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Today, it’s the International Women day. So let’s discuss some women’s issues.

Women’s role in society have changed much over time, and her status relative to men has also been fluctuating. There are of course also vast differences between different culture. Because of this, I here chose to focus mainly on my own/your own culture, and personal experience.

A few questions to all of you, men or women:

Do you think women discriminated in your culture?

Do you have any personal experience of women being discriminated?

Do you have any experience of "reversed racism" regarding women?

Are there areas where men are discriminated in your culure?

Do you think women are discriminated in you culture?
Unfortunately, the answer is still yes to some extent. Notably in the work place, where some ‘old school’ management types still prefer to keep women out of their clubhouse, and many of the religious denominations do not allow them to participate fully.

Do you have any personal experience of women being discriminated?
Actually, yes. I’ve been in several work situations where women, even those of significant position, had to endure condescending comments. I’ve also had a superior warn me not to hire attractive women unless it was absolutely necessary, so as to avoid ‘distractions’ in the workplace.

Reverse racism?
I’m not sure I understand the term in this context. I have seen attractive women gain favorable treatment, but as rule is was in a petty, condescending manor that still only succeeded in further emphasizing how Neanderthal the man in question was.

Discrimination against men?
Rarely, but I suppose it happens.

by CE: Do you think women discriminated in your culture?

Last I heard, women in the US were still making about 80-something cents to every dollar a man made, for the same exact job. As far as I know that hasn't changed.

by Waverly: I’ve also had a superior warn me not to hire attractive women unless it was absolutely necessary, so as to avoid ‘distractions’ in the workplace.

Nice. So attractive women are discriminated against because males can't control themselves.

Do you think women discriminated in your culture?
Yes, in lot of cases - sadly

Do you have any personal experience of women being discriminated?
It's a tough question, but no women can become a mechanical engineer or cabling technician here.

Do you have any experience of "reversed racism" regarding women?
I'm not quite understand "reversed racism" you're reveering too, but to follow up Waverly's reply - I've seen a woman who's know nto be secret lover of a boss can quit and then being re-hire on a company for about 3 times. Talk about special connection ! *SIGH*

Are there areas where men are discriminated in your culture?
Never encounter one

Originally posted by Der-draigen
Nice. So attractive women are discriminated against because males can't control themselves. [/b]

I just hope you were clear it was something told me, and not a philosophy I shared. In fact the very next technician I hired was female and happened to be the most qualified, and by coincidence attractive, of the applicants.

Originally posted by Waverly
I just hope you were clear it was something told me, and not a philosophy I shared. In fact the very next technician I hired was female and happened to be the most qualified, and by coincidence attractive, of the applicants.

No, no, that was clear I just wrote my post that way because I'm sure that isn't the only place where such things happen (i.e. the supervisor being reluctant to hire women of a certain appearance); maybe it's more common than we think

I'd also like to add, that the US has never had a female president. Other nations have had female prime ministers etc., but the US, for all it claims to be such an advanced society, is woefully behind in this regard.

Then again -- if Hillary Rodham Clinton were to become our first candidate, I'd have to eat these words

I'll clarify the "reversed racism" thing, sorry for being vague, what I meant was cases where women get advantages over men because women are the "discriminated gender". My example below illustrates this.

Do you think women discriminated in your culture?
According to demographic and socioeconomic statistics, Sweden is the most gender equal country in the world. Still, women still don't get equal pay for equal work in all cases, and the traditional "women's jobs" have lower salaries than the traditional "male job's" despite equal need at the job market, and equal lenght of education. The differences are smaller than in most other countries, but they are there.

Do you have any personal experience of women being discriminated?
Actually not, but I heard that my university had carried out a study that showed that female professors only got the position if they were about 30% more merited (measured in publications, projects, educating experience etc) than male appliants. A special equality program was then adopted, see below.

Do you have any experience of "reversed racism" regarding women?
The equality program included a quota for how many men and women should have what positions. For instance, my department is supposed to have a female head the next 2-year period. Problem is, there is only one female prof (the professor title in Sweden is much more strictly regulated than in the US, we and Germany has the same system I think) and she was head of dept last period, and you cannot have the same head for 2 periods in a row. Despite of this, she had to be head again, (she didn't even want to, she had planned to retire soon).

