My teen daughter has burst out crying and gone upstairs because we were discussing Maya Forstater

Just ignore it. They hear so much rubbish on social media and at school. It's our duty to bring a scientifically based opinion to the table.

According to Liz Truss at the Women and Equalities Select Committee the Gender Pay Gap is made up of:

1. Women and girls choosing less well paid jobs and careers than men and boys - so current big push to get girls into STEM which is generally a higher paid career choice

1. The Maternity Penalty

1. Sexism - however this was very much 3rd to the first 2.

Not least as bringing in more money would seem to me to be a good reason, and a man might bring in more money because it suits them to get pissed with clients 4 nights a week, whereas the equivalent woman is rushing home because she cares about her kids!
Well this is the whole problem. If bringing in money is how success is measured, and its dependent on evening client entertaining, and society tolerates men being absent from family life more than women (by which I mean that more women than men take responsibility for care), then women can never be equal.

At least two of those barriers are structural and could be tackled by cultural change - less correlation between success and out of hours work; less tolerance of men being absent fathers.

@JediGnot The sad thing is that tackling the inequality in pay caused by women taken career breaks for kids is a much harder nut to crack than structural sexism in the workplace. Sweden has tried offering equal parental leave entitlement for women and men, but nevertheless most men do not take time off and so the pay and promotion differential remains. It's hard to know what the answer is. It is a burning question for more enlightened employers, who know they are losing or under utilising a great deal of female talent.

[quote RadandMad]@JediGnot Forgot to say most companies and organisations have to report their pay gap data and it is illegal under the Equal Pay Act to pay women less for doing the same job as a man without a good reason, such as more seniority/years in the job.[/quote]
Just googled Gender pay gap needs reporting by companies with over 250 staff.

also "There are 8,000 large businesses (defined as businesses with more than 250 employees), accounting for 0.1% of businesses but 39% of employment and 48% of turnover, as the following chart shows."

So, the vast majority of businesses DO NOT have to report the gender pay gap, and only 39% of staff are covered. Just fact checking you!

I'd also be suspicious that "doing the same job as a man without a good reason" means much in a lot of companies. Not least as bringing in more money would seem to me to be a good reason, and a man might bring in more money because it suits them to get pissed with clients 4 nights a week, whereas the equivalent woman is rushing home because she cares about her kids!

Pettiness aside, I take your point - you're up on this stuff more than I am.

@JediGnot Forgot to say most companies and organisations have to report their pay gap data and it is illegal under the Equal Pay Act to pay women less for doing the same job as a man without a good reason, such as more seniority/years in the job.

@JediGnot According to the ONS, the gender pay gap remained close to zero for full-time employees aged under 40 years but was over 10% for older age groups. Most of the time this is due to women taking time off to have children, thereby missing out on promotions, etc.

I sat through a training session for PREVENT and they talked about this inability to question the narrative and how people who have been targeted for radicalisation can't deal with questions they don't know how to answer because it doesn't fit the core belief. If it's off script, it's shut down.

Some TRAs could benefit from intervention as their belief in genderism has led them to terrorise women.

The BBC is currently laughing and making fun of a bunch of guys dressed as old women to do a charity scooter ride.

Surely that's transphobic?

Seriously though, does this ridiculing of people crossing gender norms contribute to why people feel the need to be so 'one side or the other'?

@ChattyLion
“ we don’t have equality yet for very very many groups in society, including women, people of colour, people with disabilities, people who are same-sex attracted and many many more.”

True, but one of the latest popular notions is that “cis” women, especially white women, are extremely privileged, especially over transwomen. The only inequality that’s fashionable for young people to champion right now is “trans rights”.

I do hope you’re right and that the penny will drop for more young people.

@SnoopyLights That’s very interesting. Explains why the usual responses to reasonable questions on Twitter is to repeat mantras, throw insults, say you are full of hate, then block you.

As long as they do that there will be no opportunity for debate and discussion.

That's really interesting, and fits my perception of how those with this kind of cognitive dissonance behave, and how angry and evasive they are.

