Do you think that men are oppressed?

'Sunny, I would be quite happy to support DH. So now you've "met" one.

Welcome to my world!'

Thats fair enough Sprogger but it isnt very common at all and personally I dont think it will ever be that common. Most women round here are ying to go off work or part time once they have kids. I know I was . Works more fun when you have the work/life balance of half at home, half at work as you dont get bored imo. I dont know any women that has to work full time with kids except for 3 women whose kids I have looked after that have had to because of financial reasons and they hated it. I felt really sorry for them but its just the way it is nowadays as things are expensive.

There's a difference TSH, which should be obvious but I'll help you to it. Feminist groups have an agenda which is the liberation of women from discrimination etc. They don't have anything to gain by distorting the facts, they want to find out what's really going on so they can do something about it. Whereas a right wing think tank funded by business, with an agenda that the free market is benevolent and companies should not be subject to regulation - they've got a lot to gain by downplaying the gap. They want to run their businesses and if they can get away with paying people less, and having discrimination unscrutinised, they make more money.

So you acknowledge there is a pay gap?

You do know that HH is a politician don't you? She was a member of the cabinet? She probably has statistics for these things, of a better quality than what you or I can dig off the internet. Funnily enough I don't see feminist as an insult. Just what do you think feminism's "ulterior motive" is?

Here.

Can I just point out that:

a) that is a free market promoting right wing think tank with a vested interest in showing that companies "regulate themselves", and rejecting government intervention

and b)they are still acknowledging a pay gap! They are not saying that women ever earn the same as men, even when they "behave like men do" (because men never have children) . You could rephrase it as "among people ages 27 to 33 who have never had a child, men are still earning at least 2% more than women" - for obvious reasons this gap is likely to exponentially increase over a lifetime. "Women who hold positions and have skills and experience similar to those of men face wage disparities of between 2% and 10%"

That's the best they can come up with - in this highly selective set of variables there is a big paygap (I think 2-10% is big, there shouldn't be any gap) that we cannot explain by referring to experience of breastfeeding or anything other than pure sexism.

TheShriekingHarpy,

I wrote -
"I read on the Skeptifem blog that the most dangerous job in America is prostitute. The death rate for prostitutes in the U.S. is 204 out of every 100,000. For fishermen, it's 129 out of every 100,000."

TheShriekingHarpy replied -

"As a collective whole though (ie the sum total figure for men employed in hazardous roles vs women in equivalent professions ) it is still demonstrably apparent that men tend to be deployed for these type of roles. Of course you're correct though, prostitution can be decidedly dangerous in itself."

It appears one of the reasons for that statistic was made the subject of that blog entry was to highlight the fact that official figures didn't even bother to include prostitutes (or housewives).

why is the US collecting data on the UK's pay gap anyway? they've got their own issues

do produce them!

That stat is for women and men in comparable full time employment, so all that biological stuff/sacrifices while relevant to the wider issue, is irrelevant to the truth of that figure. There is a discussion on the negotiation issue above, which showed (since you obviously CBA to read the thread) that people perceive women who "negotiate" to up their salary as "less nice" and are less keen to work with them. So women who don't negotiate hard are in fact reading the signs correctly, that they would be disliked/less likely to find work than if they just take what they're given.

TheShriekingHarpy and sunny2010,

when I asked my question

""Women have a myriad of choices. They can simultaneously assume the role of the working parent (through part-time work and/or flexible hours) and carer."

Does any legislation prevent men doing this?"

It was a genuine question asked out of curiosity. I am very well aware that society puts pressure and expectations upon everyone. I simply wonder if there is any additional legal barrier preventing men from doing what you implied they are not allowed to do (due to social pressure or discrimination or oppression).

sunny2010 wrote
"How many women do you know that would want to work and let the man stay at home or go part time? I doubt there would be many, personally I have never met one. Its societal expectations not many women would go out with a man that wont work at all."

I know quite a few women whose male partner stays at home or works part-time and does most of the childcare.

I searched for some statistics on stay-at home-dads. So far, I have seen estimates of more than 190,000 for the UK at the f-word and also here.

I think the situation is much more likely to arise after children come along in an existing stable relationship rather than when a woman and man are assessing each other as potential dating material before any relationship has even started.

The men in question had full-time jobs before the children were born and they have been prepared and able to sacrifice their career, something that is assumed most mothers rather than fathers should do.

restrain strain. In fact I would love you to restrain yourself, or maybe even retrain yourself. :)

I don't want you to restrain yourself TSH, so I'll reprint my post from earlier: "of course some men are oppressed - gay men in Uganda for example [and there has been a huge discussion of economic factors on here as well, look up]. But "men" as a group aren't oppressed. Whereas women, as a group, are. Some more than others but all at a basic level."

TSH: "I do want to address and challenge this counterfactual, erroneous idea that men don't experience hardship, discrimination, "oppression" or whatever" - you might get a bit lonely arguing with yourself on that, because everyone has acknowledged that men can experience all these things. They just don't experience them because of being men, but because of other factors.

Let's see, could it be because it's been less than 100 years since women were accorded the right to vote, just 40 years since the right to equal pay was enshrined in law, less than 35 years since women were able to claim mortgages or bank loans in their own right without a male guarantor, and even now the pay gap between men and women in full time work of equal value is 16.4%?

Some men probably are happy to be miners, some are not. Same as with sex workers. Some feminists say that all women must hate to work in sex industry and it must be put a stop to. Thats not true I have worked in a strip club at the bar and have been friends with many strippers who really enjoyed their job. I also have done webcam and phone line sex work and it was a laugh and turn on that just happened to make me cash. I would have no problem with my daughters or sons doing it if they wanted to.

It goes either way there are people oppressed in all areas but that doesnt mean the whole group are oppressed by it.

Sunny2010 wrote
"I really dont see the point of arguing who has it worse."
then
"Look at the miners in Chile that are stuck until Christmas something like that would never happen to a woman. Prostitutes on the street are usually women or girls that have experienced difficult lives and if it was legal and regulated it would stop this from happening as much imo. Up market call girls and lapdancers do it because they want to and the money but the lower end of this market the girls are often forced."

I sincerely hope those miners are rescued as soon as possible. It must be awful to be stuck for so long underground.

In your comparison between male miners and female sex workers, why do you take the "happy in their freely chosen career" line with the women in your comparison but not apply that to the male miners?