Women in today's soceity

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Do you think women are still viewed weaker/lower than men?

Yes, I do believe so
18
31%
I'm not really sure...maybe most likely
5
8%
No, I think they are equal the way they are
18
31%
No, I think they are equal the way they are
18
31%
 
Total votes: 59

Littleangel91356
Posts: 103
Joined: Apr 22nd, '05, 01:16
Location: USA

Women in today's soceity

Post by Littleangel91356 » May 25th, '06, 22:51

I know this is a big controversial topic and is still one of the main poroblems in our soceity. I thought of this today because my teacher made a sexist joke about women(he's a male) saying that they are lower than men. He also stated like, " If they were equal, why aren't their pays the same?" and " women in today's soceity workshop? that's such a worthless thing." and it heated up a arguement between one student and the teacher saying "it is wrong to say those things about a women and make a joke about it. How would it be if it were a racist joke, would it be the same? it's like that." and the teacher didn't even really listen to her.

What I felt is that, is there still many men who view women as a second class citizen or lower than males in general? if so, why? And for all these women out there, how do you view women's treatment and how to do you feel about it?

If anyone could reply to this, it would be grateful and thank you for reading this and hope this is a appropriate topic.

Aprisea
Posts: 103
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Location: Barcelona,Spain
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Post by Aprisea » May 25th, '06, 23:28

You're teacher is stupid!
The treatment to the woman are different in each country. In global I think many men think that woman are weak, not all of course. But this is a hard and controversial topic to talk here.
Sorry my english is poor :P

Mythrel
Posts: 463
Joined: Aug 11th, '05, 02:34
Location: Burnaby, British Columbia

Post by Mythrel » May 26th, '06, 00:59

I think you and the other students should raise some money to send your teacher to joke camp :lol Was he trying to spark debate (like a philosopy teacher? mine used to always play any side of the debate to push discussion and thought but if those were his real opinions then well... ) I don't see women as lower then males. Physically we are different, but people are people. Women don't deserve to be treated as though they are less than. Women should be given the proper wages for their jobs which should match their counterparts. I have never gotten the excuse for that one.

Littleangel91356
Posts: 103
Joined: Apr 22nd, '05, 01:16
Location: USA

Post by Littleangel91356 » May 26th, '06, 01:19

The thing is, he's a math teacher...it seems he didn't view soceity as much before...I wonder what was wrong with him at that moment.

I do see the women kinda treated different or not allowed to do some work in japan because they are women and they don't have the capabilites or som,ething...but yes, it's hard to talk about.

tran05
Posts: 32
Joined: Apr 13th, '05, 18:55
Location: USA

Post by tran05 » May 26th, '06, 01:26

Not sure about other countries but in US, at least at my work place women and men are treated equally.

Prowler_88
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Joined: May 5th, '06, 22:16
Location: England

Post by Prowler_88 » May 26th, '06, 11:03

The thing is most people 'treat' women equally. Its just an issue on a wider scale. I recently studied this as part of my university degree, and while managers and professional males tend to try to use neutral language, females come off worse when cutbacks occur. This is since they are the ones that bear the burden of having children, and even if the role is then reversed and the husband looks after the children, employers see the necessary time off for females as an outweighing factor. This forced leave (unless couples choose not to bear children) also means that a woman's career path is broken up, meaning they are likely to earn less in the long run.
This is all exacerbated by governments (Im in the UK) where policies are largely targetted at women and the workplace - by targetting policies as such it places a focus on women and can increase gender disparity. Countries such as Sweden are the best as they offer silent policies that encourage families in the workplace, the result being a higher fertility rate and a higher rate of female employment (with an average wage closer to males than almost anywhere else in the world).

(Thats what my essay read like anyway :whistling: )

Personally I treat men and women as equals (I think!). And there are just as many women that I look up to as men...one of my best friends at uni is a woman and she's smarter and more hard working than me or any of my male friends!

doc_tomoe
Posts: 45
Joined: Mar 13th, '05, 10:59
Location: Überlingen

Post by doc_tomoe » May 26th, '06, 11:34

there'll always people who view other people as lower beeing just because of race,sex or wealth ..
most of the time because they just didn't learn any better ...
and there's still countries around where women are treated worse than farm animals..
something has to be done against situation like this ...
the question is, how do you keep people from doing stuff like that and talking like that ?

kotaeshiranaihito
Posts: 234
Joined: Dec 23rd, '05, 19:55
Location: New York

Post by kotaeshiranaihito » Jun 10th, '06, 02:56

I think you and the other students should raise some money to send your teacher to joke camp Laugh Was he trying to spark debate (like a philosopy teacher? mine used to always play any side of the debate to push discussion and thought but if those were his real opinions then well... ) I don't see women as lower then males. Physically we are different, but people are people. Women don't deserve to be treated as though they are less than. Women should be given the proper wages for their jobs which should match their counterparts. I have never gotten the excuse for that one.

