andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2006-03-10 12:06 am
andrewducker) wrote2006-03-10 12:06 am
Quick poll before bed
Taking the definition of feminism as:
The view, articulated in the 19th century, that women are inherently equal to men and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
and remembering that you don't have to select entries if you don't want to (and therefore don't need to choose "I am a woman and a feminist" if you're not a woman):
[Poll #688002]
The view, articulated in the 19th century, that women are inherently equal to men and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
and remembering that you don't have to select entries if you don't want to (and therefore don't need to choose "I am a woman and a feminist" if you're not a woman):
[Poll #688002]
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1. Women choose jobs that pay less. They're more likely to take up public sector work - nursing, teaching, care - and public sector always pays less. The article does say that, but it seems to think we should "fix" this by stopping job segregation - I don't think that all nurses secretly want to be engineers and are only nurses because of the power of Society, I think that men and women, being different, tend (and of course this is a tendency) to have interest in and aptitude for different types of job.
2. Women take time out to have babies, for childcare, for looking after people. This is *their choice*, and I don't think it's fair to expect someone who's worked full time for 10 years, part time for 5 and not at all for another 5 to be paid the same as someone who's worked constantly for 20 years. We can do a bit to fix this with paternity leave and stuff, but most of the time the mothers want to be at home.
3. As a rule - and there are always exceptions either way, as with everything - women just won't sublimate their life to their work the way some men do. They won't work 80-hour weeks, they won't take so much work home, they're less likely to thrive in competitive high-stress being-a-wanker environments like the stock market and financial jobs in general. A lot of high-paying jobs that mostly men do - IT and finance are the ones that come to mind - you won't be successful and get promotion unless you're willing to pull allnighters, weekenders, stay till 11 at night to close a deal/ debug a program, have a ten-minute lunch break at your desk, all that stuff. I wouldn't stay in a job that expected me to do all that, and I don't know many women who would.
So essentially, I'm not really querying their stats, but more their conclusions...
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I dont know, your description of these all nighters and 80 hour weeks sounds suspiciously like bringing up children, except less gruelling, more fun and much better paid.
well I wonder, for most people one of the partnership has to take care of the children, manage the household etc. This has historically devolved to women, what is still called "womens work". Its what allows the males to pull the all nighters, the eighty hour weeks and the massive pay packet.
bit of chicken and egg here i think. Why should nursing pay less than engineering, teaching less than stock-broking. Isn't it historically that we have always undervalued "womens work" - caring, nurturing, enabling professions? There is no innate reasons these jobs should attract less cash.
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It shouldn't, and I will rant at length about the undervaluing of these people, but there's just no way the public sector can afford the salaries the private sector does, and I don't want schools and hospitals privatised any more than they have been either.
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I don't have all the answers, and I'm happy to admit that. Nurses and teachers are underpaid, yes, but the only way to pay them the same as accountants or whatever would be to privatise the NHS and the education system and run it as profit-making ventures, which I think would be far worse for the country than the under-paying. It's not just a "women don't get paid enough, pay them more" issue - the world just doesn't work like that. Sorry.
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2. Women generally, still have babies *with* men. Isn't this the man's choice as well? Shouldn't the man be given the chance to spend time at home with the baby, and shouldn't there also be provisions in the workplace (for both men and women) for proper child care and baby care?
3. Do you have any actual proof for this statement? Proof enough to counter the statistics?
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And before you say people can "choose" not to have children - people can also choose not to have sex, choose never to have a partner or choose to cut their left leg off. Do you think this is really the main option you want to present to women as the alternative to systemic underpay and lack of equal opportunities?
"You can earn 40 % more over your lifetime and have a decent pension on etirement if you choose never to have a life partner." Go for it. Sell it to the public. Choice theory is the curse of white liberalism.
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I don't like stats because I don't know exactly what they mean a lot of the time. The Wife, though, looked at a chart of pay scales and so forth in the finance sector (in which she works), and the difference (still about 17%) was between women and men in the same jobs.
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