Like it or not, the countyside isn't a
I know a little about this as I'm a site carpenter myself.
My wife til recently worked as a plumber and one of the best carpenter/joiners I know is female.
There's a massive amount of sexism in the building trades.
When I work with the female joiner I get blokes sidling up to me and asking a series of questions.
It always starts off with
"Is she your wife?" No.
"Are you seeing her?" No.
"Can she do her job?" Hell yes, better than almost any man I know although she's physically quite small and can't carry hour rated fire doors up a flight of stairs on her own. Can't say I want to do that either.
Then things take a turn for the downright weird because after finding out she's not my partner, she knows what she's doing (she was my tutor at college) then they ask...
"Is she a lesbian?" ***? Now I'm not entirely sure if they all just think that I'm so damn handsome (really, I'm pretty average) that any woman working alongside me who doesn't want to go out with me MUST be a lesbian or what the hell it is but its weird.
When I'm working with another bloke there's none of that.
Then my wife has had to put up with a fair bit of sexism as a plumber and let me tell you, its toxic.
I've worked on site with a couple of Nigerian blokes* and although nobody is racist to their face, there was a lot going on behind their backs.
The usual stuff and it seemed like everyone thought they must have lived in mud huts in Nigeria or all been phone scammers.
To their face? Well, friendly(ish) but ever so slightly uncooperative. Not always easy to really pin down as racism but if you've seen them saying something racist when the Nigerians were away then just a bit uncooperative when they're about its not hard to work out.
Pulling them up on it seems to make a bit of difference (although when confronted they start the "virtue signalling" accusations if they have no better arguments) but its slow change and having a few politicians (Farrage and Co) who make stupid comments seems to set it back a bit cos it emboldens them. "He's just saying what everyones thinking" type of stuff.
*I think Ive met about ten Nigerians in my life (Cumbria isn't exactly a melting pot of different cultures) and so far every one of them has had a great attitude and good sense of humour. I'm sure eventually I'll meet one who's an irritating pain in the neck to balance the numbers so but so far they have been people I'm happy to work alongside.
Oh and Toddy? We've all got nailguns but even then we still use a hammer a lot.
We've not forgotten how to use em just yet.