The Gender Pay Gap

Pawwed Rig

Doesn't mean anyone has to clean up after them. Just leave it until the issue comes to a head. Don't see any implication that the women are expected to do it unless it has been explicitly said

fits

OneOfThem wrote: »

You're with me on the general point in regards of slightly condescendingly posting a comedic video with a funny tag line that alludes to something in lieu of making a salient argument or directly addressing a previous point though, or no?

I am putting forward an argument that unconscious bias (which we pretty much all have to some degree) is a factor in the gender pay gap. If you think thats not directly addressing the argument, well thats your own shortcoming.

If you want to take a test of your own bias, try this here.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

Re the cleaning thing I dont really want to expand any further on it. But how people behave when noone is watching says a lot about them. That is all.

boobar

Stheno wrote: »

Ah thank you oh wise one I read the OP and immediately thought of that study.

As a woman working in IT, at a fairly senior level, I have to say I've never encountered a gender pay gap, I have faced sexism in the industry, but have never to my knowledge earned less than my male colleagues. I know at the moment I earn the same or more than them for reasons that will remain undisclosed.

However, I have a male colleague. He has three kids under five and due to family pressure is not free to travel due to his family obligations. He's currently stuck in a role he hates, at a salary level less than mine as he is not as free as I am.

The study above went into more detail, and found that as women got older they earned less. This is easily attributed to maternity leave, as women take time out due to having children. I work in IT, taking a year out would be fairly massive, doing that a few times would be a catastrophe.

That imo is what's wrong here with this pay gap, I've never had children and have slowly and steadily advanced over the years, with no constraints in terms of home life commitments, not being able to travel etc, but that imo is very unusual for a woman, and what constrains a lot of women.



No -17% in that at a certain age they earn that much more.

I think you make a very good point here. I think roles are reversing today or perhaps merging is a more suitable term.

Like your male colleague, I too am working in a role that "works" in terms of my family. However, the next step up for me is virtually ruled out for the next 4 years until my kid finishes national school.

Luckily, I'm well paid, really enjoy my job and feel lucky that I can take a considerable block of time as leave in Summer to spend Time with my daughter.

My wife works as a nurse in a sector largely made up of women. Pay not great for what she has to do, don't even ask for time off at Xmas, Summer she us lucky to get 2 weeks spread out over 2 months. She can't do school runs, collections or take a day if the child is sick. So not only suffer on the pay front, she also suffers on the time front too.

OneOfThem

fits wrote: »

I am putting forward an argument that unconscious bias (which we pretty much all have to some degree) is a factor in the gender pay gap. If you think thats not directly addressing the argument, well thats your own shortcoming.

Well you're not really, you're just saying that it is. That's more a statement than an argument.

lexmac

The whole thing is a myth peddled to feed the victim-complex of feminists. Best to ignore it and knuckle down to your own job. Men shouldn't distract themselves with worries as to feminists are coping with the travails of public life...all it does is advocate more misandry

NachoBusiness

fits wrote: »

Im just going to leave this here.

Yup, that's what some people would have us believe it is generally like for women in the workplace.

Thankfully though, it's not.

ShowMeTheCash

fits wrote: »

I am putting forward an argument that unconscious bias (which we pretty much all have to some degree) is a factor in the gender pay gap. If you think thats not directly addressing the argument, well thats your own shortcoming.

I think the word you are looking for is subconscious bias, I am not sure how much bias one can hold when asleep!

I am sure there are victims of sexism in the work place, I think it can happen to anyone.

I think over the last 10 years a lot has changed especially in the western world and the whole gender pay gap is peddled not by people who want equality but by people who are looking for superiority or are looking for reparations for the past.

I think a lot of these feminist causes today are being poisoned by this #wehatemen type ethos void of anything sensible. It's not to say some of it can be sensible but watching debates on various news channels it really comes down to the same stuff that is based very much in an angry bitter place.

When asked what about equal rights when it comes to a fathers right to see his children you are met with "Men are violent and most divorces come from abusive relationships"....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RllnCmROPL0

I think what tends to happen today is people play the victim.
"I didn't get that promotion because....."
Then they fill in the reason they want to believe.. Feminist will try and convince you it's because you are a woman.

Maybe you just where not good enough.
Maybe people don't like you because you are not a likable person.
Maybe you are difficult person to work with, maybe no one takes you seriously because you do not pay attention and lack a level of intelligence equal to that of your peers.....