Another example is the special professorships for women that was invented in the 1990's by the then education minister. These professorships are for women only and were meant to increase the share of women at high academic positions. So now many universities have this kind of "2nd rate" professorships that everybody knows are artificially created and not mainly based on merit, but on gender. This is so typical for Swedish politics, you solve the problem not by going to the root of it and look at causes, instead you make a superficial solution that looks good in the statistic yearbook. Of course all women with "real" scientific merits compete for the "real" professorships like the men do.

Are there areas where men are discriminated in your culure?
Yes, child custody after a divorce is the prime example here. If the parents are equal in all aspects, the women will usually get custody in a conflict. It's also very difficult for fathers to get sole custody if the women is an unsuitable parent, much more difficult than the reversed.

posted by Kid

It's a tough question, but no women can become a mechanical engineer or cabling technician here.

Why is that? It's quite interesting how different culture define what is "male" and "female" professions. In Western Europe, engineer and physician has long been viewed as typically male professions, whereas in the former Soviet union, both were typically female profession, especially physician. Physican has only recently become a gender equally distributed profession in Sweden.

Do you think women discriminated in your culture?

Show me a national culture where that isn't the case.

Do you have any personal experience of women being discriminated?

Hell, yes. The very first instructor I ever had in a college course to ever make Shakespeare meaningful to me was an Assistant Professor, a woman who was passed over for tenure in favor of a man who had no papers published (she had two) and less experience on the job. She fought it, but I don't know what success she had.

Do you have any experience of "reversed racism" regarding women?

I was turned down once for a job in public rqadio and told it would have been mine if I'd been a woman. I reported this, but of course it was my word against the idiot who had said it in the first place, and he denied it.

Are there areas where men are discriminated in your culure

Definitely. There's a aura of disapproval, for instance, against male nurses--somehow, that's considered demeaning, pacific work, which it most definitely isn't. And from what I understand, male hookers are treated as lowlife by even female hookers, unless you're at the top of that curious social ladder.

my friend's dad sits on a board that picks incoming medical students. all things being equal, a woman is given a spot over a man, and if at the end of picking students there seems to be too many men, they'll go back and make sure more women get in and turn down more qualified men.

in commercials and various television and movie medium, there is always a deliberate push to make a prominent figure female or a minority. in almost every training video that i am forced to watch, there just happens to be a three legged, hunchbacked, deaf mute chinese woman in a wheelchair as CEO. i find it offensive that such measures are taken not to show men in a certain roles.
take that monument they made to the firefighters in NY...i was genuinely surprised when they took the painstaking effort to make it various races but did not change one to a woman.

and it has been too long since anyone posted in my "father's rights" topic for it to still be here on the forum. but for those that did read it, know another area that i find men get severely screwed.

don't get me wrong, i know there are plenty of injustices against women. a female friend of mine has the identical job at a different facility, we have the same experience, yet i get almost 10 grand more than her. but there are instances where men get the raw end of the deal...that's all i'm saying.

Originally posted by Der-draigen
I just wrote my post that way because I'm sure that isn't the only place where such things happen (i.e. the supervisor being reluctant to hire women of a certain appearance); maybe it's more common than we think

At uni, I sometimes was told by teachers and some people in my class that my looks were highly unsuitable for a psychologist, they thought my male patients would suffer from.

Well, good I'm a researcher now so I don't see any patients.

One of my best friends was frequently accused by her female colleagues of having got her position because of her looks, and not by merit. It's certainly not only men who behave discriminative towards women.

Originally posted by nael
and it has been too long since anyone posted in my "father's rights" topic for it to still be here on the forum. but for those that did read it, know another area that i find men get severely screwed.

I remember that thread - as I wrote above, this is the area where men get most discriminated in Sweden.

