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Forwarded from the Women in Computing Research Mailing List
How would the UK IT industry run if there were suddenly no men?
Mammoth Screen are an independent television drama production company and they are currently developing a new idea for an ITV television drama series for which they need to undertake some detailed research before the screenwriter can get started.
The project is going to explore the question of how the UK would function if society underwent a sudden demographic change whereby there were no men: only women. Whilst this is obviously a hypothetical scenario, they are hoping to take current research and expertise on demographic breakdown to create an informed and realistic picture of how Britain might work in such conditions.
One area they are investigating is how employment in key areas of infrastructure is divided between the sexes e.g. given that the majority of long haul lorry drivers are male, would petrol forecourts dry up and would supermarket shelves go empty if men were taken out of society?
Similarly, would the national grid fail because the majority of its operating engineers are male, or does it work on a fairly automated basis?
Another area they are looking into is the sociological, emotional and psychological side of how people would cope in the aftermath of such a traumatic and shocking change to their lives. They're hoping to take studies and research from other recent scenarios where society has been faced with trauma or sudden loss of men to create a picture of how the characters in our drama might respond.
With regards to the IT industry, what they would love to know is how you think women would cope with the increased amount of pressure at work as there are so few women in technological services. Do you think some areas of technology would collapse altogether due to lack of staff?
They are also interested to know if there's anything else that leaps out at you after reading the premise of the show.
They are looking for your input asap as the writer would like to start work on the screenplay within the next month or so.
I can't help thinking this idea could work but is more likely to be the most horrendous sexist drivel.
Mammoth Screen are an independent television drama production company and they are currently developing a new idea for an ITV television drama series for which they need to undertake some detailed research before the screenwriter can get started.
The project is going to explore the question of how the UK would function if society underwent a sudden demographic change whereby there were no men: only women. Whilst this is obviously a hypothetical scenario, they are hoping to take current research and expertise on demographic breakdown to create an informed and realistic picture of how Britain might work in such conditions.
One area they are investigating is how employment in key areas of infrastructure is divided between the sexes e.g. given that the majority of long haul lorry drivers are male, would petrol forecourts dry up and would supermarket shelves go empty if men were taken out of society?
Similarly, would the national grid fail because the majority of its operating engineers are male, or does it work on a fairly automated basis?
Another area they are looking into is the sociological, emotional and psychological side of how people would cope in the aftermath of such a traumatic and shocking change to their lives. They're hoping to take studies and research from other recent scenarios where society has been faced with trauma or sudden loss of men to create a picture of how the characters in our drama might respond.
With regards to the IT industry, what they would love to know is how you think women would cope with the increased amount of pressure at work as there are so few women in technological services. Do you think some areas of technology would collapse altogether due to lack of staff?
They are also interested to know if there's anything else that leaps out at you after reading the premise of the show.
They are looking for your input asap as the writer would like to start work on the screenplay within the next month or so.
I can't help thinking this idea could work but is more likely to be the most horrendous sexist drivel.
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Unless of course they mean the mythical planet of the women where men never existed and women reproduced by budding or something. In which case they would have a nice stable society that will have evolved differently due to the different pressure that this alternate reproductive system entailed.
I could see it being spun as sexist drivel on either side really either, 'Ooo look men are vitally important without us you poor ladies wouldn't have any power to run your hair dryers' or 'Look chaps you really are redundant now the world wouldn't even notice if you disappeared, maybe we would keep a few of you in reserves.'
Sigh.
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I also think this is a good thing and neither way is 'right' focussing on one to the exclusion of the other is craziness.
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Until that is, Captain Kirk arrives, defeats the Klingon captain in single combat (du-du-durr-durr-durr-durr-du-du-durr-du), while his clothes get ripped in a suggestive manner, enflames the passions of the surprisingly young, exotically beautiful and scantily-clad matriarch, ignores the Prime Directive and completely destabilises the amazonian, utopian society...
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If, magically, nobody was shocked into headless chicken mode, then I guess there would be a few breakdowns and problems before the relatively few techies left could train a new contingent. Big deal.
A proportion of the work done nowadays is pointless wheel spinning, or potentially avoidable things like coping with an insanely complex tax system. I guess some of the more absurd legal requirements would be suspended to allow the competent people to concentrate on the necessary tasks, even if they also had to do a bit of retraining. If you can, for example, design spreadsheets to cope with capital gains and taper relief, you could, with enough reason to do so, probably retrain fairly quickly to cope with, say, electrical engineering. You'd need comparable mental capacity in either case.
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Y:tLM is pretty good; uncompromising and often surprising in an oh-yeah-I-hadn't-thought-of-that way. It does have lesbians in it, but in the opinion of this filthy agent of the Patriarchy, not the exploitative kind.
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I don't want to diss the comic about which I know nothing. But the basic premise in the hands of ITV doesn't fill me with anything approaching confidence.
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Actually, wait, no it doesn't. There's equal potential for them both to suck, just in different ways.
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Maybe I'm unnecessarily jaundiced about modern TV.