The illogical hypocrisy of 50/50 gender employment

[bhavv]

This is one ever gnawing flaw behind most of the feminist movement that I have never understood - the idea that x job role be populated with an equal number of male and female workers.

I have often challenged this hypocritical argument with my comment 'where are all the female sewer workers?', a job which is literally so filthy to do that no feminist would ever use it as their point of argument for gender equality in this line of work.

Recently I spotted this petition on change.org regarding gender equality in the house of commons:

https://www.change.org/p/david-came...U&utm_source=petition_update&utm_medium=email

Surprisingly it got very common with over 200k supporters. This automatically raised a contrasting point in my mind in relation to the company I'm currently working for - one of the induction videos was about gender equality and how the company is proud that over 65% of its workforce is female.

And therein lies the hypocrisy. If more than half of the workers in a particular job / company are male, this is always seen as unequal and feminists campaign, whine and rage to no end about such 'male dominated patriarchy blah blah etc' jobs. However if the gender percentages are flipped, and there are a significant higher proportion of female workers to male workers, this is celebrated and encouraged, while logically such a case in comparison should show that certain jobs / employers are biased towards men, and rather that 50% of the workforce in those sectors should be male.

So why is it that 'gender equality' is only ever used to further try and increase the number of females in certain jobs to any value over 50%, but lacks support for the idea of 50% of a workforce being male and trying to demonise any case where more than 50% of a workforce are male?

 

[Arwon]

I think if you really applied your mind and thought about it in good faith, you could answer these questions for yourself.

 

[bhavv]

My answer is because humans are dumb.

 

[Phrossack]

Because feminists are not actually interested in equality.

 

[useless]

A wild MRA appears!

 

[Evie]

You're confusing the method (mandating 50/50 distribution) with the aim (making traditionally male-oriented field equally accessible to women).

Forcing political parties (or companies) to hire and appoint quotas of women is a way of breaking down barriers that get between women and certain social roles. Barriers that can be strongly suspected to exist when women under-representation is both severe and endemic in a given field. As is definitely the case in politics for a wide variety of reasons.

 

[classical_hero]

What about occupations that are generally female dominate?

 

[Silurian]

Men should be able to become nuns.

 

[useless]

What about occupations that are generally female dominate?

Such as?

 

[Flying Pig]

Quotas work where the people doing selection for admission or promotion all come from one group, and are (consciously or not) biased in favour of people like them, or where people from a certain group find it difficult to find role models or mentors. If the problem is that few men want to become (say) primary-school teachers, quotas won't help, or at least will help only very inefficiently - the real problem is how the job is perceived.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

This is one ever gnawing flaw behind most of the feminist movement that I have never understood - the idea that x job role be populated with an equal number of male and female workers.

I have often challenged this hypocritical argument with my comment 'where are all the female sewer workers?', a job which is literally so filthy to do that no feminist would ever use it as their point of argument for gender equality in this line of work.

I asked the same thing in another thread and someone (apologies, can't remember who) answered that it was more important to get equality in roles like politics and business leaders etc because these are the roles that have the influence over society as a whole, or at least the specific business as a whole. Whereas getting more women into the lower end jobs affects nothing but that lower end. Which I actually thought was a pretty decent argument. My problem was that the argument didn't gel with the usually stated rationale that there is no reason why any gender disparity should exist in any role and it is therefore inherently a problem wherever it exists. It also doesn't address the female-dominated roles as you mention where there never seems to be any effort made to change that balance (with the possible exception of male (primary) school teachers which does seem to get mentioned occasionally, although even then it's usually only in terms of putting the blame on men for not choosing that field, rather than a problem with the field itself).

Anyway, as you can already see from the responses you've garnered so far, I wouldn't expect anyone pro- this viewpoint to actually give you any sort of proper answer, so good luck with that.

 

[useless]

We get it, you feel mras are persecuted etc

Moderator Action: Trolling.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Not particularly useful comment, but then given your name...

