own imperatives, and who started that? Land design history is in itself interesting. This was my text, but, urgh, something like 1980. Still worth a read:

Design on the Land, Norman Newton
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Land-Development-Landscape-Architecture/dp/0674198700

In the U.S., I may be wrong, but still take it that Harvard is the place.
I went to a University of California extension place, night school, for four years, while working in the new field. Lots of staying up late.

You have to have a bachelors to get into the program (not for your wife a problem in any similar school). Or did, as I don't know about now. You finished and then you interned for two years and then you took big tests with tough time limits. Mine was national boards, three days then, with a short state test in that, followed by an interview. (I remember being ice cold before the interview, out in the waiting room.) I also remember my husband and I going to a place on Venice Beach and having champagne and calvados after we drove back (him driving) to our area. I could tell I passed. Usually you can't tell. I have a friend who took an architecture test nine times before passing - he was fairly high up in transportation stuff. Much of that I take as a language problemo, perhaps with a fear component. As I said earlier, I think, I have friends who are architectural historians, not architects, and they have had interesting work. One did arch tours; one got involved in architectural management. One male, one female.

What did this get you?
At least in Los Angeles, you could work for the city re planning or building and safety, or in garden design firms, or in world type site design firms, or your own immediately started design firm, general landarch firms, or your own design and construction firm (presuming you passed a contracting test). I have a friend who became a landscape architect and later became a occupational therapist, who now does garden design for disabled people.

There are also recessions, so oft times are tough.

That's enough for now. I wanted to emphasize that ability with math and science and sense of space is, to some extent, necessary, but that some less than terrific in that but clinging on to the word 'okay', may shine in other areas and find room in the field.

I'll pm you a link on the courses I took, manana - have no idea what is happening in your area.

So, this is a tangent re gender roles, but, eh, not completely.

Yuck, I just looked at one of the websites. Maybe the brains have fled, trolling for let's do graphics.

Well, when I settle down, I'll still try to give a list of courses.

No rush... I seriously doubt she'd enlist. But thanks for a detailed answer.

Well, no method of birth control comes with 100% certainty of efficiency. This is perhaps why most women choose partners more carefully. The Russian roulette of sex doesn't work because women want the best advantages for their children...including knowing the identity of the father (although we now have DNA tests). Women still hold the primary role as caregivers until the offspring come of age....that's a lot of work for a quick roll in the hay. There's a difference between being repressed and choosing to have sex without inhibitions with a partner of choice. Being selective doesn't necessarily mean repressed in my opinion. I do think society has gone overboard with the rules of attraction. If a man compliments a female's figure it is not sexual harassment. I still think wether your a male or female it's best to test the waters, and read cues before assuming someone's desires. I've seen females throw themselves at men...and I've seen guys look uncomfortable. Nobody wants to feel like prey...better to feel like a participant.

I grew up on a working-class council estate in the 1950's and many kids parents used to both go out to work, meaning their kids had to come home from school to a cold empty house until their parents got home a few hours later.
Some of those "cold empty house" kids often had emotional and behavioural problems because of it.
My mother was always there at home for me and my sister when we got home from school, God bless her..