None of the above has anything to do with gender just something that varies from person to person.

orubiru

fits wrote: »

I am putting forward an argument that unconscious bias (which we pretty much all have to some degree) is a factor in the gender pay gap. If you think thats not directly addressing the argument, well thats your own shortcoming.

If you want to take a test of your own bias, try this here.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

Re the cleaning thing I dont really want to expand any further on it. But how people behave when noone is watching says a lot about them. That is all.

The problem with the "gender pay gap" is that to pin it on an inherent bias against women you need to come up with some kind of proof. In Ireland, for example, is there an unspoken agreement amongst corporations that men should be paid a particular rate and women should be paid a different, lesser, rate?

Has this ever been exposed? Have the shareholders of a major company been caught in the act of saying that "our male employees must be paid more than out female employees"? Did this go unaddressed by the courts?

I am sure that it's illegal for companies to discriminate based on gender? So that's why "unconscious bias" seems far too convenient. You can't prove that there is a conscious bias so it must just be that pesky invisible bias? Come on now.

So, I tried out the test. What is your honest opinion on it?

I found that it was somewhat predictable and easy to pick answers that "prove" I have no bias. I guess what I am saying is that bias is not really unconscious in this kind of situation because if I already understand that I feel differently about men than I do about woman then I already have an inherent bias. I mean the simple fact that I am attracted to women and not men is already a strike against me in terms of bias. I'd rather date someone who is planning to live in Ireland long term. That's another bias right there. I find that athletic ladies are more attractive than overweight ladies. That's yet another example of my bias.

Of course, you admit yourself that we all have bias to some degree. So I think you are almost there with realising that "unconscious bias" as a reason for why the gender pay gap exists is nonsensical. When it comes to paying men more than women, that kind of bias could only really be conscious. The person deciding how much employees should be paid would certainly be aware that they were always giving the men more than the women.

I would like to counter your post by putting forward an argument that, in life, people are mostly looking after themselves and the people close to them. Rather than having a bias against others, most people are biased in favour of themselves and their close relatives and friends.

Given that people would prefer to advance themselves and that we'd rather see ourselves snap up opportunities than let someone else take what could be ours.

In the workplace this easily makes sense. I want ME to be the person who gets paid the most. I want ME to be the person who gets the most respect and recognition.

So, I believe that I should push my employer to pay me as much as I can possibly get. If my female colleague does not push as hard as me for that then who has the bias? Not her obviously. Consider that no employer in the land wants to pay more in wages than they need to and that none of them have a special "mens rate" that the pay to only male employees. So the employer also has no bias in terms of gender (they may prefer me as an individual though). The bias clearly lies with me and my bias is the fact that I think that I deserve more.

You seem to be imagining a world where instead of employing the cheapest possible workforce (that's women, according to you) companies are happy to pay extra to have a man do the exact same job? They are doing this because they have an "unconscious bias" against women? No way. That would be an entirely conscious and deliberate bias. "Mr Director, we could cut our expenditure on employee salaries by 25% if we had an all female workforce but I'd advise that, instead, we employ more men because woman are just the worst." Right?

No. Most workers are just looking out for themselves. They want the best salary for themselves. Actually, some of those people want the best salary for themselves so that they can provide for their wives or daughters. the only bias is "I think I am a great worker, better than the rest, and I deserve more money".

Is there room to consider the possibility that there is a trend for men to EARN more than women due to some trait that differentiates between the genders and that the gender pay gap (I do not dispute that it exists) is a consequence of those different traits?

orubiru

fits wrote: »

Anyone who thinks they dont have some level of unconscious bias going on is lying to themselves in my opinion.

If a result of unconscious bias is that women are paid less than man then a proposed solution could be to pay them both equally across all sections of society. OK. Done.

Now, this leaves us in a situation where everyone is being paid the same amount for the same work. Good job everybody.

However, it's only a matter of time before some Worker X thinks "you know, I'd like to just get a little bit more for me". Maybe it starts with working an extra 30 minutes here. Maybe that becomes being away from home for a few weeks to do work for The Company. The Company notices this and so a bias forms in favour of that employee. They pay him a little bit more when it's time to negotiate salaries. Or maybe he approaches Another Company looking for a little bit more and they acknowledge his extraordinary efforts. It's bias. Uh oh. Now we have bias. Bias in favour of Worker X.

