Cockburn, Machinery of Dominance (Pluto 1985) and Brothers (1983) — "skill is a sex/gender weapon"; technical competence is gender-coded male

Claim: Cynthia Cockburn's foundational work — Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change (Pluto, 1983) and Machinery of Dominance: Women, Men and Technical Know-How (Pluto, 1985) — provides the analytical frame for what the gender composition of construction implies. Cockburn argues that "skill is 'not only a class political weapon. It is also a sex/gender weapon'" (quoted in Phillips, Feminist Review, 1983). Her closing claim in Machinery of Dominance is blunt: "of the two, gender is more implacable and tyrannical" (p. 251).

Anne Witz's Professions and Patriarchy (Routledge, 1992) extends this point: professions historically constructed as feminine — nursing, social work, marketing, communications — face uphill credibility battles in male-coded technical fields.

Sources:

• Cockburn, C. Brothers. Pluto, 1983.
• Cockburn, C. Machinery of Dominance. Pluto, 1985.
• Witz, A. Professions and Patriarchy. Routledge, 1992.

Confidence: Verified (primary texts) / Single-source academic for the Witz extension.

For Candid: The point is not that contractors are misogynists. It is that the gendering of "technical competence" as male is structurally embedded in trades workplaces, which makes services coded as feminine-professional — graphic design, copywriting, social media, brand strategy — pre-emptively suspect as competence claims. The implication for Candid's self-presentation: lead with technical work (code, infrastructure, performance metrics, systems thinking), surface the design and copy work through that frame, not as standalone deliverables.

Related: [[women-in-canadian-construction-13-6pct-2024]] gives the current employment-share numbers.