If I'm not 'school-age' or 'college-age', does that mean I'm 'older'?
Yes, b_b, it means you are older than school-age or college-age. You can be school or college-aged and not in school. My audience will be college-aged students and I imagine some "older" ones and I am particularly interested about how much they think about questions of gender in their workplaces. I'm also interested about whether post-college individuals realize later on, when they are in the workplace, that there are gender issues. I'm curious the extent to which men and women think there are gender issues. That is, if women perceive gender issues or discrimination (no mat leave, for example), whether men are equally concerned about these issues. Women tell me that they go to meetings where certain men will never look at them or address questions to them. They address questions to other men, who then turn to the woman for the answer. Are men alert to other men's subtle forms of discrimination? Some are both alert and vocal about it. But it is hard for us to be aware of experiences of others. We tend to assume that people are treated the way we would treat them. The Black Lives Matter movement has shed a lot of light on the fact that people are routinely treated differently, often fatally.
Here's the biggest problem: I think that most people who think about whether there's an issue aren't the people that need to be addressed. The people who never think about whether gender issues exist (especially in male dominated industries) are the ones that aren't going to listen and who cause most of the problems. Here's a quick anecdote to illustrate my point. My wife was working with a guy, and they were within earshot of a meeting in which there was an angry woman yelling at a bunch of people. The guy looks at her and says, "You don't ever want to sound like that," with a smile and a chuckle. She looked back at him and said with a dead serious face, "Yeah, you too." Apparently the dude just kind of stared back in confusion then changed the subject. She's also had men tell her in all seriousness that women shouldn't design cars after they have a family because all the only part of the car they care about at that point are the seat belts and airbags. And, I shit you not, that it's not really fair that women are treated so much better than men in the industry, that they're just handed everything. Those types of people just don't get it. They never once think past the end of their own nose. It's a noble goal trying to get through to them, but I don't know how much impact you can have on people who completely lack the ability to be introspective.