The reason you never got an excuse about it is because it isn't true. Do some real research instead of listening to the rantings of Gloria steinman-who BTW is responsible for many many layoffs of both men and women with her frivolous lawsuits.

Anyway, here is a real study on the equal pay issue done by Warren Ferrell. A little background on him first (so no one will think he's just a sexist man). Warren Ferrell was one of the few men who was part of the women's rights marches in the later half of the 20th century (70s and 60s I think). He fought hard to pass laws that gave women the rights they have today. He actually undertook this study in order to help women get equal pay by providing hard evidence against bosses in court. But his results surprised him (and will probably surprise you as well).

here is the link to a summary, buy the book if you want more details.

http://www.womanspapers.com/story/9.24.1.0.1.0.phtml

Whether you believe it or not is your own affair, but think of one thing. If women seriously do get pay 80% of what men get, then why hasn't any company decided to just hire all women? 20% extra profit in your pocket sounds pretty good doesn't it?

kotaeshiranaihito
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Joined: Dec 23rd, '05, 19:55
Location: New York

Post by kotaeshiranaihito » Jun 10th, '06, 03:10

And I want to highlight one part of that sentence for all to see, I'll make it a nice bold

Dr. Ferrell discovered an assumption-shattering fact: when their job responsibilities (not just titles), experience and contributions are the same, men routinely earn less than women.

Notice the word is less not more. Gloria Steinman obviously just got confused by the two words.

GhstDreamer
Posts: 229
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Location: In Kant's Transcendental Mind

Post by GhstDreamer » Jun 12th, '06, 15:07

kotaeshiranaihito wrote: Whether you believe it or not is your own affair, but think of one thing. If women seriously do get pay 80% of what men get, then why hasn't any company decided to just hire all women? 20% extra profit in your pocket sounds pretty good doesn't it?
Actually the whole debate about equal pay for equal work is long gone dead in North America. I mean if there's a male and female construction employee working for the same company - of course they'll be paid the same if everything else is equal/similar (or expect a lawsuit).

The debate that is still going on is equal pay for work of equal value. Even in today's society, most women do work in female-dominated areas and men will often work in male dominated areas. Yes, society is changing but not at a very fast rate. There are not that many women who are firefighters, neurosurgeons, sanitation workers and corporate lawyers. Just like there are not many men who are nursing assistants, early childhood educators and secretaries. Traditionally, these are seen as women's work and women's work has always been economically undervalued in society.

So the ongoing debate is: How do we judge that an early childhood educator should make the same amount of pay as sanitation worker? (these jobs as examples)

Where I live, an ECE (a traditionally female job) makes an average of $10/hr where as a sanitation worker (a traditionally male job) makes around $20 something/hr. One assists in educating our children to eventually become participating members of society and the other ensures public health safety for everyone.

In order to make sure there is equal pay for work of equal value - we must deem that a certain job has just as much benefits to the society as the next job.

kotaeshiranaihito: the problem with your quote about men routinely earning less than women if job responsibilitles are the same holds water only up to the point that both the man and woman are working at the same job. Problem is they often don't - women are still gravitating towards female-dominated work and men are still gravitating towards male-dominated work.

kotaeshiranaihito
Posts: 234
Joined: Dec 23rd, '05, 19:55
Location: New York

Post by kotaeshiranaihito » Jun 12th, '06, 19:14

Actually the whole debate about equal pay for equal work is long gone dead in North America. I mean if there's a male and female construction employee working for the same company - of course they'll be paid the same if everything else is equal/similar (or expect a lawsuit).

