lad zone
(n.) a place that lacks the influence or representation of women
written by suzie frith
So, you’re at the gym and look to the area full of weights and dumbbells. You see that it is full of boys downing whey protein and deadlifting 150 pounds. It’s normal right? But what if we query this? You don’t see many women in there. Is it that society has formed such strict, defined rules of the way women and men should behave? Or is it simply coincidence that the area which represents strength and power, only holds male bodies.
And you start to think about other aspects of life outside of the gym. In school, the boys played football on their side of the playground. The men in vans carry ladders and tools, do jobs that no one would see a women do. The non-existent, but very real bro-code. Men in suits, men in pubs, men playing sports, men in films, men dominating a lot of areas. There’s parts of the world where girls just don’t feel welcome. So what is this phenomenon? These places that seem to be packed full of guys. The bro band? The fella field? The dick district? No, this my friend, is The Lad Zone.
You may think that this is a vast generalisation. We’ve come so far in terms of women’s rights and now girls are just as involved in the stuff boys are. We’ve got female role models in almost every field; sports, business, entertainment, arts. But if you look at certain jobs, and qualifications students take at school, you’ll see there is a lack of female voice, influence and power. The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects, for example, is a huge area where girls don’t seem to be. According to the Women in Science and Engineering campaign’s latest analysis of UK labour market statistics, women make up just 12.8% of the Stem workforce.
This area is quite one-sided and one place in which The Lad Zone is very real. The number of men in Stem occupations is 4.71 billion, compared to 0.69 million women. In the classroom, 21.1% of females take physics compared to that of 78.9% of males, 28% of girls studying maths at A-level compared to 72% of boys.
And with other occupations, it’s not that it isn’t split equally between the genders, but that there is little female representation in those areas. For example, 40% percent of all sports participants are female, yet women’s sports receive only 4% of all sport media coverage. You could argue that female sports just isn’t as popular, and therefore gets less hype. But why is that? It’s because in society, we’re so used to seeing men do pretty much anything, but when a girl does a certain thing, they’re ‘niche.’ This is supposedly why we called girls in bands girl bands, and call female comedians female comedians, whereas boys in bands, are just called bands, and male comedians, are just comedians.
So, The Lad Zone persists through a lot of areas beyond the gym. And you might disagree with this, but the facts and percentages are there, and they ought to be questioned. It is just coincidence that there are more men in science jobs, and more coverage of male sport, and more lads in the weights section of the gym? Or do these roles represent ‘power’ and ‘manliness’ and ‘brains’ that women feel intimidated by? Or does society not want to show or attract women to these roles? The Lad Zone is to be questioned.
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