@QuentinBunbury

My 14 yo told me I'm a transphobe and people like me are why gay people get persecuted when I asked her to define a woman It is totally cognitive dissonance, you ask a question they can't answer without betraying a core belief (e.g. TWAW) and to deal with the discomfort they shout and run away. Hard though

Every bit of that training session was ticking boxes for me about the TRA narrative and the total ban on any deviation or slightest questioning of it.

Not in my case. Me and DH trained at the same time. I took no career break, yet DH was advanced time and again whilst doing the same job. It got to the point it was such a wide gap that when we did decide to have children it was a no brainer who should take the 'hit'.

My favourite claim came from Alex the pediatrician who was adamant that sex was a spectrum. He later apologised and admitted it wasn't a spectrum after his university professor expressed her sadness that she didn't teach him well enough.

We discussed that fella here https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3975181-Paediatrician-claiming-sex-is-a-spectrumm^

I missed that

If you understood sex differentiation then you would know that "an XY woman giving birth" does not disprove the sex binary.

Sex chromosomes are the starting point of sex differentiation.

Male-bodied and female-bodied people are the end point of sex differentiation.

Which is why an XY-woman giving birth is neither impossible nor proof that sex is a spectrum. An individual born with complete gonadal dysgenisis (the XY-woman in question) has a female body and so falls firmly on the female side of the human sex binary. FYI, there is a total of one (1!) reported case of an XY-woman becoming pregnant unassisted in the medical literature to date. This is extremely rare precisely because sex differentiation in a XY-woman which has not followed the usual pathway that more than 99% of XY- individuals follow, does not normally result in a fertile woman able to get pregnant unassisted.

And yes, there have been various people claiming that sex is a spectrum. Invariably they fail to demonstrate the veracity of their claims and are easily disproven. I guess you didn't see that.

My favourite claim came from Alex the pediatrician who was adamant that sex was a spectrum. He later apologised and admitted it wasn't a spectrum after his university professor expressed her sadness that she didn't teach him well enough.

We discussed that fella here www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3975181-Paediatrician-claiming-sex-is-a-spectrum

We pretty much discussed and/or rebutted every one of the popular threads or articles claiming that sex is a spectrum here on FWR. I'm sure we can link you to the Mumsnet thread if you tell us which Twitter thread impressed you so much.

Also - I seem to recall seeing this but I don't remember where or how old it is, but if the male partner tends to be a little older than the female one, he is likely to be farther on in his career when they have kids.

I discovered my son had called a woman a ‘terf’ on twitter and I let him know exactly how angry I was about him using a slur on a woman to dismiss their point of view and how that made me feel as his mother. He apologised and says he’s changed his view, if I find he hasn’t I know I’ll regret the sacrifices and hard work I’ve put into trying to be a good mother. I don’t expect him to have the same view as me and I know he doesn't in various other areas but I expect as a minimum for him to treat women with respect and some modicum of understanding of the impact of social pressure and sex differences on women.

@ErrorCode if sex is a spectrum, what's the variable on the x-axis that we're being distributed along please?

"Men generally only earn more because their wives take career breaks and their career stalls."

Are you sure about that? I thought that other factors were also at play -

(1) Men more likely to be in dangerous and physically exhausting jobs that not everyone can or is willing to do. Women more likely to be in shamefully undervalued caring jobs.

(2) Sex discrimination meaning two similar office workers might earn different money, with the man earning more, even before either has had kids.

(3) Maybe others.

This video by Plebity is good - it's a demonstration of the 'asking questions' technique, for discussing this topic

They have some other great youtube videos too. They've both been 'cancelled' for daring to speak about this stuff!

That video on another recent thread is great -

If I was OP I'd make DD an offer. Choose any video she wants to explain why TRAs are right, maybe even a few short videos. Her choice as to which videos get watched first, but you'll watch the above GC video together, and her videos of choice and then you will each explain what you agree with in the other's video(s), and what you disagree with and why. And if it comes down to facts you wil both try to go away and try to evidence the facts using data from reliable sources.