Feminism

[Senethro]

Men and women tend to pick different lifestyles. That something else than discrimination.

Do you have an example society with a reasonable history of egalitarianism to show whether this is an effect of culture or biology?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Well, equal pay for equal work would be a good start.

No argument there.

That said, there's still a lot of sexism in my union, and it's pretty insulting. We see it all the time when a new guy is on our crew - trying to take a load out of my female co-worker's hands. It implies that she's not willing or able to do the work. It's *usually* masked as a polite gesture, but that doesn't make it less insulting.

Just an example. There are others

Personally, if I were having a difficult or awkward time carrying something and was offered help, I'd accept with a smile and a "thank you."

There was a time when I was moving from my house to my first apartment a few years ago, and thank goodness it was close enough to walk. I moved a LOT of stuff by carrying it or by borrowing a shopping cart from the local grocery store (the manager knew and didn't mind, since I always brought the cart back). One day I was having a hell of a time managing a bookshelf - on a day when it was icy and lots of people hadn't bothered shoveling their sidewalks. A bunch of healthy, strong young guys walked right past... and didn't offer to help at all. The person who did offer to help was an elderly lady at least 20 years older than me.

 

[luiz]

The pay-gap for the same job with the same qualifications in the Swedish private sector is roughly 10% - that’s significant enough to react on as discrimination. The public sectors is much better at about 1-5%.

Sweden are rank #2 in the gender-equality index. The US is #42 together with Malaysia and Hungary. The UK is trailing Croatia on rank #34. Linky.

The thing is just looking at job and qualification and comparing salaries is not a proper statistical analysis, that is, you can't claim sexism is a significant factor.

For example, I assume even in Sweden women work less hours over the course of a career than men (maternity leaves, earlier retirement, etc). This has a both a direct effect (less hours means less value to the employer) and indirect ones (less hours means less actual on-the-job experience, and maternity leaves mean the employee may be absent at critical times and still enjoy work security, a considerable cost for the employer).

So this 10% difference, which is already very small, is probably non-existent when all factors are properly accounted for. The reason countries such as the US have even bigger gaps is mostly because there the differences between men and women maternity leaves and etc. is substantially bigger than in Sweden.

 

[peter grimes]

Dude, you sure that's a mask? Also, carrying loads is assuming the role of the laborer rather than the skilled worker. It's a sign of respect? At least I know it can be even if it isn't always. You better believe when my dad and I are working together and there's something to be carried and lugged while the work is going on it's been me doing that for decades. Not because my father can't carry and lug, but because whatever he's working on he's doing better than I could.

I get what you are saying, but I really don't think you can presume cleanly what you seem to be presuming. It's just as bad as thinking "gurls can't carry the stuffs."

In these situations were all equals - we're a crew loading or unloading a truck. Of course some things require more people to move safely, but a lot of our tasks are single-carry. It happens all too often that guys will "offer" to carry something for her, and she's left standing there, feeling like a useless idiot, all because some guy thinks she's not up for doing her job.

I've seen this happen, honestly, hundreds of times. I now run interference of a sort and will ask her which item she wants me to take, and which she will take. This sends a soft message to the day crew that she's perfectly capable of deciding on her own what she can carry.

This example serves to show the ways that people may think that feminism has accomplished everything necessary. But it hasn't yet. Until random day hires on our crews stop trying to prevent a woman on our crew from doing the job she's hired to do, there's still more awareness to raise.

I know this is hyperspecific, but it's illustrative.

As for pay gap, I can assure you that in my industry there is a gross disparity between what female - type jobs pay compared to male-type jobs. It might not be obviously attributable to gender bias, but it suspiciously smells like it. And it's become institutionalized by splitting some occupations into different locals.

Wardrobers earn quite a lot less than stagehands, and as a rule of thumb the wardrobers have higher skills, work more hours, and have harder daily challenges. But because there aren't as many of them, when negotiations come up they don't have as strong a position as the stage hands.

 

[Senethro]

However, the whole thing seems to solve itself. It just needs time.

Saying that the problem sorts itself is being hugely disrespectful to all the people who took action to bring the current state of affairs about. Indeed, given the number of states legislatures in America seeking to remove access to abortion by a thousand cuts so skirting federal laws, it may be a case of having to run to stay in one place.

So the final question is: Do we want to be patient or do we want to speed things up by making use of a very problematic tool? I tend toward patience.

"Over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”"

Some dude in his own people's struggle said that.

I don't think patience and inactivity will sort stuff.

In some ways, feminism is a misnomer, since it describes a heterogenous group of sub-movements that all have in common their goal of women empowerment. Most self-describing feminists that have been the vogue in recent academic discourse are part of a radical fringe. They do not deserve to be labelled under a common banner with say, suffragettes.

You can't use the word radical to mean bad or scary in the same breath as which you use suffragettes. The suffragettes were extremely radical. Like, radical enough to die for their beliefs and hunger strike and all the rest.

If the suffragettes and their methods were still in use then you would still be using your scare words to describe them. Its only because they're comfortably far back in the past and the modern consensus agrees what they did was good that you don't call them radical.