Other employees see this and they start trying to get noticed too. They want that little bit extra. That recognition. They are working for it. Negotiating for it. Striking for it. Doing everything they can to make The Company agree "Yes! Worker X we like you the best! We will give you more!"

Now, imagine that there is a sub group of workers who maybe have to take some time away from The Company because they CHOOSE to start The Family. They need 6 months off here, they absolutely must leave at 4.30pm here, they can't come in on this weekend here. They are great workers for The Company but they are not doing the extra that convinces The Company to give them that extra bit of pay. This sub group has chosen to value The Family over The Company. So they don't really earn the bias of The Company, right?

So, no matter what we do, unconscious bias will appear and ruin our utopian society?

The only solution possible is that every worker gets a Standard Wage. No variations. If you drop out for 6 months and come back in it's OK because nobody can earn a pay raise while you're gone. If a worker does 2 hours extra per week and spends weekends away on business trips then that's OK because they won't be paid more than the Standard Wage. This would need to be enforced by the government to stop companies from rewarding employees who never miss a day or who "go the extra mile" etc.

Does this seem agreeable to you?

The alternative, I think, is to realise that there is an area of life where companies paying people what they have earned and people taking time away from work to raise children intersect. In this area, if we have women taking time away from the work to have kids and men staying in work to try and earn money (for their kids?) then the appearance of a gender pay gap is inevitable. Unconscious Bias is inevitable?

Knex*

NachoBusiness wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bu4CRiw9mg

Perhaps not really fair when you consider how eloquent Milo can sound, but he absolutely destroyed their arguments I felt.

Sleepy

fits wrote: »

I am putting forward an argument that unconscious bias (which we pretty much all have to some degree) is a factor in the gender pay gap. If you think thats not directly addressing the argument, well thats your own shortcoming.

If you want to take a test of your own bias, try this here.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

I tried the Gender - Science IAT one and tbh, am amazed that an institution of Harvard's standing would allow such nonsense on their website, never mind paid the muppets who designed it.

The test seeks to prove bias, not to measure it, establishing links between men and science (both being on the right hand side) and then switching things around and claiming that mistakes made due to one's learned response to both of those being on the same side means they have a "bias" :rolleyes: It's exactly the kind of "scientific" research one would expect from liberal arts gender studies students tbh.

At a broader level is it "bias" to extrapolate generalisations from reality? I'm going back about 15 years but when I was in college, the engineering undergraduates would have been 90-95% male. General Science would have had a more even gender split with Biology having a majority of female students and physics a majority of males. Medicine was fairly heavily female dominated but tends not to be considered a STEM subject area.

So is it "bias" to assume an "engineer" is male? I'd argue not. It's an extrapolation of the known facts that you're about 90-95% likely to be correct in your assumption (a fairly reasonable margin of error). It's only bias IMO if you assume that a female engineer won't be as competent as her male counterpart (or if you assume that she'll be better).

ShowMeTheCash

Sleepy wrote: »

I tried the Gender - Science IAT one and tbh, am amazed that an institution of Harvard's standing would allow such nonsense on their website, never mind paid the muppets who designed it.

The test seeks to prove bias, not to measure it, establishing links between men and science (both being on the right hand side) and then switching things around and claiming that mistakes made due to one's learned response to both of those being on the same side means they have a "bias" :rolleyes: It's exactly the kind of "scientific" research one would expect from liberal arts gender studies students tbh.

At a broader level is it "bias" to extrapolate generalisations from reality? I'm going back about 15 years but when I was in college, the engineering undergraduates would have been 90-95% male. General Science would have had a more even gender split with Biology having a majority of female students and physics a majority of males. Medicine was fairly heavily female dominated but tends not to be considered a STEM subject area.

So is it "bias" to assume an "engineer" is male? I'd argue not. It's an extrapolation of the known facts that you're about 90-95% likely to be correct in your assumption (a fairly reasonable margin of error). It's only bias IMO if you assume that a female engineer won't be as competent as her male counterpart (or if you assume that she'll be better).

Exactly but when you now consider positive discrimination.
An organisation which is forced to complete for female staff in a sector predominately occupied with men, we will find the opposite happen.

A female engineer with the same credentials as a male engineer becomes more likely to land an engineering job solely on the fact that she is female.

But this type of sexism is flat out refused by feminist.

