Is there the right amount of gender equality in America? Can we reconcile the fact that men and women are anatomically different and the need for more equality?

[As it pertains to America]
It's getting there and I imagine that we will get there. As a man, I may be missing some less pronounced instances of women being treated unfairly. But on the whole, I would say they are pretty darn close and making improvements every day. As has been seen on another thread, there are still some issues like women in combat or perhaps women in command (such as say a General or President) -- the question being how their emotional responses to a situation might contrast to those of a man.

P.S. -- apologies to any person who might prefer "womyn" or whatever other new PC terms I'm becoming aware of...

As a self-described feminist, let me say that things are actually pretty good nowadays. Within the living memory of our oldest citizens, women were not even allowed to vote. Quite a bit of progress has been made since then. Compare the USA and other minimally repressive nations with other, more repressive nations (I name no names, to avoid getting into side issues, but you know who I mean) and the situation looks pretty rosy. Women are not often murdered on the street, with the full approval of society, for violating religious laws in the USA. There is always room for improvement; in the USA, I think it would be less in political situations than in daily life. (I don't care for the whole "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" attitude that seems to be catching on, with the idea that the sexes have vastly different psychologies. My motto: People Are From Earth.)

Although I am often "Politically Correct" in my choice of words (I don't say "man" when I mean "humanity") I think "womyn" is a little silly.

I see plenty of hypocracy and gender-enequality going on all the time... but I'd say, 80% of the time, men are the victims.
And I'm looking at this from a female perspective... "feminist" nowadays tends to mean women who hate men and/or want more rights than men to "even things out." There are a huge amount of double standards, and groups like NOW aren't at all concerned with human rights. (Read The New Thought Police by feminist lesbian and former NOW leader, Tammy Bruce)
There is an incredible desire to attack men and to create 1000s of double standards. Just one example, no guy would dare question me when I mention that I watch Queer As Folk (I might get a few random "Ewww"s) but if any guy mentions he enjoys movies (porn or not) about lesbians, he's he attacked and accused of "ocjectiviting womankind and lesbians for their own perverse pleasure." WHOA! Sudden personal attacks. Basically, it's fine for me or other women to watch fairly sexual shows about gay men but the opposite it not true. That's just one *little* example.
Another one would be sexist jokes. How many "How many men does it take to screw in a lightbulb" jokes can women tell? They don't end. But if a guy steps up and says any sort off joke about a woman he's labeled a sexist pig.
Now, there are still sexist men, sure, but I think there's probablly more sexist women. Society has become generally more accepting of seixm towards men, becuase it's not even considered sexism. The same is true for racism against white people.
People often complaim that women make less money than men do... but if you look up statistics, that is very rarely true. The average working woman works 8 hours less a week than a man, so she makes less in her weekly wages. However, hourly wages are almost identical between men and women.

You've obviously never taken any women's studies classes. Just because you are a woman doesn't grant you a tremendous amount of insight. The position of women is fairly egalitarian when compared to the situation fifty years ago, but there is still a tremendous space for improvement.

Issues such as health-care, politics, IR, welfare and parenting are still heavily gendered and uneven. Toss race into the mix and the problems become even more exacerbated. Sure, reverse sexism has become the cultural flavour, but that sort of discrimination is largely superficial. There are REAL inequalities that have gone largely unheeded.

Ah... "Women's Studies Courses." The class I will never take and will specifically avoid.
Maybe I'll take a "Men's Study Course."
Both concepts are completely rediculus, especially when one or the other is the PC class to take.
Of course people aren't equal... We never will be, and I'll be damned if anybody is going to sit around and try to make that happen. Equality under the law and constitution does NOT mean equal results. If somebody wants to turn me down for a job and I'm better at it than the man he hires simply because he's a man, well, it's their.loss. It's not like women are having difficulty finding jobs in any field where men are easily getting positions.
Don't assume that if I "had the facts" I'd jump on your bandwagon and priase your holy opinions, becuase that simply isn't true.

I find your position really confusing. Are you saying that discrimination doesn't exist, or that it isn't important?

I'm wondering why you seem so offended by the idea of a Womens Studies academia. Are you opposed to African-American studies as well?

No, we're not quite there yet. But we're as close as government intervention can or should try to take us. The remainder of the way will have to come by societal evolution.

In some respects I am. Although originally well-intenioned, maybe even necessary, race or gender specific studies and programs are more divisive than unifying. As long as we continue to identify and celebrate our differences we will struggle to 'get along'.

