to hope for gender equality?

[LostMyPants]

I would like the genders to be treated equally. I do not think there should be events, jobs or places that folk are excluded from on the basis of their gender.

I do not agree with men-only golf clubs or social clubs. Similarly, I do not agree with women-only meetings or shortlists (e.g. for parliament). I do not think either gender should receive 'special treatment' purely on the basis of their gender.

AIBU?

I don't think women are banned from some golf clubs because of an historical bias against men and an effort to balance this injustice.

The problem is the very act of treating women equally is seen as awarding them special treatment.

The Labour Party, for example, have a National Women's Conference before the party's main conference starts. That's not equality. That is special treatment.

I think you mean sex rather than gender.

it is because we do not live in an equal society that we still need to occasionally have women only conferences, meetings and so on

YANBU. It's 2014 FFS.

I fail to see what is wrong with eg all men meetings for survivors of testicular cancer or all female BF support groups.

Find it strange TBH that some people do.

If we don't allow things simply for women then it ends up being men only! Women are disadvantaged. To advantage them leads us to equality.
What your saying is too simplistic. It makes general sense but in a world where men have far more advantages than women it doesn't work. We need to work for equality.

Will people be allowed to do things specific to one sex? eg collect money for ovarian cancer, set up a charity to try and understand and assist with suicide in young men?

That came out wrong - not assist with suicide obv! You know what I mean

If you can show me the outcomes of the women's conference lead to special or preferential treatment for female labour party members by any measure then you may have a point. But I doubt you'll be able to.

Is this a UK plan or a global one?

I do not agree with men-only golf clubs or social clubs

You know there are women only golf clubs and social clubs too yes?

It is more complicated than that surely. For example muslim women might want female only swimming session, women's support groups might have desperate need to be a man free zone. These things are not to do with equality. If the golf club forbids all women, if the swimming pool forbids all men...

One of the problems is that the outward shows of inequality / special treatment are very obvious so everyone can comment on them e.g. men only golf clubs. The fair more serious issue is the subtle inequalities e.g. women assumed to be primary caregivers to children with the consequent effect on their jobs, wage differentials, jobs traditionally done by women being low status etc.

far more serious not "fair"

I used to be a bit "meh" at female shortlists, but after understanding how discriminated against women are generally - especially within politics - I believe we DO need a little bit of this to make stuff more even.

Oh crap, I do mean sex rather than gender. I'm really sorry if that annoyed anyone.

I was a bit leery about positive discrimination until I heard an analogy which chimed with me:

Imagine a race where half of the runners are given an accidental head start. When the other runners join the race, should they just start at the starting line and hope that they can catch up, or should they be given special dispensation to start from where the other runners have already got to?

That made me think differently about all-female shortlists and positive discrimination to include all under-represented minorities in fact. I've yet to hear a convincing argument against it, but am prepared to be enlightened.

There are cases where a gender bias is inevitable, purely because of the subject matter, as referenced up-thread, and where there is a good reason (by which I don't mean 'historically we have discriminated against this group, and we want to be able to continue to do so') then common sense should prevail. However, in areas such as politics, public service, management etc, I think promoting the groups who have traditionally suffered discrimination should be encouraged.

This illustration is a similar point to DoJo's.

I'm interested in liberation of women from patriarchal oppression and I'm interested in measures that will lead to that. The outcome should be equality. Those measures might not be "equal".

Given we've had thousands of years of women being subordinate to men, I'm not unduly massively concerned with making sure that nothing we do to rectify that situation has a negative impact on any man. This is what's usually described as "going to far" or "wanting women to be privileged over men".