What skills do today's students need to fight inequality?

EM - so true . There's that certain sort of question where everyone starts to glaze over and shuffled deep down into their seats in the hope they'll be able to have a nice nap before the idiot stops showing off about how clever htey are. But I would say those are 99% done by men

Ninja skillz

GM - the downside of that is the PITA who never learns that you don't have to ask 3 questions every single time you attend a presentation or meeting, even if thouse questions are totally unrelated to the subject matter and the meeting is over-running and it's obviously only being asked to get the questioner noticed and everyone else wants their lunch now.

Although of course, it is generally the female questioners who are bitched about in that scenario, not the male ones.

I studied at a women's college, and in retrospect, I think my fellow students and I were explicitly pushed from an early point to do apparently small things that 'get you noticed' as a 'serious contender'. I noticed at a recent conference for graduate students, for example, that although the attendees were 50% / 50% male and female, and that the most senior people there were about 60% / 40% male and female, the post-session questions were asked overwhelmingly by male students - something like 85% / 15%, IIRC (I actually started counting about half-way through the conference). Now, my supervisor would have been bloody furious if her students had failed to ask a question after a talk, whether they were male or female.

I think negotiation skills would be excellent. I'm definitely lacking those.

Avantia. Unfortunately that is so true. I have been in a job where the facebook profiles of all the (female, but not male) interviewees for an entry level position were pored over the day before the interviews. I shudder to think what preconcieved assumptions went into the interview room. The successful candidate was male.

I would advise getting rid of all Facebook before the job hunt starts. Give them no opportunity to discriminate, that's my mantra. I also used to tell femal students to only use their initial in applications, not a first name, unless they had a gender non-specific name like Alex.

Top five facebook mistakes that can ruin your career

Get rid of the Facebook account where you pose pictures of yourself pouting wearing very little clothing in the local student bars !

Any potential employer is going to look at facebook to see what you have been to !

Am i the only one who is at the poster who said that female studenst biggest convern about job interviews is what to wear???? That they are worried about looking " slutty or stuffy"

Practising and being comfortable with self promotion would be a great workshop. This is an important but difficult skill to feel comfortable with.

"it's not correct that it's the negotiation skills of women that are lacking when they ask for more money, it's the sexism of the people who decide the pay that's the problem."

I negotiated and got a very small rise, and I am glad I did, however there was a high price to pay in that some people felt I didnt deserve it, (even if I was still underpaid) and made life difficult for me. Whereas if a man had done this, Im sure they would not blink twice.

Next time I will negotiate harder, because being fairly paid is important for my self esteem.

Yes I'm not really sure how it helps young women to fight discrimination to invite the beneficiaries of that discrimination along.

Teddy, it's not correct that it's the negotiation skills of women that are lacking when they ask for more money, it's the sexism of the people who decide the pay that's the problem.

Slug that does sound effective! Alas she is no longer lecturing - I will ask her about Dale Spender though, sounds really interesting!

Oh, Dale Spender is ace! :-)

It can feel like emptying the ocean with a teaspoon, but I still believe it's worth working for those "little lightbulb moments" that can make a massive difference in a person's life and their future direction of travel.

I've been involved in alot of single gender work and have found as confidence builds, consciousnesses are raised, analytical skills are honed, young women themselves are then keen to engage more with young men to co-opt them into building solutions. It can still take quite skilled facilitation to avoid backsliding into those ghastly scenarios described above but when you see a clued-up, assertive young woman challenging sexist attitudes and behaviour of young men, and other young women, taking no shit and seeing the pennies dropping all around the room as they cotton on, it's absolutely awesome. I love my job!

I agree about mixed-gender groups when talking about sexism issues. I think single gender to begin with, then perhaps small mixed groups of students who know each other.

I used to work in a university and spent one year as a pastoral tutor in a Hall. I think to be really effective, there needs to be an everyday feminist presence, letting the youngest women students know it's okay for them to put themselves, their education and their future career/lifestyle first in most instances. It depressed the hell out of me to see intelligent, capable women, wasting time they should be spending on coursework and building their future support networks on cleaning up after other people, giggling at boys and their stupid behaviour and being too nice to say no to others' demands.

One of the reasons I voted to keep my Hall semi-sex segregated was that in the trial mixed corridors, the girls were doing the boys' fucking laundry, for fuck's sake.

Grumpla, she should take Dale Spender's tack. I once went to a lecture of hers where she stated explicitly before hand that she would, in order to illustrate how girls are treated in the classroom, only take questions from women in the first instance. If men wanted to ask a question they would have to either a) ask a woman to ask it or b) wait until no more women had questions to ask.

Watching the men get more and more frustrated, resort to shouting and, in some cases, tantrums to make themselves heard was extremely funny. She simply refused to engage with the men unless they were acting in a meek and submissive fashion, i.e. like women are expected to. At the end she had a series of slides with insults men use to silence women (shrill, dyke, irrationaletc). She went through and ticked off the comments made in that session one by one. I think there was only one missing.

That, more than any academic discussion, demonstrated more to me about how we are silenced. Despite being old the rules beforehand, the sense of entitlement by the men in the room was obvious for all to see.

In my experience, too often when mixed gender groups are addressing issues involving sex discrimination, particularly when they don't know each other, haven't already built up a trust and rapport of some kind, is that the guys will get defensive and the women will often either feel silenced or feel sorry for the men (that's what they've been conditioned to do after all!) and reject the message. If you put them off at the outset, you probably won't get them back.