Sleepy

I've yet to see "positive" discrimination occur in the real world tbh. I've seen women who've risen to board level bring others up the ladder with them where gender has definitely been a factor in their promotion but I've never actually seen a quota outside of the feminist lobby industry's "white papers". I wouldn't be surprised to hear it's happening in Scandinavia though.

ShowMeTheCash

Sleepy wrote: »

I've yet to see "positive" discrimination occur in the real world tbh. I've seen women who've risen to board level bring others up the ladder with them where gender has definitely been a factor in their promotion but I've never actually seen a quota outside of the feminist industry.

I was not really aware of this myself but I do understand perhaps the reasons for it.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/13/us-science-gender-idUSKBN0N421420150413

Another thing I read was this idea that we need to get more women in the board room, to me this does not seem right, I would argue we need to get the right people in the board rooms male or female should not matter.
The minute are fixate on a gender then automatically it becomes biased.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/women-on-boards-numbers-almost-doubled-in-last-4-years

Is someone being promoted because they are the best candidate for the job? Or are they being promoted in order to satisfy some PR equality statistic?

HardenendMan

There will always be a gap. The majority of women can't really keep a career progressing once they have more than one child.

My personal experience; there is a female manager in my dept. One out of 4 total (junior managers). She has had two children. Both times she took months off work.

In that time, things moved so quickly (it's a technical dept). The other managers know so much more detail having gone through the nuts and bolts if you like. She can never claw back that difference, so when a more senior job comes up, the others have so much more to give.

Plus, if the dept head was faced with losing said women, he would think meh sure we know how to cover her work. There are 2 male managers that would make the boss $hit a brick if they were to say they are leaving. Not that they are irreplaceable. But why value the female as much?

Of course the same would happen to males that were out long term say due to illness. But on average it doesn't happen a fraction of females being out for long periods.

This is why a huge percentage of top management are male. The only females in senior management in my company are childless!!

Sleepy

At an individual level it's actually a very simple problem to solve for women: if you want to have both a career and children, have those children with a man who wants to the primary care-giver (or adopt them with a woman who wants that role).

Pawwed Rig

Not entirely true until there is shared parental leave.

Sleepy

It's a factor, sure, but honestly, I think it's the necessity to leave at 5:30, absence for childhood illnesses, inability to travel or do unexpected overtime etc. that harms a primary carer's career prospects more than the period of maternity leave.

The women who complain loudest / most bitterly about gender pay gaps seem to be those who believed the claims of 80's feminism that they could "have it all". It's a simple enough reality that if you can't dedicate yourself to a task as much as another person, their achievements will exceed yours unless you happen to be exceptionally talented. Unfortunately, far too many people seem to arrogantly believe that they fall into that exceptional category.

NachoBusiness

Jennifer Lawrence says:

"..I found out how less I was being paid than the lucky people with dicks.."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzT-PpJgFf0

I wonder if Elizabeth Banks is getting anywhere near to how much Jennifer is being paid for Hunger Games - Mockingjay Part II. Something tells me it won't be the same as what Jennifer is getting and so why should she have got the same payment for American Hustle as Christian Bale, which appears to be the suggestion.

Sleepy

I'd have two questions for Jennifer Lawrence on that issue:

1. Has she fired her agent?
If she believes she was underpaid for a movie, surely her professional negotiator is to blame, not the studio they were negotiating against.

2. Assuming she was referring to American Hustle, does she expect the same rate of pay as Christian Bale when he was the star of the picture and she was the fifth on the bill? If so, did Donald Sutherland get the same level of pay as her for his performance in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 where she was the star and he was fifth on the bill?

I don't know the answer to either of those questions but salaries in the movie industry are based on two things: your ability to draw an audience to theatres and your ability to negotiate what you consider to be a fair rate of pay for that. Quite famously, Andie MacDowell negotiated percentage points instead of taking a salary on Four Weddings and a Funeral. This netted her a couple of million, compared with Hugh Grant's salary of about $100k. And this was despite him being the lead, it launching his career and her performance in that movie still being regarded as one of the most derisible in living memory.

newport2

Sleepy wrote: »

At an individual level it's actually a very simple problem to solve for women: if you want to have both a career and children, have those children with a man who wants to the primary care-giver (or adopt them with a woman who wants that role).

I think this is part of the problem. Most of my female friends find ambition and the like an attractive trait. They not usually interested in how much a guy earns, but more in how career driven he is, with someone who is focused and knows where he wants to go being the optimal. So the people they find the most attractive tend to be the ones least likely to want to be stay at home Dads. If they were dating a guy and he said his ambition was to settle down, have kids and raise them while she went out to work to support them, he'd be dropped like a hot cake!

