Is it possible that we are second best?

[Pinkypoops]

Is it conceivable that the reason women are STILL struggling for equal recognition for their achievements, equal pay, equal respect etc etc is that we are just not as good at a lot of things as men are??
This is a pretty horrifying thought that´s been niggling at the back of my mind for a little while and I REALLY want you lot to convince me otherwise!!

Here´s the deal: I´ve ALWAYS had feminist leanings, stood up for myself, been OUTRAGED whenever anyone has suggested I am in any way inferior or less able to do something based on gender. I was the lone voice at my rather conservative university questioning the status quo, whilst my very intelligent female colleagues (academically, at any rate) would prepare sandwiches for their boyfriends on a Saturday night so they´d have something to stave off the munchies when they staggered back from their drunken boys´nights out. eyeroll
BUT........lately I´m thinking that equality isn´t that straight forward and most of the time it seems we females are out to self-sabotage! Look at all these ridiculous sex-kitten role models that so many girls aspire to be like- one after the other of these female pop stars sells out her integrity and talent to become over-sexed and under-dressed. "Rah rah...girl-power"...my ass! (or rather, HER barely-covered ass!) Their one and only aim seems to be to lay it all out there for men to "come and get it". (Oh gawd...I sound like some prudish Mother Grundy...haha...but SERIOUSLY...can somebody please shut Rihanna and her gurlfriends up??!!)
Yes women are safer drivers as in they have fewer accidents, but my God, I´ve seen some cringey moments with women who just cannot for the love of all things holy park their OWN cars.
And in the work place....we definitely lack the confidence that men have. (I include myself here) I´m in the medical field and I have to be honest....sometimes feminine self-doubt is not at all helpful when it comes to the big decisions. Men are still the top surgeons and it isn´t lack of opportunity as I see it....it´s because they believe in themselves and are prepared to take chances.
And yes, you might say it´s down to conditioning, blah blah...but I think it´s fundamentally testosterone that gives them the edge in so many ways. No matter how much we like to think otherwise, we are sabotaged by our hormones! They make us focus on having babies, being submissive, under-confident and lacking in ambition in our otherwise most productive years.
I´m all ears to hear as many opinions as possible on this!

And ftr, I don't consider Rhianna to be a role model that I aspire to.

MALE pop stars...

I'll just say at this point that my highly successful, confident, outgoing sister told me "that feminism has gone too far with this equality thing"

Yeah, right. What does she think of this sort of thing? And all the shades of discrimination between that and the near-equality some women such as ourselves in western societies enjoy.

And no I don't think we are second best. I am in a traditionally male dominated industry, where female applicants to the degree now outnumber men and perform equally as well, if not better. Women will probably still continue to not progress as far or earn as much, but that is because society still expects them to stay at home and look after the children while their husbands career continue unaffected.

Op according to your posts you are a qualified professional with two dc and a dh. You are a fully grown adult woman and a mother. You should be able to put together a coherent argument and then responses that articulate what you really think and what the real issues are that made you post here. It is very contentious to post how men are better than women on a site mainly for women and to do so with no rationale behind what you are saying comes across (to me anyway) as saying things to simply provoke a response.

If I were to summarise your thoughts it seems to be: men are better at things than women such as parking cars and playing computer games and running the world. This is because of hormones and women have the wrong ones until they are older. Also women are bitchy in the workplace and rhianna dresses provocatively and hasn't coped well with being an incredibly public victim of domestic violence whilst her abuser has resurrected his very successful career so it is women's own fault that they are not equal with men. I am being a bit facetious but it's hard to tell what you mean and what you want to get from this discussion. Rather than being patronising I expect better of a woman than this ill thought out claptrap.

OP, I do know what you mean a little bit when you talk about Rihanna eat al. I despair when I see women willingly objectify themselves. But what you have to remember is that we currently live in a world where a woman is rewarded more for being hot than for being clever or for having integrity.

In a variety of ways women are reminded of the fact that they can be as intelligent as they want but what they will ultimately be judged on is their looks. I am watching set of Youtube lectures at the mo by a fantastic female prof yet the main topic of discussion in the comment section is how hot she is.

More than that women and girls get the message that their intelligence might even hinder them getting a mate, because no one wants to make a man feel emasculated right?

