What was "Good Work" for women in the thirties?

Here's a little historical find. This film was made prior to 1931 by the Women's bureau of the department of labor in the US. It was around the time of scientific management processes and it was believed if people were appropriately assessed that they could be placed in positions better to their liking.

This film was shown to young girls in high school to encourage them to enter the workforce, that is until they got married. So 80 years ago this was progress, yes, yes we have made terrific progress but every so often I pause with sadness for the women of that generation and generations before that - they were talented and skilled but not given the support we get today.

However the take home line from the film is still appropriate today. "Waste is prevented when women like their jobs and do good work."

Do it - Make Appealing Apps for iPad for Women

And so it seems that there's a technology adoption at work that is following a very common curve. While initially men were significantly the early adopters of the iPad that the trend is turning in the US to women starting to pick up grown in adopting the ipad.

Yahoo! has reported that initially the ratio of adoption of the iPad was a 2:1 ratio of male to female adopters. This number has now become a 3:2 ratio. Frequently female are the later adopters but are also the most loyal, and steadily creative adopters.

Initially digital photography was the domain of men, while the women still tried to maintain the family photo albums, then eventually the tools became less 'geeky' and women could return to being the primary photo story-tellers in the family. Blogging - was initially seen as a mail past-time because the bloggers that got the most attention were written by men, but in the background it was women that were generating the mass movement of blogging personal stories. Could the iPad be another of these trends? Could the iPad be the form factor that is used when waiting in the pick-up lane at a school? or when visiting ailing parents at care-centers?

What could iPad provide you with to just make it an emotionally satisfying and useful moment?

What is gender equality? 50/50 or do we settle for less?

A survey was conducted by the Pew Research Center that asked for opinions on rights between the genders. One question in the survey was do men deserve jobs more when jobs are scarce. If people truly believed in equality the response would have 100% but that is not the case. In the survey, a question was asked about whether respondents believed in equality between genders, and also a question about who deserved jobs more in times when jobs are scarce. At first glance I was much relieved that in European countries and US that progress has been made, however on second review I realized that, wait a minute, the numbers are still not 100% and that continues to mean lack of support for equality. I always find it surprising how I initially look at numbers related to equality and am often grateful when the numbers are no single digits, or when a number has nudged up a few percent, and that anything above 19% seems 'almost there in terms of equality'. For example at work (engineering software company) I am use to being in a room with myself being the only female or a couple of others in a room of 10-20 people. So when we get to 5-6 women in the room it feels almost balanced.

When my family was visiting England a year ago, the taxi driver was asking my husband about women in politics, and my husband started to tell the driver that in the US things were pretty good for females in politics, he was talking merrily and one would almost think equality had been achieved, he seemed surprised when I said I didn't think it was the case. By comparison to his youth there are a lot of females in government but in fact there are only 17 female senators out of 100 today. Does this pass for 'equality'?

74 congress-women out of 448 - compared to previous decades this is significant but its not equality. How do we stay the course until the number is 224, or at least 224 plus/minus 10.

Government is one place where every senator and congress-person has a single vote so representation is important and makes a difference. What's the best I can hope for in my lifetime? 25% female representation?