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Original poster

Why, when we are equal in number, worth and ability, are women discriminated against?

90 replies

YunoYurbubson · 31/12/2010 09:39

This is probably a bit of a silly thing to ask, but the question has been forming in my mind for the last couple of months.

What I want to know is this...

If it is understood that we start out with a level playing field; ie there are as many women as men in the world, men and women have equal worth, and men and women are equally capable of achieving, how have we ended up with one gender on top and the other underneath?

OP posts:
Ormirian · 31/12/2010 10:56

What dittany said.

bonsoir - yes things have changed a little. Yuno was asking how the situation came about though. I would still argue that whilst women might ostensibly have more choices now, we are still influenced by attitudes that tend to keep us in neat little boxes.

ISNT · 31/12/2010 10:55

It's a good question yuno. It obviously started somewhere and took hold, and now is just "how it is".

Sorry that's not much help!

The thing I find baffling is the way that these days, most people would agree that women are equal etc etc and yet there is still rampant sexism. People say they disagree with sexism/discrimination but can't see it when it's right under their noses / shrug it off etc. That is very odd to me.

dittany · 31/12/2010 10:54

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donnie · 31/12/2010 10:53

I disagree Bonsoir. The illusion of equality and freedom may exist in western culture but women are more and more subject to the pressures and enslavement of sexual stereotyping/pornification and so on of women. Why are more and more women obsessed with their looks and being skinny, getting boob jobs etc? that doesn't indicate any kind of freedom to me, it indicates enslavement to concepts created by men and imposed on women.

Original poster
YunoYurbubson · 31/12/2010 10:51

But that gets me straight back to my question dittany. Why did we let men do that? Why weren't we powerful enough to stop them?

OP posts:
Bonsoir · 31/12/2010 10:47

Ormirian - I just cannot agree. Women have many more options than men these days. The problems they encounter are too much choice, and the necessary sacrifice of some options that choice entails, not lack of opportunity!

dittany · 31/12/2010 10:38

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Original poster
YunoYurbubson · 31/12/2010 10:35

Perhaps "discriminated against" wasn't quite the right way of putting it. I was referring to the depressing way that women portrayed in everyday life, media, films, the things people say. Is that discrimination?

Objectified. Sexual objects. Less worth than men. Weak. There to look pretty and not think too hard.

OP posts:
Original poster
YunoYurbubson · 31/12/2010 10:31

But being the ones who have babies could equally have made us the ones who call the shots.

"so, you want to pass on your genes do you mr? Well dance to my tune and we'll see what we can do"

OP posts:
dittany · 31/12/2010 10:23

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Ormirian · 31/12/2010 10:20

"Biological differences and societal differences are not synonymous."

Precisely Bonsoir. They shouldn't be. But they have been made so over the centuries. Because women have babies, that is all they can do, ergo they can't/shouldn't do anything else.

Bonsoir · 31/12/2010 09:55

The fact that women have babies, and that their experience of life is different to that of men because of that, is not "discrimination". Biological differences and societal differences are not synonymous.

sarah293 · 31/12/2010 09:53

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Bonsoir · 31/12/2010 09:52

Women aren't discriminated against - certainly not in the UK. If anything, women in the UK have the upper hand by quite a wide margin.

Ormirian · 31/12/2010 09:50

Erm.....good question.

Think it's to do with babies. Having babies made women economically and socially valuable so therefore were had to be treated as property. Bit like a brood mare. As soon as that happened we couldn't be allowed autonomy (you wouldn't give a mare autonomy after all) so had to be kept in our place - in the domestic sphere and nowhere else. Many rules, laws and apologia were given for women's place in society. Layer after layer of progaganda has been plastered over the simple fact that male society valued women as baby makers only - women are weaker, women's brains aren't strong enough for work, God made women to be man's helpmeet, it isn't feminine to be strong and capable, after all don't all women long to be mothers, most women don't want to work after they have children etc etc until women beleive it as much as men and it's seen as a given that all women are naturally feminine, weak, broody, less interested in the non-domestic sphere, less ambitious etc. Men did quite a number on us really.