Sometimes I wonder why girls even bother. They've worked so hard to get so far in education yet what do the media and politicians focus on? Boys and their underachievement and how we need to increase quotas for boys entering university. Did those people give a flying shit when it was girls being discriminated against? Does anyone care that these hard working girls will earn less than their male counterparts? No, instead they pee around their ever diminishing territory which basically now consists of science and technology making up new reasons why girls' brains aren't suited to science. It used to be the shape of the pelvis, now it's to do with brain types. Seriously the assault on female self-esteem is constant. It's a bloody wonder we've achieved anything.

Oh dear, I'm late to this, but OP:

No.

HTH.

I work in male dominated industry and it saddens me to see the amount of women who cone and go simply because they cannot cope with the job or cant hack the pace. At redundancy time it is always m women who go f

Oops posted too soon.

It's always the women who are the majority of the people redundant.

I always wonder why then men dominate in more female type industries such as hair dressing, cooking and fashion design. It seems men are usually the best in both female and male dominated industries.

"female type industries such as hair dressing, cooking and fashion design"

Not sure I see any of those as female type industries actually. Society often tells us it's the case, but I'm not sure it's true or that we should hold them out to be such

"Men generally have the advantage of an uninterrupted career. Women often have to make stark choices around the time they have children whether to continue to work ft, pt or drop out completely. It is the latter 2 choices which sabotage women's visible success in the capitalist economy IMO."

That's the kind of thinking we need to get away from. Men are making choices as much as women do. By continuing the myth that it's normal/their godgiven right for men to continue their career uninterrupted, while it's down to women to make a choice, it's only women who are being pressurised into making that choice, and only women who'll be made feel inadequate whatever choice they make. Yes, maternity/paternity leave provision is still not entirely fairly split, but a step in the right direction has been made recently enabling some sharing. Now it's down to men and women to use it to break down the stereotypical roles.

FWIW, I chose to work full time and had taken 39 weeks mat leave for each child - that was before the split thing came in, and also my employer offered enhanced SMP, so no brainer. In the space of 4 years I had two lots of mat leave, but also doubled my income through changing jobs and being promoted. The house work is evenly split, as we both work out of the house as much as the other. The financial burden is shared evenly (and there's less pressure than a sole earner would have) Had we bought into the myth that a good mum can't work full time, that probably wouldn't have worked out.

My husband chose to work just as much as I did. He gets asked much less often why though, as it's assumed that's what men do and that's what needs to be changed.

OP -

I don't agree with you that "women are second best", but I do agree that "equality isn´t that straight forward".

Certainly there is lots of unhelpful learned behaviour for both males and females, and there are sexist attitudes and discriminatory practices still at work. If these were removed I think there would be more equality - more women in traditionally male leadership roles and more men playing an equal role in raising their kids, caring for elderly parents etc...

But I don't think we will ever live in a perfectly gender neutral world where women are equally likely to be captains of industry, chess champions, revolutionaries etc... and men and women approach their careers, public and private lives in exactly the same way, or where people (both men and women) don't undermine their own best interests by going with their hormones at times.

This is not because women are "second best" (there is no such scale) but because we humans are not perrfectly rational, and because of the different evolutionary pressures have shaped male and female tendencies to risk taking, status seeking and caring.

In practice differences between men and women can be marginal (e.g. The running example someone gave upthread), but when men and women form partnerships to raise children the differences tend to be amplified.

I don't think it is antithetical to feminism to recognise how biology shapes society, and it should not be used as an excuse to keep women down, or excuse injustice. But at the same time it can't be wished away.

Willowme , what do you mean they can't hack the pace? Are you saying women leave the job sooner because they aren't capable of working so hard? That seems very unlikely. Do you think it may be because they have to go home earlier to pick up the children, deal with homework and bedtime, do all the domestic stuff and take days off for school events/hospital appointments as well as a full day's work? Or do you just think women really are weaker all round?

Come on, let's not shoot the OP down for airing her POV or playing devil's advocate. It's as important to challenge beliefs just as it is for me (a man) to come on here and see the other side. I may not agree with many feminist theories but that's not to say that I should be disrespectful and shoot people down for their POV.

TBH I struggle with the interupted career thing and women being objects too. Much of this is due to our biological make up. To some extent we cannot change what evolution has given us so don't think it's fair to lay the blame solely at the male species. It's an old argument but if men had breasts and a womb then we would undoubtedly stay at home more than the woman and the entire salary/equality thing reversed.

I think we often forget that until the industrial revolution (and the invention of the combine harvester etc.) roughly 80% of the population worked on farms doing a range of tasks but mostly hard physical labour. This has been happening since the dawn of time and possibly why man is physically why he is.

