Minor rant - shouldn't watch the telly!

[ISNT]

The one show

Just had a thing saying that women's pensions are much lower than men's and double the amount of women as men have no pension provision whatsoever.

Report started by saying about how the old idea that women aren't any good with money (not heard that one but anyway) isn't true but now we've seemingly got equality, how is this happening?

Aha, I thought, they will obviously talk about

• Women doing lower paid work than men in general
• The gender pay gap (different money for same work)
• The hammering to women's pensions and earning potential if they have children and take more than 3 seconds out of work
• The fact that until recently women usually didn't qualify for a full state pension because of not enough NI cont due to time out raising children

Did they talk about that? Oh no. First they said that women only want to spend money on things that are tangible. So pensions are meaningless to them.

Then I missed two mins while I looked at a gossip thread so they may have said all the above in that section... but... I doubt it as when I tuned back in they were talking about women shopping excessively to fill emotional voids in their lives, then they talked about women having lots of debt due to frivolous shopping, then they rounded it up by saying that whether the "purses were prada or gucci, women had to remember they held the strings".

How will we ever get anywhere, when lazy gender stereotypes are propogated in this way, and the real deep problems are not even mentioned???

very good!

Feel free to use it / bits of it, anyone else who wants to complain!

Honestly I was like this

The worst thing is that if they hadn't said the utterly outrageous thing ie that pensions are meaningless to women as they only understand things that are tangible, I probably wouldn't have batted an eyelid. And the rest of it was awful.

Just shows how far away we are from where we want to be

I suggest people don't use any of your actual wording -- if lots of identically or similarly-worded complaints come in they tend to get disregarded or at least discounted as being part of an "orchestrated campaign". Individual wording is very important (doesn't need to be very long as they should be well aware of what the issues are by now).

going to complain now.

Fair enough prof! Just trying to make it easier for people.

I'd say if it's between taking things off what has been written, or not writing at all as you don't know what to say, do the former. Lots of lobbying groups use standard template letters, perhaps as the lesser evil.

Well done ISNT. I have just now watched it on the iPlayer and sat there cringing.

To top off an evening of complete sexist shite on the telly, did anyone see last night's Apprentice? (Well no, you're probably all a bit more high brow than me!)

how far into the prog is it? I have found the prog on IPlayer but don't want to sit thro whole thing
thanks

Mmm, yes, but they've had the detailed issues pointed out at length now so "What a load of sexist claptrap that was on the One Show item about women's pensions." would probably do fine if someone doesn't know what to say. They'll tally up the total number of individual complaints they get about the programme segment.

It's not a big issue, but I've had lobbying groups ask me not to use standard template letters before, and WriteToThem has a whole help section on why they block their use. So worth bearing in mind.

Oh is it on iplayer? So people can watch and make their own complaints minds up

I saw the apprentice last night as well. I don't expect anyone to believe me when I say that this is only about the 3rd time I've had the one show on and also don't watch the apprentice, but somehow I managed to take in both last night. And yes what a load of shit that was. When they said the ones who had made the dreadful advert had won I switched over in disgust and ranted at DH. The whole thing was just so appallingly sexist wasn't it. From the man picking the woman for the advert that he fancied and then have her snuggle on the sofa with him, to the whole 50s premise, to just everything. It was awful. And it won. WTF?

Since when does AS think that alieneating your entire target audience is a successful result?

Re the Apprentice (watch lots of crap on TV ), I thought it was very interesting though that Nick referred to how distasteful their sexist campaign was as did Al. And he did say they just didn't lose to emphasise how crap they were, linking it to their sexism.

I think the article was maybe the second one on the One Show last night.

I only ever watched the first series of The Apprentice, but that was appallingly sexist. The by-far-the-most-competent candidate was a woman eliminated by AS just before the final stages for no reason at all so far as I or anyone else could see (his advisors just sat there looking like this --> ). It really just did seem as though he was put off by female candidates who didn't fit into his own preconceived ideas of "women in business". Very icky. I haven't bothered to watch it since.

found it, it's about 14 mins in

Maybe we should start our own channel with lots of non anything-ist programming.

