to not be insistant that the sexes are equal?

[elmoandella]

why do we have to be equal in all aspect of life??

we are not the same.

women are better at some of life's tasks. men are better at others.

obviously there are exceptions to this.(women with high levels of testerone for eg. tend to have a more "male" attitude and way of doing things)

i was raised by a liberal mother who did everything for herself. raised 5 kids while running a business. with no childcare and as a single parent for the most of that time we were growing up.

i was encouraged to do follow lead and be successful.

however, it seemed a very unhappy life.

i have to ponder the idea that perhaps she would have had a much more satisfactory life if she hadn't been so determined to be equal and get her own way.

is it really so terrible to just accept women may sometimes, in certain fields of work, get paid less.

I also dont see why so many women strive to equal there partner in pay.

what is wrong with your other half being the greater earner. it is half the battle then when you go for maternity leave. you will be able to relax a little and enjoy it. than worrying that the main salary is cut drastically as the female is the higher earner.

i know a few on here will want to flame me. but i would actually like to see a reasonable debate on why so many women are so determined to do everything.

tell me why you want equality so badly.

convert me!!

Bella, I'm sorry but i find your view to be quite an ignorant one. Alot of employers don't not offer part time hours because they can't be bothered to work out away around it, some jobs genuinly cannot be done on a part time basis. Without trying to sound patronising, which i probably will, so appologise in advance, but imo, until you have been on the employers side of the fence in a small business, you have no idea how difficult it can be to manage staff/find good staff to employ/work around all the time off staff want etc. Alot of employers are made out to be the big, bad, boss who just can't be bothered to work out a solution but i can tell that is not the case most of the time.

My dp did split a job in half once from someone who left. He found a morning replacement straight away but for the afternoon replacement it was a nighmare. He went through several different people. It used to work like this;

He put an ad in the paper, costing £60 a time for 4 lines of words, i would have to sit in at home all day on the Thursday (when the ad was printed in the paper) to take phone calls and give out interview times etc.

Dp would wait behind at the shop or give up a Satuarday for the interview. Half the people wouldn't bother to turn up and there were usually only about 2 who were suitable for the job or that even seemed keen.

The person would start on Monday, i would have to go in to train them up for a few days, finding childcare when i did this. I would spend days training them only for them to either not bother turning up again or for them to turn out to be useless at the job. Very frustrating.

So dp would find himself repeating the cycle again and this went on for months. So when he was a body short, his staff were working their butts off to cover and dp would be doing a 14 hour day as opposed to a 12 hour one.

We did find an afternoon girl in the end who is now off work on ssp due to un-work related stress. So we are still a body short and you can't win. My dp does everything he can to accommodate his staffs need and quite often gets kicked in the teeth.

I wouldn't normally go off like this but i know what drama my dp goes through as an employer so for you Bella, to suggest that employers don't offer part time work simply because they can't be bothered to find solutions is ludicrous.

I can only speak for small businesses here as that's all i have experienced. For bigger companys it's a whole other ball game.

What exactly has 'swung too far the other way'?

From the government website: 'You have the right to ask for flexible working - not the right to have it.'

If flexible working doesn't work for a particular role (and I fully accept that it doesn't for all jobs) then the employer has the right to turn the application down.

How exactly is that 'swung too far'? There may even be cases where some people make unrealistic requests but I don't see how that's relevant. If the burden of childcare were more evenly shared between the sexes then this wouldn't be a debate about women, it'd be a discussion about childcare.

Aren't we supposed to be talking about equality?

MsSparkle, that does sound tough - maybe you need to try some new ways of advertising? (No idea what they might be but e.g. jobcentre, that website that matches mothers with part-time jobs...)

I agree MsSparkle. The employer is an easy target - it's a cop out to just blame the 'big bad employer'. The fact is, most employers want the best person for the job. As Xenia mentioned earlier, when you employ someone who is excellent, you are far more likely to want to be flexible where possible to hang onto them.

