Issue #31: Women of Amateur Radio

You are very welcome. Your efforts to support the community and your coverage of amateur radio are both deeply appreciated.

There really hasn't ever been a better time for amateur radio. Amateur radio can be a powerful force for personal and professional development, while also giving people the opportunity to do community and disaster relief services. However, we are seeing steep declines in the numbers of licensees almost everywhere else in the world, and flat/droopy overall growth here in the United States. When looking closer at the numbers, we saw a 20% decline in the number of women licensees in the US over the past 10 years. We also see what seems to be a significant aging.

I don't have any easy answers for recruitment. There are observant and compelling things said in this thread. It's apparent people have both thought about and also tried to put into practice efforts to spread the good news about amateur radio.

I just can't recommend membership in organizations where the leadership takes obvious pleasure in harming their own members. Get a license, find what is fun for you, and reject any club or organization that makes people feel bad. If that means you hang out more with your local DEFCON group than any of the ham clubs, so be it. You're getting at least as much ham activity there as you are from the NTS crowd. In my experience, a lot more.

-Michelle Thompson

 

Thanks Michelle, good comments. I sure agree with you about clubs. The first thing I did upon re-licensing a number of years ago was to join the local ham club. Today, I decided not to "re-up" with that club. When a club goes South and is just a clique, it is not long for the world and it certainly never made me "feel good" as you suggested. When a ham club works, and I know a LOT of them that do, it is a fantastic learning experience and a great place to make contacts. But your comment about not joining something that doesn't resonate is a good one. The Radio Club of Tacoma, an example of a club that works, was founded in 1916 and has hundreds of members. Clubs that do something right, as that one does, are bound to be a good choice for new hams. Dave, W7DGJ

 

I'm very fortunate to be a member of an active local club with a steady trickle of newcomers. Even a few teenagers. But these kids are mostly interested in digital work. They really aren't interested in hearing how satisfied I am with my current Medicare.

Happily we've got a few experts who are also doing the FT8 thing and they are our most successful Elmers. The rest of us listen and that's good too.

 

As to ham radio aging, yes, but so is the country. Were it not for immigration we'd be a lot older than we are.

 

Happy Thanksgiving to our Trials and Errors readers. Thank you for being here! Dave

 

My XYL N0UO says "we're all boring Old man"

 

you will always have groups that want to control others, that's human nature!
How we overcome it require a stalwart mindset and the honorable intention.
being unwavering in the sight of the weasel factor may not make you popular with the weasels, but a benefit in the long run.
to some extent I face this a lot in the Fire dept.
due to state requirements some changes must be made and we get a lot of grief from the old-timers who refuse to follow the changes.
we have auxiliary members who are itching for something to do because they cannot go on scene due to restrictions of health and insurance requirements.
But there is many tasks they could easily do to facilitate the required changes.
such as inspection of gear, data recording, inventory, and the like
None of it is particularly hard but takes up a lot of time of the active members.

club issues? well they face the same situations. some members are assigned multiple responsibilities and often have difficulty in completing them.
In our club I have been audio recording the minutes for the secretary and everyone is fine with it.
this saves her time and effort for transcribing the meeting minutes in case she misses writing something down.
a club needs a rigid structure following Roberts rules of order.
for example expenditure of funds, organizing training, committee formation, verification of memberships, elections and so on require voting by the members.

equipment repair is usually done by the skilled members and owners, But there is nothing wrong with including those who want to learn.
Ive got no problem with teaching soldering skills and what i do know about electronics. and damn sure have no problem with learning something new when offered.

dropping out of a club? well that up to the individual, If you feel that club is inadequate for you then look for another or do what you can to improve yours.
If the weasels have their nest well made, then by all means drop out and let them fail on their own.

the point is the only thing holding you back is the person looking back at you from the mirror

 

Well, that was a nicely-written article! Happy to see it here.

A few very rambling observations on some of the comments:

"As a predominantly male pastime, we guys are always talking up how cool the gear is, how much fun it is to put up an antenna, build a radio, tear down a shack and rebuild it, and so on . . . those are all "hot buttons" for interest. While some women may be excited by this, others (perhaps especially the older ones) may be attracted more to the social and friendship aspects of the hobby."

I might have agreed with the sentence above, broadly, more 50 or 60 years ago. Social expectations of "appropriate" gender behaviors were a lot more rigid then. Observing many hundreds of college kids over the last few decades, I do think that is changing, and not just a little bit. I met quite a few young men who were more into doing things for the social and friendship aspects of life - many more than were able to openly admit that when I was that age - and quite a lot more women who were into taking things apart to see how they worked. [Which was "me" as a young woman.]