Another area where men are discriminated in Sweden is in child care professions. All the pedophilia-reports has made people afraid of hiring male staff for Kindergarten and primary school positions. This is not only discriminating, it's also based on the erranous belief that men committs pedophilia-related crimes more often than women. According to large investigations carried out by criminologists and sociologists, female offenders are as common as male, but the cases don't get reported to the police. The investigations are based on anonymous interviews with thousands of people in different ages and different regions, and the aim was to study the problem of under-reporting this kind of crimes. Boys tend to report far less than girls because it's a bigger taboo, especially when the offender is the mother. Female pedophiles can mostly committ their crimes without leaving visible evidence and injuries on the victim. Also, if boys report, they tend to be less believed than girls.

scholarships are another area that really irked me back in high school when i was researchign what was available. it's amazing how lacking white middle income male scholarships are.
i of course understand the significance of female/minority scholarships, and the role they have played to help even the job market today and to help cohorts realize that there is that option for them when it wasn't there traditionally.
and maybe i am blind sinc ei am a white male, but i just think the education field and the awareness of schools and educational opportunities is fair. ESPECIALLY for graduate school. i went to a very ghetto high school and had every disadvantage of every minority and woman in that school, yet when i needed money to go to school it didn't matter.
now i have a nice $80,000 loan hanging over my head.

Do you think women are discriminated against in your culture?
Hell, yeah.

Do you have any personal experience of women being discriminated?
Currently, since I'm a physician recruiter--there have been some practices that have told me they are not interested in a female physician because she would need too much time off for her children.
Recently, I was in an artists' group, which met every week and various artists would come in a show their work. The men who started the group rarely invited the women artists to show anything, and when one outspoken woman artist complained, the "leader" of the group became incensed and threw her out. A lot of the male artists that met there didn't like this either--but the group could only meet in the studio of the above artist and no one wanted to cross him. I quit.
A while back, I did sound for bands in Austin. When I started doing it, none of the male sound guys would help to train me. It was the only other female soundperson in town who showed me the ropes. Quite a few times, a musician would show up and be told that I was doing the sound for him, and get really bent out of shape. One guy gave me about 10 seconds to get his sound right (generally, it's impossible to get the sound right until someone's played a whole song)--then said I didn't know what I was doing. I told him to do his own damn sound and left. Another time, I was running sound, and a guy in the audience came up and started turning knobs on the sound board when he saw me there. He had absolutely no idea what they did!!! This type of discrimination is the old--only men understand mechanical things type.

Do you have any experience of "reversed racism" regarding women?
I had a waitressing job many moons ago. They would put an ad in the paper for waiters/waitresses--but it was well known that they would never hire a male. It was an upscale pool hall (great tables) frequented by Texas congressmen and businessmen who wanted pretty girls to look at. The tips were good though.

Are there areas where men are discriminated in your culure?
Definitely in child custody. Also, I think in general with their emotions, they are really penalized for expressing "weak" emotions, like sadness.

Are there areas where men are discriminated in your culure?

Well, why is there an International Women Day and not an International Men Day?

In my culture chauvinism runs rampant. You women might think that only females suffer because of this, but that ain't true. We males also suffer because:

-Women think that we don't have any feelings and therefore we canna be hurt emotionally. (My ex-gf thinks so, as a result she's always claiming to be a victim and I got labeled as the predator so to speak).

-"Real men don't cry" is a common saying here, and the worst thing is that almost everyone believes it. So if someone sees you crying then you are labeled as a gay.

-"Men have the obligation of making their women happy" is another dogma here. So women easily turn away their responsibilities in a relationship, arguing that men MUST do everything. "If something good happens then it's because of me", says the woman, "but if something bad happens then it's only your fault, you moron". Thank God not all women think that way.

Just some cases, but there are many more.

Women think that we don't have any feelings and therefore we canna be hurt emotionally. (My ex-gf thinks so, as a result she's always claiming to be a victim and I got labeled as the predator so to speak).

I suspect the first part of that should be, "some women think that," or better still, "some people of the opposite sex think that..." There are quite a few men who don't give their wives or girlfriends credit enough to change the oil in a car, much less hold down a medical practice or pilot a jet.

Suffice to say, everytime one side of the human species is reduced to being labeled illogical and emotional, while the other is blamed for being logical and heartless, everybody suffers. We're all of us creatures of emotion, and wielders of tools of logic. We're many things, and the fewer boundaries we place upon ourselves and others, the more likely we are to live up to our potential, and to assist others in living up to theirs.