 

[Farm Boy]

In these situations were all equals - were a crew loading or unloading a truck.

Aight. You know you job(amazingly enough) better than I do. I'll take your word on it, but in carrying tasks, lifting, shoving, or whatever, it has never been the case that everybody, regardless of gender, is equals. Making sure that people are comfortable enough in their job to self-select and self-manage tasks seems an assertiveness and effective management issue to me more than it does a gender issue to me, but like I said, I'm not there watching it. Maybe you urbans have a machismo thing that's different than the one I'm used to.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Saying that the problem sorts itself is being hugely disrespectful to all the people who took action to bring the current state of affairs about.

Let me get this straight.
Because people had to fight for the current state of affairs I must support the continuation of this fight using quotas or otherwise I am being disrespectful to those people?

If so, then that is not a kind of respect I care for. Because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
The trend is there from what I know. So yes, the specific issue I referred to, the difficulty of women to advance in their careers relative to men because of their sex lacking acceptance, does seem to solve itself

The abortion craze in the US is an entirely different matter and I share your concern. Though let me add that the feminist argument for abortion is IMO very silly. Abortion is either wrong or right because it is either wrong or okay to kill embryos at certain stages of their development. And weather that is so is about the question why it is even wrong to kill humans and how that applies to embryos. I understand that the mother has own important concerns and that feminists are concerned about her freedom of choice, but it should be obvious on the face of it that however important those concerns are they are dwarfed to irrelevance by the question of life and death.
But to be clear - I am pro-abortion. But surely not for feminist reasons.

At last, I don't know where this quote of yours is from, but it seems to me that you are comparing apples and oranges.

 

[Tahuti]

Do you have an example society with a reasonable history of egalitarianism to show whether this is an effect of culture or biology?

Primarily biology. Culture just grows from it. Men are bigger than women. Women can get pregnant, men do not. Women do better in formal academic settings (i.e. earn higher grades, complete degrees earlier) while men are physically stronger.

One notable field where women and men are equal is intelligence and mental things in general. Overall, it shouldn't be taboo to emphasise differences between men and women where appropriate without being labelled a sexist pig.

 

[Farm Boy]

If the suffragettes and their methods were still in use then you would still be using your scare words to describe them. Its only because they're comfortably far back in the past and the modern consensus agrees what they did was good that you don't call them radical.

That they were. And American history whitewashes the fact that while they won the vote(hip hip hooray!) in their radical crusade they were also the driving force behind Prohibition(yaaaaay.) Wanting the progress without the Prohibition is not an unreasonable stance.

 

[Senethro]

Let me get this straight.
Because people had to fight for the current state of affairs I must support the continuation of this fight using quotas or otherwise I am being disrespectful to those people?

If so, then that is not a kind of respect I care for. Because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
The trend is there from what I know. So yes, the specific issue I referred to, the difficulty of women to advance in their careers relative to men because of their sex lacking acceptance, does seem to solve itself

The abortion craze in the US is an entirely different matter and I share your concern. Though let me add that the feminist argument for abortion is IMO very silly. Abortion is either wrong or right because it is either wrong or okay to kill embryos at certain stages of their development. And weather that is so is about the question why it is even wrong to kill humans and how that applies to embryos. I understand that the mother has own important concerns and that feminists are concerned about her freedom of choice, but it should be obvious on the face of it that however important those concerns are they are dwarfed to irrelevance by the question of life and death.
But to be clear - I am pro-abortion. But surely not for feminist reasons.

At last, I don't know where this quote of yours is from, but it seems to me that you are comparing apples and oranges.

Ok, I was over-generalizing there. The point I was leading up to ask who gets to decide when enough feminism has been done that we don't have to actively do more because its unnecessary/inconvenient, or that progress just happens without effort. I don't really know enough about the specific issue of women in workplaces except to say that the legislatures/boardrooms of the developed world look hella fulla dudes so I'm always leery of the "do nothing" position.

 

[metatron]

That they were. And American history whitewashes the fact that while they won the vote(hip hip hooray!) in their radical crusade they were also the driving force behind Prohibition(yaaaaay.) Wanting the progress without the Prohibition is not an unreasonable stance.

Dude, don't you know that they only wanted that because drunkard man-pigs were beating their wifes?
Yup, that's right. Episcopalians, Methodists and Swedish Lutherans beat their wifes. Half of German Lutherans did. Catholics did not beat their wifes. Hence the difference in approval for the prohibition.

If you don't know that, you're clearly a part of the problem.

[...]

Actually, now that i think about it "privilege" and "you're like a racist" are actually not the best arguments.
You should totally ramp it up to Holocaust comparisons.

Shoot. Pro lifers already own that.

 

[warpus]

Well, equal pay for equal work would be a good start.

Isn't the gender wage gap (in the U.S. at least) a myth?

That's just the first article I found on the subject, so excuse me if it's crappy or whatever. I learned about this a couple weeks ago, so there's got to be more sources than that. Not that forbes isn't a good source, but I haven't looked through the article in detail, so I have no idea what else is in there.