I'm not a terribly social animal myself, but I do appreciate hearing about people doing experimental things because I love a good puzzle. As that applies to radio: I do like knowing the basics of how it works. I do like the challenge of seeing if I can learn enough to actually get on the air. Do I enjoy talking about the type of store-bought equipment I have? Not really. It's the means to an end, to me, but I know some people do like that sort of conversation. Do I enjoy hearing how someone managed to get on the air using barbed wire, hair curlers, and a BBQ grill, while powering their rig by pedaling a bicycle? You betcha - and I want to know how that works!!! And what happens if you change the layout. Etc. Would I also like to be able to chat about daily life - the latest recipe for beef jerky or where I'd found a good sale on Bob's flour, etc.? (Medicare, not so much. The premiums are giving me heartburn.) So far, in the very few times I've managed to chat with folks on the local repeater, I've been able to do that. And it's been quite pleasant. All of the handful of people I've been chatting with have been male (I assume from the voices) and at least a couple are older than I am, so it looks like hams across the age spectrum have plenty to talk about other than just their radio equipment. I'm not finding that it's a world where all talk is technical. Thankfully.

Generations. I know a woman in her 30s who has considered jumping into the hobby. It's my impression that she is more interested in communicating with other people than the technical stuff. She is intellectually capable of building a decent station from scratch from spare parts, but it's of no interest to her other than that she has an "I'm going to do it because you think I can't" streak and probably would build one just to prove she could. She and her friends had STEM pretty much shoved down their throats, really, all throughout their schooling, regardless of their innate talents or proclivities. The public school system has always had a tendency to have been a "one size fits all" machine, in my experience. Sadly. I would have jumped at all that if it had happened when I was a girl, but it did not. She is not so-inclined, but could not escape it. (Talk about ironic!) She has other interests and finds most STEM stuff tedious. Not challenging, just tiresome at this point. She won the top science award at her school, she maxed out the testing, she did what they asked her to do, and now she's done with all that and follows her own drummer for her own reasons. One avenue of interest appears to be getting herself licensed. Unfortunately, the above-discussed "Brand" has been off-putting to her. I don't think she's met any ham operators, but from what she says it seems that her general impression is that they are all old white guys with too much spare money, or ne'er-do-wells driving oversized pickup trucks with Confederate (or American) flags flying off them while coal-rolling people on the street, or political fringe "preppers". I don't know where she got that impression - seriously, I do not. (I hope it wasn't from me!) TV? Movies? I don't know. Is that what "the Brand" is out there in the wild in a wider way? I have no idea - I sincerely hope not. Because if it is, well, yikes!

"What's needed, IMHO, is equal treatment. Make no assumptions about what will attract someone because of their chromosomes, gender, whatever. Make no assumptions about what someone can do, what interests them, what their contribution can be, what their needs are. Consider the individual, not what group they do or do not belong to."

Brilliantly put. Bravo.

 

Hi Mary,

Great comments, thanks. Your story of the 30's woman with the interest in ham radio but concerns about that "brand" I spoke of . . . real interesting. There are a lot of people turned off by those same impressions. We've got to do something about that in the long run.

While I agree on the "equal treatment" comment at the end, in order to get your 30's female friend to join in, we'll have to have a different image than the one we push "equally" right now across all genders. If the brand we push is indeed a bunch of white guys driving pickup trucks or hunched around their radios talking Medicare, we're doomed.

Dave, W7DGJ

 

Well, I sure hope that isn't the overall image. I really do. That would be a tragic misjudgement of the people, on the whole, who are into this hobby.

As for my young friend, I think the best thing I can do for her is acquaint her with some "hams" of good quality who don't fit the stereotypes she's conjuring up. It has been my experience that once you meet and talk with someone, and get to know them, if you had preconceived notions about them quite often you realize they were nowhere near reality. Maybe that's a quirk of mine, but it's always seemed to work that way for me. So at some point in the future I will make an effort and offer to do that.

I wonder if she's been seeing things about ham radio on YouTube? There is some strange stuff on that platform. (Good stuff, too, but the algorithms can cough up the fringe click bait really too often.)

 

CW being left in the dust? Have you listened to 40 meters this weekend?

Yes, the Morse Code TEST is long gone. Yet the mode is widely used. That says something.