My mum lectured in Women's Studies for years and this was very much her experience too - every year she would have one smartarsed bloke in the seminar who had signed up to get shagged by women prove what a "new man" he was and would end up dominating discussions etc with "Poor Menz" crap, "You think all men are rapists" etc. It was EXTREMELY frustrating!

I don't think that supporting young women and helping them the skills they need to fight inequality is mutually exclusive of fighting that inequality in other ways, nor do I think it pushes the blame for inequality onto women.

Personally I feel that having been raised by feminist parents gave me a massive advantage over many of my female peers - I see a lot of my contemporaries struggling now to negotiate their relationships with the fathers of their children after several pre-children years of "apparent" equality. Easy to think feminism is outdated if you are middle class well educated and earning & contributing the same to the household financially.

Had my DH and I not already confronted a lot of the assumptions about work, childcare, money etc in advance (because I sure as hell wasn't going to have babies until we had!) I would be struggling with that now at the same time as having a small child.

I don't think this advantage is because I am special or 'better' than a lot of other women, I think it is because my mum and dad put a lot of time and energy into giving me those skills, dissecting gender stereotypes / assumptions etc. So I think for those young women who haven't had parents like mine, it would also be useful for them.

If we are expecting them to fight inequality that means we need to show them how unequal our society still is, and equip them with the necessary survival skills!

I think alot of interesting points have already been raised on this thread, but maybe I can add a few more ideas.

I think that both young men and women can benefit from practical advice on applying for jobs, career development, bigging up their transferable skills, etc. Even in the current tough economic times, when my organisation has been inundated with applications every time we advertise a job, I've still been disappointed with the quality of many of them. Simple things like spelling mistakes, glaringly bad grammar, not following basic instructions on the form can put you out of the running even when you might have excellent experience, qualifications, skills and enthusiasm. You've got to get the attention of the employer first, and a slap dash application won't get the right kind of attention.

As others have said, the reality is that the job market and the situation when you are in most jobs isn't one involving a level playing field. Indirect, if not direct discrimination (sexual and other forms,) is entrenched, often so much so that it's taken for granted that things will be "different" for men and women, without it even being questioned. Basically, the set up is mostly pretty damned unfair and the problem with building skills without doing so in the context of that uneven playing field is setting up young women not only to fail, but to blame themselves for not being "good enough," when factors holding them back are not within their sphere of control.

So for me, I would suggest putting work in to setting that context. It's only when young women recognise the reality of discrimination that they can develop the skills to discern what is going on, to spot mechanisms of oppression and injustice, not take things at face value, but also be able to work around and within what is there to their best advantage.

Some of that is about "unlearning" many of the things they will have been conditioned to believe about themselves, about the world around them, about the world of work. But, I really think this is important - sort of building their resilience and capacity to engage with what is a patently unfair system out there while hanging onto their sense of self-worth, getting on as best they can and hopefully being part of positive changes for successive generations of women who will follow them.

I would actually suggest that some of the work be done in separate groups for young women and young men. I think young men also need to hear that message of institutionalised discrimination and need to recognise that they will benefit from unearned privilege just for being blokes. But, I think the way the message is conveyed needs to be different for young women and young men to genuinely make an impact on both. In my experience, too often when mixed gender groups are addressing issues involving sex discrimination, particularly when they don't know each other, haven't already built up a trust and rapport of some kind, is that the guys will get defensive and the women will often either feel silenced or feel sorry for the men (that's what they've been conditioned to do after all!) and reject the message. If you put them off at the outset, you probably won't get them back.

Sometimes it works to do a bit of separate work with young men and young women and then bring them together when both have "come along" in their thinking a bit. I don't know if it's possible to do that, but I would be worried that if you are talking about workshops that will involve mostly women but some young men, you could end up with the scenario I described at the end of the last paragraph, which can actually be utterly counterproductive.

Yes, it's not possible to teach women who ask for more not to come across as greedy or lazy. They aren't coming across like that any more than the men are, the reason is that people are sexist and think women don't deserve it. Of course you'll think someone who doesn't deserve rewards is greedy for wanting them.

It's the people offering the payrises or jobs who need to be taught to pay women their worth not make them pay a lack of penis penalty.

Yes FGS don't teach the women that if they don't succeed, it will be because they weren't assertive enough and if they do, it's because they're extra special and all other women are just wimps and saps and fit only to be their servants.

It doesn't really make all that much difference how women behave does it, it's how the men with power behave, that will really change things.

How equal is the hierarchy of your university would be the first question I'd ask.

Are there an equal number of women in senior positions - senior administration, professors, heads of department? Are women thinkers, women theorists taught in the same numbers as their male counterparts.

If there aren't, you could get your female students to find out why and start agitating on behalf of the female half of the faculty and staff. That would be a good education for them.

Things that don't suggest that the problem is with the women students and that they should just step up, assert themselves and all will be fine. As you have pointed out yourself Teddybare, if women assert themselves like men in negotiations they are perceived differently. They aren't in control of that. To give them a workshop on how to negotiate suggests the problem is theirs and they just need to do it better. That is precisely the kind of thing that makes young women think that it's all fine and they are equal.

I'm with Eleanor, Elderberry and Plump.

Also I think young women need to know how to build relationships now which don't set them up to be shat on later in life. Don't get married to men who don't take their share of household responsibilities. Don't get caught up in doing a 'women's role' because it's a quieter life.

Eleanor that is a brilliant idea.