A prime example is all the hullabaloo about 'cultural diversity' at colleges and universities. Have you ever visited some of the campuses that promote this? They are littered with fraternities, clubs, social groups, study groups etc that segregate the races and cultures. I don't see anything about that to be admired.

So what would you advocate, a slow abandonment of all cultural differences? Who gets to give up their culture in the sake of unity?

We poor, victimized men.

According to the United Nations' Yearbook of Labour Statistics, women in the US comprise 47% of the workforce. They are paid 77% of the wages which men are paid for exactly the same jobs (working exactly the same hours) in the non-agricultural labor market.

In terms of managerial and administrative roles, women make up 31% of the workforce (according to the Women's Bureau of the US Department of Labor) and earn 65.6% of the salary which men in identical positions earn.

And, again according to the UN Yearbook, "women remain at the lower end of a segregated labour market and continue to be concentrated in a few occupations, to hold positions of little or no authority" and "to experience more unemployment than men and for a longer period of time than men".

I guess it all depends on how one defines "almost identical".

One area in which we don't discriminate, I suppose, is in terms of maternity benefits. In France, Germany, Spain, Singapore, and Mexico, women are paid 100% of their wages during maternity leave. In the UK, it's 90%; in Italy, 80%; Sweden, 75%; Japan, 65%; and, in Canada, 55%. In the good ole US of A, they're paid exactly what a man is paid for maternity leave: bupkis.

Similarly "almost identical" is the representation of women in our government. According to the Center for American Women and Politics, women hold 13.6%, of the 535 seats in the 108th US Congress and 22.3% of the total seats in the state legislatures.

You've come a long way, baby - as the Virginia Slims ads used to say.

Somebody is going to have to explain to me how women should get 100% of wages and benefits for maternity leave while I, as a man may have to pull her weight both during pregnancy and during leave.

This is purely hypothetical, I don't currently have this dilemma in my job, but I gotta ask........

In Italy, the employer is required to pay maternity leave for up to 6 months! Here, maternity leave lasts only 6 weeks. In addition, a business is required to rehire the woman for the same position for a time period of up to 2 years, should she decide to return to work. While this sounds like a great deal for the woman, the result is exactly what you would expect. Businesses are crippled by the labor law, and most are hesitant to hire a woman of childbearing age. I don't think that's discrimination, it just makes sense.

Nice stats, Wertz but the data does not take into account seniority. The data is skewed massively.

I used to be a mid manager in a technical department and was forced by regulations to hire an equitable mix of genders. Much to my surprise, in this technical field, women commanded 15% GREATER salary on the local market when compared to like-experienced men. Wow, what was I to do on a FIXED budget? Hire the LEAST experienced females to satisfy upper management and the "rules" while keeping my expenses fixed.

What did this do to productivity? Well, I spent (or the company spent) a pretty penny getting these women up to the minimum standard. Flash forward 3 years. With this experience under their belts (girdels), I now couldn't afford to keep these women and they found better paying jobs, I was forced to hire new ones and go through the same process.

Now that is industry. Its twice as bad in academia, where these stats are fabricated. Female professors are ALWAYS paid more than equivalent males. So much for equality.

That one is going to need a citation.

Maternity leave is a joke.
If you're not working, you can expect to not get paid! Now, of course, it's FANTASTIC if a company wants to offer maternity leave, but in no way is it the government's job to make companies pay people who aren't working. It's insanity to force somebody who's attempting to pay working a salary and get work actually done to pay somebody who is doing no actual work. Now, if they either A) Have it listed in job benefits and discuss it before a woman is hired, or Have the money free to pay her with and still pay for a replacement worker, that's GREAT.
.But.it's.not.a.government.responsibility.unless.it's.a.government.position.

Women are not entirely socially accepted by ALL men, but what you're asking for is to FORCE acceptace by creating a new evil to replace the old one. It's happening in Africa - after all the racism against black people, it also exists against white people who are stoned in certain countries just for being white. There are now two very prominent types of racism there, rather than just one problem, there are now two. It doesn't solve anything.
Your skin colour has nothing to do with who you are as an individual. It's you who wants "unity" of people with similar cultures, rather than seeing people as individuals. You can have as much "unity" as you want, but don't force it on anybody.
I saw an anti-smoking ad (Ads which I, as a non-smoker, hate almost as much as being in a room with smokers) that stated something like "45,000 African Americans die each year from smoking."
I wanted to scream! WHY must they give the statistics of how many "black" people this has affected? Why not just PEOPLE? Why does it matter what colour the skin of these people was? What's next, "1,000 Irish-Americas with dolphin tattoos on their wrists die of smoking each year." What are they hoping to acomplish?
I am against African-American studies... they're rediculus. Let's study the acomplishments of human beings and individuals, not "let's see what the people with dark skin have done" classes. Sure, people have a right to run and take them, but I've got a right to point out how entirely unsound and stupid they are.

