can we reject gender and still be pro female?

Two bits of annocdata

Years ago now i got a new job, 3 women, 3 men all doing the same job (albeit different levels if experience)

We all thought we were on the same money as that was how the job was advertised...the highest paid was male who blagged it, next in various orders were the three women and lastly the last two men

My point being it may be a mistake to assume you are all the same unless you have actually seen payslips

My second example was in the same company, was due to be promoted, got pregnant and was not given the promotion because "i had a child and would be unhappy leaving it for periods of time" Didnt go back after maternity leave

In one of those workplaces there was a 'Club' that arranged outings, which only the male members of the workforce could go on. That kind of bonding also helps ambitious men to get on.

Also it comes back to socialisation. Boys are encouraged to compete and put themselves forwards. Girls are encouraged to look after the team - I know this is a generalisaition, but I often read on here about bright girls being paired at school with a pupil who is struggling so she can help them, at the expense of excelling in her own right.

In the majority of my workplaces, women have filled the entry-level and mid-range posts but the Directors (or equivalent) are almost all men.

*are assumed to be
sorry

No I'm not sure most women choose not to be promoted.
Most women are assumed they will be the home carer, and are not offered promotion.

Therefore most women (IME) recognise this pattern of being turned down and overlooked, so they back down to allow their partner to pursue the better paid carreer they are unlikely to be granted.

WSWBSWH - I guess what I am saying is that the option of having the always available work all the hours that god sends to try and get to the top, is there for women as well as men. What i see is that more women that men choose to take time out of work for family reasons, in fact hardly any men do it at all.

However, it feels to me (and I may be over simplifying things here) that family and "having the top job" are mutually exclusive. However I don't really feel that women are forced into that role, rather they choose it. I for one wont go to my grave lamenting all the conference calls I missed out on while looking after my kids.

I think fine has a very good point about the pay gap shooting up in the 30s.

I personally think jobs (executive type ones at least) are far too demanding. You are expected to be available pretty much all the time.

I think there needs to be a huge effort to make more part time positions or job shares available. In as many jobs and pay grades as possible.

I will admit to putting my career on hold at the moment. My kids are quite young.
At the moment I'm choosing to stay in an ok job where I get more time with them rather than move.
A move would mean more money, more travel and the job would certainly be more interesting but at the moment it's more important to me to spend time with my kids - interestingly dh is of a similar mind re his career.

But it's not your experiences, or about practices in one company fine, it's about the experience of the class of women as a whole. For each of us individually we may or may not be able to "play the game". I for example was able to take the executive training my organisation offered even though it involved about six weeks in a different city quite easily as dh was a SAHD at the time. For others (male and female) that may not have been possible. There is a strong societal expectation that women should pick up the caring roles (children, elderly parents etc) when needed. Much harder for a woman to say "no" to that than a man.

Perhaps the women in their thirties are all opting out to have babies, or maybe their employers are simply assuming that they will opt out and not giving them the opportunity in the first place. Plenty of women find on returning to work after maternity leave that they are put into undemanding roles with little opportunity to excel despite having "leaned in" all their working lives. They then often drop out of executive type careers because challenging that type of hidden sexism is very difficult.

My personal experience is that if you want to "play the game" and make the appropriate noises and make yourself available, it doesn't matter whether you are male or female. Perhaps my experience is not typical, or indeed my industry is not (although without giving myself away it is one of the largest companies in the world in a "male dominated" field with a female CEO). So when i look around my office and think of the outrage often expressed on here about women being paid much less than men for the same job...I don't see it.

Women in their 30s earn 8k a year less, the authors of the study suggesting that this is because the men are being promoted and the women are not

Presumably because they are taking themselves out of the market in the Fine suggests.

This year in Scotland the number of newly admitted female solicitors exceeded men. It will be interesting to see how that pans out to partner level over the next few years.

Sorry, that was to fine not nooka

You're also missing the full detail of that Press association pay study. Women in their 20s earn about 1k a year more than men. Women in their 30s earn 8k a year less, the authors of the study suggesting that this is because the men are being promoted and the women are not.

The pay gap decreased by 0.2% last year, and is more extreme at more senior levels (and no significant change since 1997) with women often just completely missing at the top. I'd love to think that in 20 years time that would not be the case, but I doubt very much that things will radically change. Even women that don't have children are paid less than men so the 'it's all your fault' narrative doesn't ring true to me.

I've been lucky and had a good career (so far!) with no discrimination apart from irritating comments when I first started out. However in industry leadership meetings I am always part of a very small minority. Things are far from equal now and they aren't moving very fast.

Not quite. The issue is that the gendered female role can be imposed upon you whether you accept it or not. A very trivial example - I used to work in very male-dominated industries. The expected me to pour the tea at meetings. I did not oblige. Didn't stop them expecting.