That sounds a lot more pretentious than I'd like it to, but the sentiments are true.

Originally posted by Der-draigen
I'd also like to add, that the US has never had a female president. Other nations have had female prime ministers etc., but the US, for all it claims to be such an advanced society, is woefully behind in this regard.

Then again -- if Hillary Rodham Clinton were to become our first candidate, I'd have to eat these words

What's so "advanced" about having a female president?

And I would be thoroughly content if we don't get a female president until after Hillary has died.

It makes me sick that there should even have to be a Women's Day. It amazes me that people never actually think about the modern applicability of million year old gender stereotypes. It makes me sad to see that women should have to campaign to be treated as well as the other homosapians who had abit of x-chromosone squirted in them back in feotus-hood. rrrggh. I find the only thing that actually gets me angry is such blatant refusal to accept logic as this. Why can't somebody just say 'Think about it for 5 minutes' and every body think about it and form their own conscious opinions which would (I am certain) be absolutely fine. I am sure that if mankind sprung into the world yesterday, nobody would even consider the possibility of women being worse than men. Unfortunately, some people just can't make opinions based on the facts as they are.

sorry for that rant, now...what I actually think.
I am certain that there is discrimination against women in the UK, just because people think about wether their Job Applicant etc is a man or a woman. In professional circles, I think this does not even need to be considered.
However, I am only a child and have never had a job and can't talk very authoritatively about it.

Relationships are an interesting issue however...I have found that girls often have beliefs that it is the male's job to treat the female like glass. If he hurts her then he deserves punishment, while if it is vice-versa, she deserves forgiveness.

This is a nasty effect whixh has come from the inability to think for oneself which I got angry about earlier. It is embodied by the ignorant "feminists" who you see on TV, claiming that women are better than men, seeking revenge blindly like animals. It is similar to the (occasional) anti-white outbursts of Malcolm X. It can lead into a vicious cycle.

Man treats woman badly because she cannot kill wild boars as well as him> Man and woman evolve> Man still tries to blame woman for boar killing inefficiency> Woman becomes bitter and holds belief that all men hate her for boar killing inefficiency> Man and Woman evolve soem more> Woman punishes man in relationship and on TV> Man holds belief that all women want to punish him in realtionship and on TV> Man finds justification (boar killing inefficiency) for hating woman.....*

if those who hold discriminatory beliefs and gender stereotypes could just remember that we have machines to kill boars for us then I think we could forget that any of the disgusting things which have happened because of differences between the sexes had ever happened. I think the world would be a better place if everyone could press refresh and start thinking independantly.

*when I say man and woman, I only mean of course the men and women who discriminate sexually.

Originally posted by Sailor Saturn


What's so "advanced" about having a female president?

And I would be thoroughly content if we don't get a female president until after Hillary has died.

Re: Hilary. I always felt that from the get-go, she was unfairly vilified. I think in some way she was the personification of a type of career-minded, ambitious modern woman, and all the resentments that men had been holding were hurled at her. She was iconic, in a way. I don't think anyone saw the real person there for a long time. No one really forgave her for being who she was until Bill humiliated her. I'm not thrilled now, however, with her complete sell-out to pro-Israel interests. She could have been great, but now she's just another politician.

I've felt for a long time that the women's movement failed in many ways. When my mother was young, her career options were: secretary, nurse or teacher. My father did not want her to go to college, so she didn't. She did, however, forge her own career, and I think if she had had the same advantages as my father, she would be a CEO somewhere now. In the seventies, feminists were fighting for women just to have the right to work in untraditional jobs, and to go to college. Now, all women have to work, unless they are rich, and they are still relegated to lower or middle management positions. Pay is still unequal. The other thing that bothers me is that in order to cliimb up the ladder, women have to abandon many of the better feminine qualities. Is it progress to have a high-powered job when you have to act as ruthless as men in those positions? Look at Margaret Thatcher--is she an ideal? I had hoped women would bring changes, but that has not occured except in small ways.

One other thing that really ticks me off is Republican women who are anti-feminist, and claim to be pro-family. People like Elizabeth Dole or Nancy Reagan, for example. These are ambitious women who never spent any time with their children.