73 de Jim, N2EY

 

My point is that if people get the feeling they're being "sold" something, or "recruited" for something, they are more likely to not go for it. Words like "recruitment" give the idea of "sales pitch".

I would say it differently.

I would say that the way to attract people is to present the wide variety of things amateurs do. Different modes, different technologies, different bands, different on-air and off-air activities. IOW, present as full a picture as possible, so that different people can see that there's probably something they will like.

One person may be interested in UHF, another in LF. One person may be interested in DXing, another in homebrewing. One may like the idea of a small, ultraportable station doing POTA and similar, another the big shack full of gear. One may like the newest manufactured stuff, another restoring vintage, another building their own. And all sorts of combinations. The trick is to NOT make assumptions about what certain people or groups will like.

Hold on there!

I'm an old white guy (although when my grandparents reached Ellis Island about 120 years ago, there were lots of Americans who didn't consider southern Italians to be "white".)

I have a workbench I built myself a few years ago: https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/this-old-shack-new-workbench.571737/

And a station that is 100% homebrew, 100% CW, and hollow-state: https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/a-few-pictures-of-the-southgate-type-7.453281/

I have at least five CW keys, too.

I've been a ham since 1967. Amateur radio led me to a career in EE. I'm writing this during a break from CQ WW CW.

What you seem to be saying is that I should hide my light under a bushel, and not present what I do as Amateur Radio. That I am obsolete, unwanted, Mr. Bad Example, and I should move to the back of the bus, sit down, shut up and go away.

To that I say NO!!

What I (and many others) do hasn't been the "brand" of Amateur Radio for decades. Nor should it be. It's PART of Amateur Radio - a chapter, not the whole book.

What needs to be the "brand", to use your word, is the enormous range of activities. Old radios, new radios, fancy radios, simple radios, MF to microwaves, QRP to legal limit, CW, 'phone, digital, image, DX, local/regional, satellites, homebrewing, public service, DX, contests, ragchewing, mobile/portable, technical, social, etc., etc. The big and expanding picture, not just one particular piece.

There's so much variety that it's difficult to portray - but that's the way forward.

And that may be the draw for some people. Part of the Big Picture.

See above. The "brand" should be about the wide variety of things that hams do - including old guys building and using CW radios in their basements - but not limited to them. Nor to preppers with HTs and yellow vests. Etc. It's a big story to tell.

Back in 1969, there was a movie "The Ham's Wide World" -

It's amazingly quaint today, being 54 years old. But it tried to show the wide variety of activities of amateur radio. THAT is what is needed - updated to today.

It appears that I wasn't sufficiently clear before - my apologies.

My point is that it is wrong to ASSUME things about people because of their age, gender, or other characteristics. You do NOT know what will attract someone, particularly a stranger. So what's needed is to present the range of activities, and let THEM decide what they like.

Some will want to make friends. Some will be interested in the technical side. Some will want to learn and use Morse Code. Some will want to talk to astronauts on the ISS. Etc. That's why it's important to tell the whole story.

The "brand" I see, for the past several decades, is NOT "some old guys using Morse Code and old radios". Rather, it's almost the exact opposite.

With all due respect - it's about telling the whole story to as many people as possible, and letting them decide.

And that's not trivial.

Too many people don't even know Amateur Radio exists.

Too many people think Amateur Radio is the same as CB.

Too many people think Amateur Radio requires buying thousands of dollars of gear and putting up huge antennas just to talk to strangers.

When's the last time you saw Amateur Radio accurately portrayed in a movie, a TV show, or a book that was seen by millions of non-hams?

That's the REAL problem. We have something that may interest maybe 1 in 400 Americans - but if that 1 in 400 doesn't know about it, or has an inaccurate view, they'll never sign up.

73 de Jim, N2EY

 

I'm also a CW man and happy and gratified by the ongoing interest in Morse. But how often do you learn that the guy on the other side is on Medicare as opposed to the prime of life? And how often is he a real youngster? Rarely I'm afraid.

Meanwhile the kids are going digital. I don't blame them. They don't know Morse and it doesn't take long to run into a jerk on HF SSB.

 

I think we're on the cusp of s nice revolution with CW. At a meeting on Friday, the young guys were talking about wanting to learn the code, and the older guys were more than willing to oblige. Not only is it the original "digital" mode, it's fun! I remember sitting at the dinner table with my buddy, talking in dahs and dits and bugging the hell out of my sister. Dave, W7DGJ

 

Good post, Jim. We essentially agree on all your major points, they are just expressed differently. Dave