Should women be allowed to do everything men do?

[Hullygully]

Talk to me about equality.

sparklymommy - see I did come back at mum/sister with the facts about pink having been boys colour etc. etc. They both told me I was blatantly wrong! (I know i'm not!)

Hully I love your question, 'Should women be allowed to do everything men do?'

As a women I have noticed in the workplace that women wait for permission to do something while men rarely ask for permission, will do what they think is right and get heaps of praise.

I think it is important for women to be women but also understand they are working in a system created by men. If you want do something you don't need to ask permission. Just do it.

The armed forces are a different case and I find it interesting when talking to my brother. There are women in the SAS and they are often beyond enemy lines. He would like to see more women within the Army asking for front line experience. Obviously I batted him over the head and told him that no one was going to ask for something they have been told isn't an option so he now makes a point to ask every women he commands if they want to move into a front line role. A couple of have said yes and my brother has worked with them to get them into the front line roles that are available. With my brother it was important that I challenge him to change his behaviour.

Based on conversations with my brother I think the concern is that the physical requirements are too tough for many men and if allowed into front line roles there would be a female equivalent physical requirements which were lesser. My brother has said that the UK needs to look to Israel to see how women can effectively operate on the front line, however, politically that isn't going to happen.

'I need to perfect the smile and nod smile and nod I think.'

Except when you want to feed her a line in order to watch her get all aeriated and flustered and filled with cognative dissonance.
Hully gives lessons in that, she has a black belt in it.

I know a boy why Caught The Gay from sitting on a swing after a boy in a pink T-shirt had sat on it.

mmmerangue THE HORROR!

He lives in the 1960's, by the way.

I guess I was very lucky, as both my parents were feminists, I never heard the concept that I couldn't do something because I was female, until far to late for me to entertain it as a concept, I just laughed when anyone tried to mention it, in conjunction with anything that involved me.

I (and siblings) was rased globe trotting in many different cultures, My mother from a long line of feminists, was climbing routes that no men (some have yet to be climbed by anyone else) ever had before she had me, (she climbed pregnant and with me strapped into the top of her rucksack as a baby and toddler), both parents are scientists.

I chopped wood, rebuilt engines, constructed, engineered, drove tractors,extreme sport, given total unquestioned freedom, science , maths education , live off the land and self-sufficiency ,solo sailing, solo walking/climbing before I was ten, never once was told or shown by a parent that there were gender roles in life, my father did everything except breast feed.

Being as I can design, build from foundations up,((I operate a JCB), wire, plumb, joinery, plaster, stone and block work), a house, lift more than my own body weight (5 10 and built like BSH) above my head, do more one hand pull ups than my age, carry three bags of sand up a ladder, I don't think I will be asking any of my crew to open a jar any day soon.

I feel such a failure that my children are going to be faced with the same level of limited tedious stupidity thinking that the generations before have, it is so fucking boring.

I have a DH who has no concept of gender roles, my children do everything, my daughter as happy on a chop saw as her brother are in the kitchen,

Only fuck feminists (male and female), save having to put up with boring tedious stupid thinking in your life.

My apologies Hully I thought you were having a joke. Women on Submarines eh? Whatever next?

read the replies this woman gets when she asks about becoming a SAT diver

here it touches on,

As a commercial diving company owner, I have employed one female diver, doing a civils inspection job in a dock culvert. The only criteria I would apply are:
Can the diver effectively and safely rescue a large, fully kitted diver from the water as a standby diver on a potentially hazardous civils site or as surface crew
Can the diver do this job as well as anyone else.
Is the diver strong enough and fit enough to do the job in general ( lifting & setting up kit from container/van, use of heavy tools/rigging).
Does the kit fit the diver.
Do I have to spend any extra money on this diver for safety or welfare?
If the answers to these questions are not favourable... Well there are loads of divers on the beach waiting for work. These are requirements I would expect to be met by ALL divers (I have run off plenty of male divers for various reasons) and I see no sense in working around them for the sake of brownie points for positive discrimination.

Not many companies if any will allow women to go into a saturation chamber with men.

We need people like you on the sub

quotre, indeed. I hope mumnetters look at how they bring up daughters. Have yo bought your daughter a penknife? Have you shown her how to make a bow and arrow? Has she made fire outside with you? Not surprisingly in their 20s my daughters are doing pretty well in careers not in small part because of their feminist upbringing.

(I have also this week started building works (being done for me I am afraid mostly by men... but never mind) on my island and a lot of the skills I use there are fun for all humans, not just men. A few pictures although only showing a very small wall so far for the one room hovel...
www.flickr.com/photos/2013ph2013/sets/72157634080107413/ )

I am another one whose father was very involved. He hoovered the house in the 60s. With the babies who were bottle fed he did all the night feeds to give my mother a rest. He put us to bed and did stories each night - my parents tended to split up so one did the girls and the other our brother. It is not true that in the 60s where were no men in feminist marriages chipping in as much as women and being fair. They certainly existed.

I forgot you had an island Xenia, would you mind awfully if I visited in the sub?

No, Xenia, I haven't brought my daughters knives or made fires with them. I have however brought them up with the values of a dyed in the wool lifelong lefty feminist who spent her youth Objecting To Things, and have produced two lefty feminists in my turn so really I'm not worried.

It is possible to find a photo online of DD2 aged two wearing a Fawcett Society T-shirt in the FS mag.

I can't come on your sub, Hully, as am lefty peacenik type who spent youth Objecting To Subs.

Xenia has an island?
Who knew?

My daughter has a penknife and has made fires!

She also made a coffee table from scratch when she was 10. You wouldn't want to sit near it as all the nails stick out and it's a bit lethal and she's not very interested in finishing things properly...but she did it all on her own with grim determination.

Her and her brother also made a two storey tree house together using power tools.

Can I have an award of some sort?

You'd like my sub, we burn patchouli and sing songs of an evening.

Who's going to be doing the allowing? Will there be some sort of committee? Will I be allowed to join it?

yes my daughter has a penknife and makes fires - but wouldnt that be v dangerous in a submarine?

Given that the first Women's Liberation Conference wasn't held till 1968 and the Equal Pay Act for around a decade later, I think it's fair to say that the 1960s were not overall a time of great gender equality.

It's only by the Struggles of Wimmin, sisters, that we are where we are today.

motherinferior - you do realise that women in the UK were better off, in terms of educational attainment and career opportunities, before WW2 than in the 1950s and 1960s? Progression has not been linear.

I have just been studying the suffragists and suffragettes with ds for his gcse and no they absolutely were not bonsoir.

I hope there is plenty of bunting and lots of cupcakes in your sub, Hully. So as we wimmin will find it appropriately welcome.

I really don't get cupcakes, all claggy and sickly. So no, we don't have those. We have wasabi peas.