No-one would watch it

'Are women hopeless at controlling their finances?'
'I've got three sisters and I can absolutely agree with that.'
'Well, there we are.'

QED

the thing about women spending on clothes etc also doesn't mention the fact that women have to spend more on clothes thanks to the s*dding beauty standard that means you will suffer at work for not being well-dressed.

Just watched it again, and whoops it said that for women pensions were "unknown" not "meaningless". A good reason to follow prof layton's advice on writing it yourself!

I didn't watch the programme, obviously, but just reading your OP made me see red. I've sent my complaint

This was my opening line:

WOmen have traditional been the ones to balance the family books. Around the world women's bookeeping skills have kept the children in food and clothing over the centuries and today in many cultures.
Bill-paying, investing and accounting is regarded as "women's work" in numerous countries such as the U.S, Thailand and Japan.

So imagine my surprise when I tuned in to a programme suggesting that women are somehow born with an inability to bookeep, and that this is why they receive less of a pension than men.
Is it just British women who are born with this fiscal handicap? The programme doesn't say.
.

Also I don't know many men who aren't red hot keen on big shopping trips. They are just as susceptible to designer labels, "must have" items and many have very expensive hobbies to boot. The idea that only women shop is ludicrous. Maybe less men get into debt over it because they have higher incomes, rather than to do with an innate superiority in financial matters

I know at least two families where the man has to hand all his wages over to the woman on payday a la the olden days. So they don't piss it all up the wall. Works for them so fine. But it's bollocks to say that women are shit with money and men are great.

Especially when you're talking about pensions, where most young / early middle age people's pensions are through work. So nothing to do with how many shoes people buy and everything to do with why so many less women are accessing their work pensions (or in fact whether they even have them). This is such a complex subject, to see it reduced like that was bizarre. I'm not sure what debt even had to do with the question TBH.

sorry, if that doesn't tie in with what the programme was actually about (seeing as I didn't watch it).
But even if they're scratching their heads at what my complaint letter means it's all good. Keeps them on their toes...

Mine:

In a report about why fewer women have pensions, there was no discussion about the real economic factors that might contribute to this, instead the focus was on women's alleged "reckless and emotional spending" as the root cause. Nor were other generalisations about women, such as that they "tend to like tangible assets" and are unable to cope with abstract concepts like pensions, called into question. If such claims were made about any other group - an ethnic minority perhaps - playing into offensive stereotypes, the producer/editor would rightly be hauled up and told that this was unacceptable. That should be the case here.

When I heard the introduction to the report, I assumed they would be covering some of the core issues, such as problems with NI contributions for women who take time out to raise children, women doing more low-paid work in general, the refusal of some companies to promote women to higher paid positions etc. Instead the report put the blame for their likely poverty in old age on women, essentially arguing that they are too stupid and greedy to plan for the future. I find this grossly offensive and utterly baseless.

The ordinary women interviewed for the report mainly reported that the reason they were not investing in a pension was due to a shortage of money. Yet this was not examined in any further detail, instead the presenter signed off with a totally irrelevant remark about designer handbags, feeding into a common stereotype of women as being superficial and stupid enough to prioritise fashion above their future.

Insults about women being too "emotional" to make sensible choices, and the outrageous claim that women are unable to see the value of intangible things (education for instance - oh wait, more women than men go to university) made this report outdated, sexist and offensive. Moreover it promotes wrong information to women who may be worrying about their future, and instead of being advised, are being told its their fault for over-spending - something that imagine will come as a shock to the nearly 50% of women who have a personal income of less than £100 a week.

I wonder if there is a gender difference in final salary and money purchase pension schemes? it wouldn't surprise me.

DH is still in a final salary scheme, in a very male dominated, strike-happy sort of job. I wouldn't be surprised if they have found it easier to remove the final salary schemes from "women's" jobs than from men's.

what about the massive sex industry. Men spend loadsa money on prostitutes. That money could go on women's pensions instead

done it.
not very polished, but very angry.

Ah, you see, it would all go on women's pensions if the feckless prostitutes didn't rush out and spend it on food pimps rent heating rent designer handbags instead.