History classes would be very complicated indeed if the idea of culture was completely abandoned.

You're ignoring my question then. Who is to decide what "humanity" is? The majority of the planet does NOT speak english; should we abandon it as a language? Different languages are certainly divisive.

I have one question for you though. I hope you'll answer it. How can you be on the side of individual freedoms and at the same time preach a sort of fanatical cultural uniformity.

Different people have different histories. Should we simply abandon all divisions? The amount of history out there is so vast that if you were to dissolve disciplines into one giant body of knowledge you'd probably have to study history for your entire life to gain a high-school level education on such a broad field. Or are "American" studies relevant? That's certainly divisive.

I can see where you're coming from. I really can. Inexperience. Yes, in theory reverse racism is a horrible thing. In practice it is a horrible thing. But how can you compare people who were brutalized and slaughtered for hundreds of years acting out their collective rage to sexism in the workforce? That is a simply awful comparison.



I sincerely hope you're never injured on the job.



I sincerely hope that you realize that maternity leave does serve a viable economic purpose, as well as being a socially responsible piece of legislation. Or do you plan on simply staying at home and marrying a well-to-do husband?

This is from the Parliament of Australia.



The fact is that women are at a biological "disadvantage" when it comes to childbirth in that they are unable to work in the period immediately surrounding the birth. It is also a fact that some women NEED to work to support a family. Are you suggesting that those kids are just S.O.L.? You say it's not a government responsibility? The government is well within it's perview under Article One Section Eight:



I'd say that ensuring a viable workforce and making sure that families can afford to have children falls under general welfare wouldn't you?



Stick to english then. Are you casually dismissing the historical role that black people have played in the formation of America? African American studies exist for a specific reason, as do Women's Studies, etc. THey exist because the particular fraction of society they explore are NOT represented in mainstream academia. So, are you advocating that we stop studying an entire segment of history, or that it should all just be lumped together? If so I'd love to hear how you would viably merge 300 years of academic discourse on the "White" history of America with the 50 odd years of predominant African-American Studies so that nothing is left out. How hard could that be?



See, I don't knock something until I've tried it. Have you taken an African-American studies class? If not, then how are you qualified to asess it? Do you know what they teach, or why they exist?



Umm, maybe the ads were targetting BLACK people?! Would you run a tampon commercial featuring a bunch of men? Probably not. Ads are targetted towards specific people for specific reasons. In this case it was most likely because there was a lack of awareness in the black community or there was a higher rate of smoking.

This is NOT a debate regarding race, it is regarding gender equality. Stick to that question ONLY.

Good thing I mentioned maternity benefits, eh? It enabled most of you to ignore the other statistics entirely.



Thanks, at least, for responding to the main point of my post. However, the data most certainly takes seniority into account. Gender parity in the workplace has been an issue for more than thirty years. That a sizeable majority of the more senior positions in American corporations are still occupied by men simply indicates how slow industry has been to respond to equal employment opportunities. It is the hiring, promotion, advancement, and pay scales of industry, Minute Man, which are massively skewed. The statistics simply reflect the reality.


Nice anecdote. It's a pity your company was unwilling or unable to promote these qualified women within the company - and unwilling or unable to pay them to the market standard (which, it seems, they were very readily able to find with your competitors). Were you willing to offer them opportunities for advancement or to pay them what they were worth, you might've been able to keep more of them. Then again, your poor company might've ended up with a few women who did have a bit of seniority - and I'm sure that the fellow managers of yours who would appreciate your girdle jokes would be none too pleased by that prospect.

I believe, btw, that a greater percentage of men in corporate America now wear girdles than women (I couldn't find the article where I read this, so dismiss it out of hand if you will ) - but I appreciate your taking the opportunity to post a gratuitous sexist swipe at the millions of capable women who are helping to keep this country afloat. It speaks volumes about your own bias - or, excuse me, prejudice.

Do you have any skewed stats of your own, btw, to indicate that your experience is in any way typical of "industry"?