I am not the empoyer, but I am in a management position in the public sector, and I have regular responsibility for interviewing and appointing people. I am absolutely prepared to consider any request for flexible working within the legislative framework for flexible working, and I have actually bent over backwards on some occasions to accommodate others who have specific family needs. But I am also going to be honest about where flexible working doesn't work because it isn;t in the best interests of the organisation (in my case, a school).

It pisses me off therefore, when people like LB make sweeping generalisations that people like me 'can't be bothered' or 'aren't imaginative enough' to accommodate flexible working. What a crock of shite.

I agree, it does always seem to be the mother who has to leave work early to collect her child who is ill. Rarely ever the father. So this then makes women look bad from an employers eyes and makes them less desired to hire women. If childcare/responsibilties were shared more equally between the mother and father, employers wouldn't favour hiring men rather than women.

Dp says he has tried advertising through the job center before but he said unfortunatly they always send over unenthusiastic people who only come for the interview to make it look like they are looking for a job

dh and I tried to take turns whenever ds was ill - but dh's employer REALLY objected and used to moan about 'can't your wife do it'. Swine.

Dp says he has tried advertising through the job center before but he said unfortunatly they always send over unenthusiastic people who only come for the interview to make it look like they are looking for a job

There must be other routes as well as the local paper, though. Where do experienced shop assistants hang out? What do they read? Which websites do they go on?

And it might get easier for your dh with the recession - any way he could find some of the redundant workers from Woolies, for e.g.? Contact local branch of USDAW, if it still exists, to see if they know of anyone?

Dp currantly has his shop up for sale. The whole financial crisis came about just after he put it on the market. He has done it mainly due to ill health but he also done it because he fed up of all the regulations and rules that are put apon employers these days. Not the best time to sell but if he doesn't he will end up dead in the next ten years.

The whole equality of sexes argument always makes me think of the episode of Friends where Rachel and Ross interview a male nanny. Chandler and Ross believe it is wrong and keep sayings "its like a woman being..." but cannot complete the sentence until Joey later comes up with "penis model".

I dont want to be a man in a dress, I'm not a raging feminist. But I do believe that men and women are equal, but they dont have to be the same iyswim.

DH and I have a good partnership. We earn similar wages, we can both cook and we can both do diy stuff in the house. We are both equal in our parenting with our child.

It does, however, make me sad that in the wider world, if I did DH's job, and he did mine, he would earn more than I do, and I would earn less than he did (compared to what we actually get) which I think is wrong. There was an article in Glamour magazine about the differences in pay between men and women, there was about 10k different in the line of work I do, and from what I can remember, there was only one job where women earnt more.

I work for myself. I earn what I charge. I am very valuable so I charge a lot. The personalities of some women are such they do themselves down and don't ask for pay rises. It's in their genes not to do so. They feel lucky anyone is prepared to employ them rather than think they're God's gift to the work place. I'm not sure we'll easily get that to change but certainly women on here need (a) to say tough to the husband who says his boss won't let him have time off work and make him take it or get him to hire the agency nanny and pay her for that day and (b) throw the toilet brush at the man who thinks he's fit at weekends only to play football with his son whilst women clean the loos and (c) ensure it's the man not the woman who shoots their career to pieces by asking for flexible working. Loads of really positive things women can do to help themselevs and ensure we get to a position where employer says - oh no, it's a man with a small baby who'll be off a lot with a baby and sees a woman and says - great she'll have a man who will be the one who takes the time off when the children are ill so let's hire the woman in preference etc.. Moral duty on women to effect these changes really for their own good.

I certainly agree we are equal but different. I also think most women and men have not a clue of the problems their employment requests cause particularyl for small businesses and there's a total mutual misunderstanding. They see employer as rich person with loads of free time to make the workplace suit them rather than often is the case small business almost gonig under with the boss earning less than some of the workers even and working twice as hard and businesses almost going under when staff leave for whatever reason. But I choose not to employ anyone which is brilliant and I am so lucky and one reason is I don't want people going off sick or not pulling their weight etc etc

I know if my dp was paid hourly for the hours he does, he would be earning double, if not more of what he takes home.