 

[useless]

Thanks for that insightful comment, which i've never heard before, is 100% original and isn't often repeated. totes orige bro

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Well what exactly was your own "insightful" comment meant to add to anything? Come on, I was directly answering a point in the OP, relating an answer to that very question that I was given in another thread. An answer which, as I stated, I found to definitely have some merit, but that I still have my own reservations about. It was an entirely appropriate and on-topic reply which actually addressed something the OP said. Your response? The usual snide one-liner which has nothing to do with anything I said. And you're going to have the temerity to criticise me for not adding anything to the discussion? Go away you silly person.

 

[warpus]

Quotas work where the people doing selection for admission or promotion all come from one group, and are (consciously or not) biased in favour of people like them, or where people from a certain group find it difficult to find role models or mentors. If the problem is that few men want to become (say) primary-school teachers, quotas won't help, or at least will help only very inefficiently - the real problem is how the job is perceived.

Yeah, I don't mind gender quotas for a political caucus or something. Men have dominated politics for a while, if we need to create an artificial lower barrier for women to get involved in politics temporarily while the scales even out, then so be it.

Similar arguments can make sense for other types of positions, but in the end if you really want to get more women into STEM type jobs and if you really want more men to become kindergarten teachers, you've got to remove the stigma associated with women becoming programmers or men becoming nannies, or whatever. And yes, there are definitely gender-based stigmas out there, and they are in part driven by gender roles.

I doubt we will ever end up having a 50/50 gender split for any given position. That's just not realistic. Men are going to prefer certain types of jobs and women are going ot prefer certain types of jobs. We can try to minimize this by saying goodbye to as many gender roles we have in society as possible, so that when a little girl is growing up, her classmates don't make fun of her for preferring engineering, and/or for her not to feel weird or different from her female friends. Kids pick on those who are different, so we should be striving for a future where a man who wants to become a ballet star is not made fun of by other "more manly" men. "More manly" and "more feminine" should not exist as concepts. They will for a while and so we will be stuck with some of these problems. There is no magic/silver bullet solution here, it's going to take a lot of work, and a lot of time.

The solution is definitely not to artificially impose 50/50 gender quotas on every single position. The solution is also definitely not to make sure that women on average make as much as men make on average. An engineer can make more money than a liberal arts graduate, and that's fine. The key is to get more women into those higher-paying positions, instead of somehow raising the wages of female-dominated jobs. That's never going to work and it's a bad idea in the first place.

 

[Akka]

Thanks for that insightful comment, which i've never heard before, is 100% original and isn't often repeated. totes orige bro

Considering your initial message was just completely pointless and the same repetitive crap you copy-paste constantly, you really should refrain from throwing rock in a glass house.

 

[useless]

I don't live in a glass house Akka, i live in a flat. I'm treating this topic with all the seriousness it deserves.

 

[Evie]

The solution is definitely not to artificially impose 50/50 gender quotas on every single position. The solution is also definitely not to make sure that women on average make as much as men make on average. An engineer can make more money than a liberal arts graduate, and that's fine. The key is to get more women into those higher-paying positions, instead of somehow raising the wages of female-dominated jobs. That's never going to work and it's a bad idea in the first place.

Mind, raising the wages of female-dominated job to equal the wages of male-dominated job with similar training, scarcity of labor, etc

That's gender pay equity in a nutshell - a traditionally female-dominated job should have about equal pay to a traditionally male-dominated equivalent (in terms of required training, skills, scarcity, etc).

 

[warpus]

Mind, raising the wages of female-dominated job to equal the wages of male-dominated job with similar training, scarcity of labor, etc

That's gender pay equity in a nutshell - a traditionally female-dominated job should have about equal pay to a traditionally male-dominated equivalent (in terms of required training, skills, scarcity, etc).

Sure, but you're forgetting one factor - the free market. If job A is equivalent to job B in terms of training, skills, and scarcity, it's still possible for the market to have less of a demand for position A than position B. So I'd include "supply/demand" in there as well.

I mean, an NBA player is always going to make more than a WNBA player, because there is a huge demand in the market for the NBA and a much smaller demand for the WNBA. So even though the positions are very similar in terms of training, skills, and perhaps scarcity, NBA players are always going to on average make more than WNBA players. That's just the market in action, and that's fine.