Like UJ, I would appreciate some statistics - skewed or otherwise - to back this up. I could just as easily post: "Male professors, on average, are paid 843 times as much as their female equivalents." Without anything to back up my claim either, Minute Man, we just become a couple of fantasists arguing pointlessly in a void. Or were you just using your "statistic" as an excuse to throw your unfounded "fabricated" reference into the posting? I presume that you're intimating that these wealthy female professors are sitting around deliberately skewing statistical reports for the Department of Labor in order to - what? - inflate the starting wages of your companies underpaid women??

Whoever said that summed up the current situation re: gender equality very well. Oh, wait, that was me!

No, I have not taken a Women's studies or African American studies class.
However, I would glady take a class on The Civil Rights Movement, or on the Gender Equality Movement. In classes like those, they would study the entire historical time period - including white people and men who helped those causes respectively.
I'm for individuality, and I believe that all this "cultural diversity" is only a way to attempt to have all women grouped together, all men grouped together, all black people grouped together, all Asians grouped together, etc. That's not indivuality. Of course, again, people have a right to make these little groups and these little sterotypes, but I don't support them.
Oh yeah, and nope, I don't plan on getting married and staying hope. That was a cute little assuption, but I'm actually moving to NYC and going to college there. I plan on WORKING.
Meh.
Izdaari, I agree with you that socially there is still sexism against women, but also that it isn't the government's job to fix that. There will always be a few sexist men. But I wouldn't say that's a huge huge issue.

You took my quote horribly out of context, but your response still doesn't adress it. I never assumed you planned on staying at home... My question is, what happens if five years from now you decide to have a child? What happens to your decision if you know that you have to decide between work and children?



This is why I asked if you had taken these classes. Your understanding of minority studies is inherently flawed. I'm in a women's studies class. Do we ONLY study women? No. Do we divide women and exclude men? No. The same can be said for African American studies. It isn't just a study of Black people by black people for black people. It's a study of the African-American experience. Walter Mondale would almost certainly be represented. The experience of African Americans where defined by white people would be studied as such. A women's study class looks at the experiences of women across the whole world. This study doesn't exist in a vacuum. Men are involved. The difference is that if we are for example to study the effect of culture in a Woman's study class we look specifically how it would effect women. Since we can presumably agree that women have a different place in culture I fail to see the problem here.

These courses are designed merely to focus on an area of study that is underrepresented by other fields. Of course I adressed this whole issue at large in my previous post; you just ignored those parts. Like I said in that message, if you can find a way to reconcile all courses of study so that they become completely inclusive without becoming cumbersome and broad I and the entire academic world will be glad to see it.



I'm sorry, but that doesn't make any sense at all. How are people calling themselves "Asians" or identifying themselves as "women" making stereotypes? And what does individuality have to do with it? Diversity and individuality are not two heads of the same beast.

Space Ghost, er, Joe, I have taken a Women's Studies class. It was um... interesting. I kept an open mind and learned a few things, though nothing I couldn't have learned equally well by reading on my own. Unfortunately that one, as every class like it I've ever heard of, was primilarly a Left Wing Perspective class, by which I mean a forum for leftist political indoctrination -- as much about pushing socialism as about feminism. I'm pretty much immune to that and just payed attention to the actual subject, and went along with the instructor's PoV enough to get a good grade, but I shudder at what was done to any "young minds full of mush" who signed up for it.

Btw, I do consider myself a feminist but of the ifeminist variety, as are many libertarians.

Hurray! I like Wendy McElroy too

Right on, Mrs. P! My two heroines: Wendy McElroy and Camille Paglia.

mrspigpen & Izdaari - would either of you care to elaborate why you admire these women so much and how they connect to this debate?

For McElroy, I admire her work in promoting a distinctly individualist variety of feminism, as distinguished from the more common variety which IMO is closely linked to socialism and left-wing politics in general. See the ifeminist site, which is pretty self-explanatory.

Paglia is a favorite of mine (not necessarily Mrs. P's, I have no idea how she feels about Paglia) because of her many insightful and humorous books on women's issues. She isn't exactly a libertarian feminist like McElroy, more of a libertarian-leaning liberal, but she is fiercely independent and not afraid to challenge feminist orthodoxy when called for.

How that relates to the debate? I just brought it up as an aside in replying to Ultimatejoe's comments on Women's Studies classes. I expected that'd be the end of it and we'd return to the main issue.