"equal but different" is the line the apartheid regime in S Africa used to justify the oppression of non-whites.

Any one individual is different from another individual. I am no more like Mrs Smith than I am Mr Brown. Gender doesn't predict anything about the ability, capability, talent, likes or dislikes of a person beyond the basic biological facts of reproduction. It doesn't even predict much about the human body beyond general trends - women tend to be shorter than men but there are plenty of short men and tall women. Women tend to live longer but there are women who die younger than men.

I am no more likely to be good at cooking than my dh is to be good at DIY. Basing decisions on what people like or are good at on their gender is stupid and wrong.

Agree with your second paragraph xenia.

I can see your point in the first paragraph, and I'm glad it works for you, but the danger is in thinking that's how the world works for everyone.

I am good at what I do. I am a teacher. I cannot charge what 'I am worth', because you would find it impossible to put a price on inspiring a child, making a difference to their life etc. There are also public sector pay scales which dictate what I earn anyway!

Yes, I could branch off into private industry, be self employed as a consultant or whatever. Or go for a cushty job in private education where I wouldnt earn a lot more but could have an easier life (been there, done that, lovely in lots of ways, but too much that was unprofessional IMO)

But for most people, what makes life worth living is more than just a big pay cheque. I believe in what I do, and it makes me happy.

I am a 'raving feminist'.

Oh, and I look pretty damn good in a dress too.

I can testify to the truth of both those statements.

sorry the threads gotten long so i've missed out a lot of it. but thought i'd add a male point of view. surely equality isn't about forcing everyone to be exactly the same, but about giving them the choices to be as similar or as different as they want to be regardless of gender (obviously inside the law).so that everyone has equal opportunity to pursue what they believe will make them happy.

what i don't get is people looking for inequality or the chance to shout mysoginy at things which have very little to do with sexism. i.e. a thread on here giving out about children not being allowed in an academic library amounting to sexism. or complaints about privately funded male only golf clubs (which we hd a big thing about over here in ireland). when you don't get similar complaints about women only gyms or the womens marathon.

Agree with your first par, second is a bit more complicated. The academic library thing - person who objected was being plain snooty and actually if a quiet, well-behaved child is not allowed it is indirect discrimination because women are far more likely to have childcare responsibilities than men. Single-sex gyms are presumably because people don't want to flash their bodies in front of the opposite sex (I can see it appealing to certain cultures, in particular). Yet I can't see any justification for male-only golf clubs - are they worried women will beat them, or something? Especially objectionable as a lot of business is discussed over golf, lot of business relationships surround it.

I am not speaking from a position of ignorance, I have had experience of small businesses and I am fully aware of the problems. I acknowledged in my post that it is difficult for small businesses, particularly in a time of transition. But just because it is difficult, that is not a reason to say "bugger it, it's too difficult, let's not do it". Change is difficult. Being a small business is difficult. It always will be frankly, whatever the employment law is. That's no reason to oppose re-jigging the marketplace so that it is more suited to the majority of families. Nothing is ever perfect - we will never have a world that suits everyone. All we can do is try and work towards one that suits most of us. And most of us have children and want to have enough time and energy to bring them up properly, want equality and respect in our relationships, and want to earn our living. How to balance that so that the majority benefit, is a huge undertaking, but it's an undertaking that has to be... er, undertaken.

oooh mayorquimby, you're very brave to risk incurring the wrath of the man-haters!!

Actually most people on MN are fairly sane, but there are just a few who would like to chop your balls off!!

LittleBella - who exactly on this thread has said

"bugger it, it's too difficult, let's not do it".

(apart from you!!)

Who are these man-haters then?

To mis-quote Rebecca West, "I only know that people call me a man-hater whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat"

What a strange post, violethill. I assume you're not implying that being a feminist equals being a man hater.