in this part of the world, we have had a few women forklift techs, and I have heard that one passed away just recently. She was as hard a worker as most any man, but believed in working smart, not hard, as much as possible, and while we worked for competing dealers, she will be missed. I also have an 'abodanza" of young techs wanting to learn the business, so much so that we continually have a position of 'apprentice' that is equal to 1/3 of the number of our 'journeymen' shop techs, and after somewhere between 6 months and 2 years (depending on past training and experience) they are moved into journeyman level techs.
We do seem to provide a light stream of younger techs to the local larger dealers, since the younger techs usually feel like they will make more changing jobs, (and they seem to be correct, for the most part), but it also still seems to me like the 2nd "Peter's principal" holds true; 'work expands to fill all available time'.