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04-01-2014, 13:05
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Firstly, like the last post, the title is not a reflection of my own personal view, more a hypothesis for testing. The last post seems to have been misconstrued more than I expected, if our search on Twitter is anything to go by. I do find women who drink beer attractive and I do think that chauvinistic attitudes are unacceptable. My own admission to being chauvinistic is a show of honesty, a window on the fact that many people are naturally chauvinistic, irrespective of gender. The better of us recognise it's wrong, fight it, and try to do better.

They say, when in a hole, stop digging. Least said, soonest mended and all that. So why follow on with another contentious post? The reason is because the aim of the last post was to point out that society in general sees beer as gendered. I do not think it should be, but if we cannot explore the reasons why it is gendered in a rational, honest and sometimes perhaps painful way, then we will not be able to start tackling the issues.

The title of this post is a hypothesis put to me by a gentleman, who to be fair had already consumed a few beers, who was keen to point out what he thought was a wrong. It was at a industry beer event where there were many of the great and good from the beer industry present. Some of the larger breweries had brought their PR people with them. A good idea I thought.

Now, the gentleman in question is a very knowledgeable guy and has a lot of experience in beer. Many of the PR people were pretty young women. He points this out and asked "What do they know about beer?" If memory serves I countered this by saying something like "If we haven't talked to them we can't possibly know" he continued to explain that he objected to them because they had obviously only been hired because they were eye candy.1

I'll admit I was a little shocked as I didn't really agree with his view. I know quite a few PR people. Many are women, including many who are in the beer industry. I think they all do a great job. I hope my assessment of a person's ability to do a job is not based on their gender, age or appearance. At the time I was reluctant to enter into a discussion on the subject as a very pleasant evening was drawing to a close, with us both having had a few it might have escalated into forthright opinion swapping.

Although I managed to extricate myself from this without argument the comments still concern me. Of course he may have a point, hiring young ladies just because they are pretty would be wrong. Perhaps even, given a selection of people who appear to have similar abilities, perhaps there is a tendency to choose better looking people, especially if the role is public focused.

Do those young ladies know about beer? Well of course I don't know either. I suspect they are learning, as indeed we all are. Are they good at their job? I suspect so. They probably are very good PR people and this is far more important than having an intimate knowledge of beer, they can, and almost certainly will learn. The role of a PR person is to channel the knowledge of a company into a coherent story that entices the public into liking that company.

My point here is that the title of this post, along with the title of the previous post, are statements that I believe to be wrong. The reason for me writing these pieces is to encourage debate on the statements. I don't agree with them, I know many young people, of both genders, and of varying attractiveness, who are very knowledgeable about beer2. However the number of people who subliminally feel that pretty young women don't know about beer is perhaps greater than is good for the beer world.

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1It is posible I have misrepresented the conversation. In truth I had also had a couple of drinks and my recollection is somewhat fuzzy. Should the gentleman in question read this and like to comment then this is fine. However, it was a conversation between he and me and his identity is not relevant.

2It is in fact the case that some of the younger breweries out there have indeed got a large number of younger people working for them, and of a good balanced mix of gender. This is a very good thing. Moreover, younger people tend to have a more open minded approach to the subject of beer, this is very good indeed.




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