Sleepy

newport2 wrote: »

I think this is part of the problem. Most of my female friends find ambition and the like an attractive trait. They not usually interested in how much a guy earns, but more in how career driven he is, with someone who is focused and knows where he wants to go being the optimal. So the people they find the most attractive tend to be the ones least likely to want to be stay at home Dads. If they were dating a guy and he said his ambition was to settle down, have kids and raise them while she went out to work to support them, he'd be dropped like a hot cake!

Well, to be blunt, that's their tough **** then. You can't have everything you want in life.

Though, to be fair, it's possibly their mothers' fault for listening to the "have it all" feminism of the 70's/80's and failing to teach their children to have realistic expectations.

orubiru

NachoBusiness wrote: »

Jennifer Lawrence says:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzT-PpJgFf0

I wonder if Elizabeth Banks is getting anywhere near to how much Jennifer is being paid for Hunger Games - Mockingjay Part II. Something tells me it won't be the same as what Jennifer is getting and so why should she have got the same payment for American Hustle as Christian Bale, which appears to be the suggestion.

It doesn't really matter what movie she is talking about as Hunger Games is the only one recently where she is the lead character. Even in Silver Linings Playbook you have Bradley Cooper as the main guy. In those X -Men movies it's the dudes who are the main characters.

Of course, the conversation could (and maybe should?) be about the lack of female led movies but there you go.

The problem I have with this, and actually the problem I have with most "Feminist Theory", is that the goal posts will change in order to fit their world view. Was EVERY male actor in American Hustle paid more than Jennifer Lawrence? Was EVERY male actor in Silver Linings Playbook or X-Men paid more than Jennifer Lawrence?

If not then how can we reasonably argue that the sole factor in determining different pay grades is gender?

When she's earning more than most of the actors, male and female, appearing in movies with her then that's just fine. When possibly one or two male actors, in lead roles, are earning more than her, in a supporting role, then that's unacceptable? What? It seems like the usual double standard.

For this Feminist Theory to "work" what we actually have to do is create a theoretical ranking system that allows us to "rank" Jennifer Lawrence (and the character she is portraying) at the same level of acting skill, marketability, and importance to the storyline as Christian Bale (American Hustle) or Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook). Unfortunately such a ranking system is totally subjective and relies on arbitrary factors. "I think JL is better at acting than CB and BC because reasons so why isn't she earning more? Is it because she is female?"

This is like if they did a study that revealed Irish footballers get paid less than Portuguese footballers and so Shane Long is out in the media saying he was outraged when he found out that Ronaldo earns more than him simply by virtue of having a Portuguese passport.

Is she suggesting that male actors should be paid less? If not then isn't it rather stereotypical that she is using an appeal to emotion and/or outrage to get more for herself?

Why isn't she simply taking her agent aside, in private, and saying "listen you need to start doing a better job"?

Sleepy

While it's true that, by and large women in Hollywood earn less from acting than men, maybe it's because they're, by and large, worth less.

It seems it's been a few years since anyone's done the numbers but if we look at the concept of bankable stars (i.e. those actors or actresses whose involvement is enough to ensure a movie's financial success) there were very few women who ever made the Top 10 lists:

Julia Roberts featured in all three of the Hollywood Reporter lists (1999, 2002 and 2006) with Nicole Kidman featuring in 2006.

By 2009, when the Ulmer Scale was calculated, Reese Witherspoon was the only woman making the Top 10. Assuming these years weren't abberations for the decade and that positions 10 - 30 of those lists follow the gender trend of the Top 10), it tells us that only 10 to 20% of the top draws for movies during those years were women. Given that Hollywood is a fairly conservative studio system and has a finite output, those actors or actresses with bankable status are going to be the leads in most of that output. I'd be interested to see an updated version of that list, I'm guessing it'd feature Jennifer Anniston rather than Reese Witherspoon)

No doubt there's some who'd attribute that to sexism but according to the industry's own research women make up slightly more than half of the movie-going public and I can't find the article I read it in at the moment but I do recall reading somewhere that when a couple visit a movie theatre, it's far more likely for the woman to be the one who chooses the film (something I'm sure many of us would recognise!).

