Feminist Pub 14: The Bluestocking, a place for feminist chat and feminists to chat

Hi Ros. How are you?

Congratulations Karma! Is she your first?

hi!

Bling, I love my juicer, but I take the juices in addition to my meals, not instead of. I'm a cranky cow when hungry.

Sorry if this has been posted elsewhere but thingy on academia for women

LordC he has a juicing machine and yes, lots of veggies with some fruit (mostly apples and oranges). And after first week healthy regular food as well. It is fab for him, just getting a little tiring!

Actually, where I am now the only sensible attitude is 'you only got there because you passed the appropriate professional examinations'

My company is working towards 55% women in senior management positions. This is being done by a combination of positive discrimination and succession planning (so the women get trained for their new role, rather than just being dropped into it). I'm hoping it will work (the scheme is still quite recent).

Have to admit though that these days I tend to think "you only got there because you are a man". No doubt some men do deserve their promotion... I guess ...

Me too. I don't think I am less competent than my male colleagues. They talk more though.

My male friend works for a big ass corporation where, a few years ago, they said "right, we are making 50% of management female" and they actually followed through. Everyone, including my brother, was up in arms about it and screamed about how all the incompetent women had got promoted without deserving it. Fast forward to now, and the truly incompetent women were just a few and I think the split now is 60/40 which not only is very good, it means that no one is now surprised at meeting a female manager.

As I once told the CIO of my company, I've been negatively discriminated so many times that I'm ok with being positively discriminated for once. Give me that chance and I will make it work, trust me.

I've lived with 'you only got there because you are a girl' for as long as I can remember. If we introduced more positive discrimination, I suspect we'd have more women in senior positions and this default assumption would die a death (as there would no longer be just a few women at these levels)

Bling I thought it's bad to drink juice? All that sugar and not feeling like you've eaten. Or something like that. Unless he's juicing vegetable. Can you juice vegetable? Is "juice" a verb?

"In all things of any difficulty and importance, those who can do them well are fewer than the need, even with the most unrestricted latitude of choice: and any limitation of the field of selection deprives society of some chances of being served by the competent, without ever saving it from the incompetent."

I am more open to the idea of positive discrimination and on quota these days. It seems that until there is a certain percentage of women in a profession it will always seem that women don't belong (and if I recall correctly, the percentage is in fact quite low - you don't need that many to make a difference. Can't find the reference.). Hence perhaps we should just get on with it and get the numbers in (and I'm sure there are plenty of women who qualify, whatever field it is) and be done with it. But try arguing that! As it is, women already have to work harder, and when they got there they probably got there by sleeping with somebody.

Congratulations karma. I have a girl incubating. I plan to consider her a feminist from day 1. Am glad I am not alone.

I think relationships with a feminist awakening on only one side can be difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. Not dissimilar in imagine to a couple
Where one partner suddenly becomes very religious

Dh has become juicing obsessed. Even that I am find I hard!

Someone mentioned positive discrimination (or rather people bleating on about it).

One of my personal bugbears is the lack of support for positive discrimination amongst professional women. There seems to be concern that it might lead to people being in roles they can't cope with 'cos that never normally happens or that it might make their achievement of getting there seem less special or something. And because men always get promoted on merit alone, and never for any other reason.

Congratulations Karma

Just been catching up - work is really busy at the moment, so it is seeping into my evenings in place if MN. Sounds like it may have been a blessing in disguise.

In a rather less cheerful change of topic: has anyone got any tales of relationships that have survived a feminist awakening? Or are they always doomed?

Karma -

Congratulations Karma!

Don't think the T in G&T stands for tears though ...

Thank you!

Lovely news. Welcome to the world Baby Karma.

congratulations karma, what lovely news!