Not that we don't need feminism or anything, but just sayin'

 

[Farm Boy]

Methodists

Crap. I need to drink more to beat less. Why do I always forget this! <stupid stupid stupid>

You should totally ramp it up to Holocaust comparisons.

Shoot. Pro lifers already own that.

Heynow.

 

[Senethro]

Primarily biology. Culture just grows from it. Men are bigger than women. Women can get pregnant, men do not. Women do better in formal academic settings (i.e. earn higher grades, complete degrees earlier) while men are physically stronger.

One notable field where women and men are equal is intelligence and mental things in general. Overall, it shouldn't be taboo to emphasise differences between men and women where appropriate without being labelled a sexist pig.

Its difficult to make these statements from within the society. Its easy to observe that previously European and American cultures were hugely sexist/racist and many who were alive at the time claimed that these situations obviously arose largely from biology, whereas we can tell they largely arose from culture.

As our current societies have evolved from ones that were obviously sexist etc within living memory, how certain are you that your current position is sufficiently unbiased?

 

[metatron]

Heynow.

Why should you have it easier (with the whole whose-boat-i-share) than us liberals?

 

[Senethro]

b) subscribe to the notions of popular [CULTURE] "[LABEL]" who are curiously failing to succeed in these causes even though they have with "[BUZZWORD]" and "[FREE SPACE]" the best arguments one could have.

You could play ad libs with this statement for every decade at least back to the 1880s. Feminism has always been failing and too radical, and I hope it'll continue its strong track record into the future!

 

[Farm Boy]

Why should you have it easier (with the whole whose-boat-i-share) than us liberals?

In all fairness the National Socialists had some rhymes to their reasons in mass scale murders. I mean, genocide is a social(I think?) goal. If you want me to go full Tropic Thunder on the abortion comparisons, would I not be obliged to claim the reasoning for mass scale killing is convenience, profit, and libertine? Wouldn't that be me calling you a full-scale libertarian/capitalism-worshiping person rather than a Halocausting Nazi? Or something? This isn't my strong suit I don't think.

 

[caketastydelish]

For whatever this is worth, when I was an engish major the vast majority of my classmates were female. When I was getting a technical degree with Cisco/networking, the vast majority were male.

Not saying that's all there is to it, but if females are overwhelmingly choosing (on their own) less profitable fields, I fail to see how that correlates to "oppression".

 

[illram]

Isn't the gender wage gap (in the U.S. at least) a myth?

That's just the first article I found on the subject, so excuse me if it's crappy or whatever. I learned about this a couple weeks ago, so there's got to be more sources than that. Not that forbes isn't a good source, but I haven't looked through the article in detail, so I have no idea what else is in there.

Not that we don't need feminism or anything, but just sayin'

I see your Forbes article and raise you Bill Moyers. (Well, from his website anyway). Debunking the Myth of a Mythical Gender Pay Gap.

In 2001, Karen Kornbluh estimated that women’s earnings drop by 7.5 percent with a first child and 8 percent with a second. It also explains why the wage-gap starts out small when men and women first hit the labor market and then grows significantly when they start having families.

So our economy punishes women for the biological reality that they bear children. The AEI guys are apparently fine with that — and want you to believe that it somehow renders the pay gap a “myth” — but it’s important to understand that it doesn’t need to be this way. The US is one of only three countries — along with Liberia and Papua New Guinea — that doesn’t require employers to offer maternity (or paternity) leave. When American women have a baby, their jobs often aren’t waiting for them to return; in most other developed countries, they are. This is a big reason why only four high-income countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have larger gender pay gaps than the US.

As for the idea that "well women just make poor career choices"

Among the BLS’s thirteen industry categories, women make less than men in every single one. What this means is that even in “women’s fields,” men are going to rake in more. In fact, men have been entering traditionally female-dominated sectors during the recovery period, and as The New York Times noted, they’re meeting with great success—“men earn more than women even in female-dominated jobs.” Women can enter engineering all they want, but their pay still won’t catch up to men’s.

Economists generally attribute about 40% of the pay gap to discrimination – making about 60% explained by differences between workers or their jobs. However, even the “explained” differences between men and women might be more complicated. For example: If high school girls are discouraged from taking the math and science classes that lead to high-paying STEM jobs, shouldn’t we in some way count that as a lost equal earnings opportunity? As one commentator put it recently, “I don’t think that simply saying we have 9 cents of discrimination and then 14 cents of life choices is very satisfying.” In other words, no matter how you slice the data, pay discrimination is a real and persistent problem that continues to shortchange American women and their families.

 

[luiz]

The article you posted is not really questioning the fact that the gender pay gap is mostly not due to actual on-the-job discrimination, it's just saying that it's "unfair" regardless of the causes, which is much harder to sell.

So our economy punishes women for the biological reality that they bear children

Our economy punishes people for their biological realities all the time. As do all economies on Planet Earth, past, present and future. That's not the exclusive privilege of women who bear children.

The Laws of Physics also punish people for their biological reality.