Why do gender roles exist though ? I get a bit prickly when people speak of it as if it's some mean trick that someone played on us, to fool us all into being oppressed by men.

I think there is no question that one gender role is valued less by a capitalist society than another, but the good news is that women are not forced to play the traditionally "female" role if they don't want to. But the thing is that many women DO want to play it, we say that there is nothing wrong with liking "feminine" things, and being "girly" - so what is wrong then ?

Young women these days (i.e. under 30) do not get paid less than men, they get paid more, so i think it'll be interesting to see whether in 20 years time this really does all amount to nothing as many on this board are telling us it absolutely will.

I am actually quite optimistic, I think the stats (and own experience) prove that if you are a young capable and ambitious woman, you can expect to earn at least the same as men. If you choose the "feminine" gender role and take a long time off work to raise children and are not available to travel at the drop of a hat because you are primary carer etc - you will not earn the same as men (or women) who are not bound this way. If men choose the historically feminine gender role then it will affect them.

So the issue would actually appear to be an assumption that you will follow the gendered female role because you are biologically female ?

I do not think it is possible to be a feminist and NOT reject gender.

Me too, Vestal.

A critique of identity replacing reproductive labour as a central theory in feminism is here:

libcom.org/library/i-am-woman-human-marxist-feminist-critique-intersectionality-theory-eve-mitchell

Swan, you wrote this earlier:

'While you're at work, you're a worker - until you go home. While you're doing things for or with your children, you're a parent - until they're at school or otherwise out of your hair. While you're discussing women's issues, you're feminist - until you start talking about something else. But when are you a woman? All the time? Biologically yes, presumably. But what things do you do with the conscious knowledge that you are a woman? Being gendered as a woman (your given name, the way you look, dress, etc.) presents the illusion that everything you do, you do as a woman. But is that true for how you see yourself?'

That is pretty much the perfect description of what left wing people call alienated labour. Each part of living has been replaced by a specific work role, and you are then only entitled to consider yourself to be each of those things when you are carrying out those roles. Those roles then coalesce into the idea that parent, woman, worker are some form of identity that has to be performed.

Explanation of what is meant by women are the reproductive class is below. It is the underlying theory of most left wing feminism:

'A separation of production and reproduction. Along with commodity production came a separation between production and reproduction. To be clear, “reproduction” does not solely refer to baby making. It also includes meeting the many various needs we have under capitalism, from cooking food and cleaning the home, to listening to a partner vent about their shitty day and holding their hand, to caring for the young, sick, elderly and disabled members of society.

As capitalism developed, generally speaking, productive (value-producing) labor corresponded to the wage, and reproductive labor was unwaged (or extremely low waged), since in appearance it produced no surplus value for the capitalist. This separation, characterized by the wage, took on a specific gendered form under capitalism. Women were largely excluded from productive sphere and therefore did not receive a wage for the reproductive work they did. This gave men a certain amount of power over women, and created antagonisms within the class based on a gendered division of labor. Silvia Federici, in Caliban and the Witch, calls this the “patriarchy of the wage” (97-100).'

(That was following Lass's post)

Transvestite too.
I asked my mum when I was about 5 years old about a person on our street who was balding, was blatantly an aging man but they wore high heels and a long skirt.

She explained in a "live and let live" way they were simply a transvestite, and that makes them happy.

Now it seems we actually have to all pretend these people are actually real women.

I'm all for live and let live, but let's not all fall into a rabbit hole in the process.

The reason trans is being brought up by me is because the whole notion of gender identity has come from trans politics.

Prior to that, gender meant socially constructed roles, treatment and behaviours of men and women.

I think it has become pretty much impossible to talk about any feminist issue because the word gender, which was a really important way of distinguishing between biological sex and socially constructed gender roles, behaviour, and treatment, no longer has a clear meaning.

So I don't know if this thread is about identity. I didn't think I was. I really am not interested in people's sense of identity.

It is incredibly frustrating because I suspect we are saying very, very similar things. But because of the emergence of this idea that gender is an identity I no longer understand what people mean by abolish gender.

Following from When's question when did transsexual became transgender?

Are the terms synonymous?

Except maybe if you define gender completely different from how everyone else does

If I'm honest I'm often not sure what people mean when they say gender. Do they mean gender stereotypes, gender identity (or sometimes even biological sex).

I wonder if my feelings towards the 'how do you identify' crap have gone beyond the rational. Yesterday I was working on a sexual assault procedure for my university, so I was looking at examples from other universities to copy/adapt. There was a really helpful trauma centred approach document from the University of California, which I read with a lot of interest but the demographic form attached to it used the 'how do you identify' approach and it really really pissed me off. Something like 95% of victims of sexual violence are women or girls, and I think almost 100% of accused are men. Why even in a context which is about sex is gender identity considered king? And then used so badly, given that you can tick that you identify as female. Grr