I'm glad you know that, but you're taking the point of view of an educated person. Remember 90% of north americans are idiots (including members of congress, state senates, and councils). You would be surprised at the amount of people who actually believe that women actually get paid less to do the exact same work. I stopped by a womens studies class (on my way to my own) and the person teaching it said exactly this. For the exact same work women only get paid 80 cents to the dollar as men. For stupid people all you need is a statistic and they'll believe anything you tell them after that. For example statistics show that over 80% of data warehouses fail, so many company owners refuse to even try to invest in them. In reality a data warehouse will fail simply because the makers had no idea what they were doing, the warehouse itself was never the problem. If it is carefully constructed, it ends up making large scale companys A LOT larger. Walmart is a very good example. They knew what exactly to sell, when to sell it and what stores to stock with only certain stocks because of their warehouse.

In america never take on the POV of a person who knows stuff, be as ignorant as you can and you'll then be able to see how 90% of america thinks (and votes-read some of karl roves tactics for information on that, like how people were convinced if gays married it would be the end of civilization generation by generation, how Kerry wanted to ban the bible from even being read even though he said he was catholic like a hundred times and many other fun stuff).



The debate that is still going on is equal pay for work of equal value. Even in today's society, most women do work in female-dominated areas and men will often work in male dominated areas. Yes, society is changing but not at a very fast rate. There are not that many women who are firefighters, neurosurgeons, sanitation workers and corporate lawyers. Just like there are not many men who are nursing assistants, early childhood educators and secretaries. Traditionally, these are seen as women's work and women's work has always been economically undervalued in society.

So the ongoing debate is: How do we judge that an early childhood educator should make the same amount of pay as sanitation worker? (these jobs as examples)

Where I live, an ECE (a traditionally female job) makes an average of $10/hr where as a sanitation worker (a traditionally male job) makes around $20 something/hr. One assists in educating our children to eventually become participating members of society and the other ensures public health safety for everyone.



That's pretty much what that website was talking about. Did you read it? On an average basis women trade in extra pay for more comfort, flexibility, and doing jobs they like-please no arguments on this, read the book and then send warren ferrell letters. Like you example of ECE and sanitation person. With ECE you get to work with children and you get to play with them and educate them. It can get stressful, but this is a job that many people would love-people say they never ever see me smile, but that's because they never see me around little kids. Jobs as a garbage man are disgusting, unsanitary, and very unsafe. So in order to get people to want to do it they up the pay. And as warren ferrell wrote in his book, most men will take more risks, and give up comfort for more money.

Deciding how much each job gets is not the governments job (true there should always be a floor and ceiling-economic terms). It's not about fair or unfair, it's about supply and demand. Jobs as garbage man would not really be in serious demand if they paid $10 an hour. People simply wouldn't do them-they'd work fast food or something. While a job as an ECE would be in incredibly insane demand. So what do we do? we up the garbage mans salary to get more people to come, and lower the ECE's salary to get rid of the excess weight and only take in the most serious ones.

Plus this particular example you gave is wrong because garbage man jobs are union jobs, that's one of the reasons they get paid so much-imagine if the garbage men would strike, not a pretty picture. But I still took it from a non-union perspective.

Neurosurgeon? Let's see, like 10 years of school, huge debt, huge risk if you don't make it. Very stressful job, one lawsuit and you're done. Why go through all that when you can be a nurse? Less hours, you're not on call 24/7, not as much school, and you don't have to fear a lawsuit with every patient you have-trust me lawyers have many ways to <sarcasm>prove</sarcasm> malpractice these days. According to warren ferrell this explanation makes sense. He would say that men would definitely want to take the risk for the huge payoff.

As you can see a lot of these so called male dominated jobs are much more risky or dangerous than the so called female dominated jobs which are usually more flexible and offer more security.

Read the website or his book (he actually gives women tips to make more money by getting jobs like men). I'm sure those things can give you much more information than me.



In order to make sure there is equal pay for work of equal value - we must deem that a certain job has just as much benefits to the society as the next job.


Supply and demand. Easy and simple, read above.


kotaeshiranaihito: the problem with your quote about men routinely earning less than women if job responsibilitles are the same holds water only up to the point that both the man and woman are working at the same job. Problem is they often don't - women are still gravitating towards female-dominated work and men are still gravitating towards male-dominated work.


Not my quote, warren ferrells. That's very nice if they don't or do, but the fact is many people actually do believe that women actually get paid less for doing the exact same job, which you agreed with me is pretty much BS in NA. I honestly don't know if men get paid less than women for doing the exact same work, but that's just what the website says. I believe it can be possible if the girl is extremely hot, but I kind of find it hard to believe if she were simply average or below average looking.

It was nice talking with a person who actually has some knowledge of the world. Respond more often 8)

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