Of course whenever gender and movies gets mentioned, the Bechdel Test is sure to be mentioned to which I'd always have the same answer: if the lack of well-drawn female characters in film is a problem for you, go out and write, direct, produce and star in movies with well-drawn female characters. (I'd have the same answer to Liberal Arts students complaining about a lack of women in STEM). The barriers of entry in film-making have literally never been lower: Paranormal Activity was made for just $15,000 yet grossed over $193 million.

pwurple

Sleepy wrote: »

It may be possible if you're from a wealthy background or have an extremely high earning capacity or partner that affords you the luxury of having a "hobby career" or to delegate your parenting to a full-time nanny but I've never quite understood the latter myself: why have kids if you barely see them?

By the same token, why have a wife/husband if you barely see them? Why have friends, why bother with any relationship with siblings or parents if you are not joined at the hip all day and all night?

Where the glass ceiling hits my family, is that I don't have a damn choice in the matter. In our household, I am the primary earner. With our children, we would have loved the opportunity to swap the leave at some point. I 'worked' (took calls, emailed, did reports, etc) while not sending an invoice for my time while on maternity. Because legally, if I worked during that time for a minute, we would have lost the maternity leave entirely, and I'm not leaving a 2 month old without one parent being around.

So, I'm set back a year in terms of projects I worked on, because my husband couldn't take over. The only way a man can take that leave in Ireland is if I die.

pwurple

orubiru wrote: »

Why isn't she simply taking her agent aside, in private, and saying "listen you need to start doing a better job"?

I think that is what she is saying. She is saying she didn't negotiate enough.

ShowMeTheCash

pwurple wrote: »

By the same token, why have a wife/husband if you barely see them? Why have friends, why bother with any relationship with siblings or parents if you are not joined at the hip all day and all night?

Where the glass ceiling hits my family, is that I don't have a damn choice in the matter. In our household, I am the primary earner. With our children, we would have loved the opportunity to swap the leave at some point. I 'worked' (took calls, emailed, did reports, etc) while not sending an invoice for my time while on maternity. Because legally, if I worked during that time for a minute, we would have lost the maternity leave entirely, and I'm not leaving a 2 month old without one parent being around.

So, I'm set back a year in terms of projects I worked on, because my husband couldn't take over. The only way a man can take that leave in Ireland is if I die.

Why did you just not go back to work and have your husband take time off?
If you are the primary earner?

Sleepy

pwurple wrote: »

By the same token, why have a wife/husband if you barely see them? Why have friends, why bother with any relationship with siblings or parents if you are not joined at the hip all day and all night?

Surely as a parent you can recognise that it's a rather different relationship than any other? We had children because we wanted to raise them, why else would you do it?

As adults, our partners, parents and siblings don't go to bed at 8 o' clock, it's a lot easier to fit time to spend with them in during the evenings and adult relationships are far less demanding of time than that of a parent-child one. It's perfectly normal to speak a handful of times a week / month. You might be fairly accused of absentee parenting were you to reduce contact with young children to such a level...

Where the glass ceiling hits my family, is that I don't have a damn choice in the matter. In our household, I am the primary earner. With our children, we would have loved the opportunity to swap the leave at some point. I 'worked' (took calls, emailed, did reports, etc) while not sending an invoice for my time while on maternity. Because legally, if I worked during that time for a minute, we would have lost the maternity leave entirely, and I'm not leaving a 2 month old without one parent being around.

So, I'm set back a year in terms of projects I worked on, because my husband couldn't take over. The only way a man can take that leave in Ireland is if I die.

And that's wrong. That's where Feminism has failed: by only focusing on the rights of women, it's left them in a position where their partners don't have the right to swap responsibilities with them.

pwurple wrote: »

I think that is what she is saying. She is saying she didn't negotiate enough.

Well, why isn't she admitting her failure instead of blaming it on "sexism" then?

fits

Sleepy wrote: »

a
And that's wrong. That's where Feminism has failed: by only focusing on the rights of women, it's left them in a position where their partners don't have the right to swap responsibilities with them.


?

Hellooo. Nordic countries.! Paternity leave is direct result of strong feminist movement.

Sleepy

Sigh. Are we going to compare ourselves to oil-rich Nordic countries again? The lands where discrimination against men is considered a good thing? Where disagreeing with feminism is equated with racism?

I'd love to live in a country that could afford to be as socialist as the Nordic countries but, frankly, I don't think I'd be happy to live somewhere where my genitalia made me a second class citizen.