I've no doubt sexism reigned supreme throughout history but you cannot argue that posessing greater physical strength leads naturally to certain decisions when gathering enough food meant the difference between life/death. It's only since the 2nd world war that we've not had to worry about food - hence the obesity problem in modern times.

Speaking of obesity I'm also guilty of adjusting my nutrition and working out in a bid to fight against nature. I often despair at these threads as it all seems like doom/gloom dispite the west making great strides to work toward equality. Me being a metrosexual is one of these changes and is a futher development of man as he comes to terms with the fact that he cannot get by on being the breadwinner any more. Hence men are now having to beautify/groom etc. to be attractive to the opposite sex. Ok so I'm already married but guess I am just plain vain

I agree with handbag crab. These posts are so ill thought out. You're judging men by what they are best at and not judging women by what we are best at.

You say 'men are better at computer games' therefore women are second best. Why not 'men aren't as good at knitting therefore women are better'?

Why judge all women by Rihanna and not all men by Chris Brown?

I see it all too often in my job, women are hindered but a lot of it is their own doing. Most women I come across professionsly have cried at work over something stupid, been openly bitchy to other female colleagues, or had affairs.
This type of thing undermines their professional position and can be the reason women never make it to top in their careers.

I would far rather work with men and that's part if the reason I choose my career, there is less bitching and irrational behaviour. At times I'm
Embarrassed to be a woman when the type of thing I've described above goes on. I'm not against women I just wish they could see they are not helping themselves to get ahead with this behaviour.

Sorry about spamming, but I would like to discuss Himalaya's point about the potential for true equality.

I agree that if the playing field were absolutely level, you probably would still see a majority of one sex behaving like this while another is more likely to go that way. However, there will also be men who are fabulous at the nurturing side but not so good with risks, and women who are daring and assertive. It's the assumption that because you are male you will naturally be better at x whilst a female has the natural lead on y that is wrong. You need to examine the individual and give each one due credit for what that person can do, not what someone else with the same genital arrangement might be able to do. If the best man for the job is a woman, give it to her. It's irrelevant whether the world's strongest weightlifter is male; if this young, healthy woman in front of you can lift more weight than the little old man with a bad back, let her lift, and let him type if he's good at it. And for God's sake don't give him the job because you assume he's got a wife and family to keep while she's only working for extra dresses

Think I got a couple of sentences jumbled around at the end there, but I hope you catch my drift.

I typed this post half an hour ago and the conversation's moved on but hey... About men having more confidence, I remember reading about research that showed there was a reason why women weren't as assertive in the workplace as men - they got much more harshly judged for e.g. asking for more money.

As well as general views about proper behaviour for women, it also depends on context - how much women are seen as outsiders. Another study I read about found women MSPs were more assertive in the Scottish Parliament than female MPs in Westminster - presumably because women had been included from the very beginning and so were more accepted.

As for this 'bitching and irrational behaviour' by women, all I can say is that I've not seen it. And who are these women having affairs with? Or does it not count as unprofessional on the part of the men?

The sample chapter is all I can say without going in a rage about some of these generalisations about bitchy women and all that.

"And of course I most certainly do not feel that ANY behaviour on the part of women justifies male violence (again- a whole other subject)....however when one of the world´s biggest female role-models is beaten black and blue by her partner and then is seen to be possibly reconciling with him along with singing lyrics that could possibly be seen to be inviting more violence against herself, one does kind of despair of the message that sends out to would-be abusers."

It isn't Rihanna's job (or any other abused woman) to stop men abusing women. That is a job for men. And the whole music industry is also stacked against her. It is male-dominated and very misogynistic. There are many many male artists writing and singing equally, if not worse lyrics. Rihanna is merely a product (as horrible as that sounds) and quite frankly deserves our sympathy and empathy not our wrath/judgement/scorn.

And male violence isn't a whole other subject - it is at the root of inequality between men and women. One that you conveniently forgot to mention whilst discussing who parks cars better and who is good at playing computer games - as if that is why we have inequality .

You seem to be quite happy attacking women who are just trying to get by in a world stacked against them. As HandbagCrab said you have been let off pretty lightly on this thread for basically coming on and putting women down. It makes me angry that you feel it is OK to do that.

Going I read that when I get a chance Uptoapoint .

Ninja for example I work with 10 women and about 100 men 7 of the women are having affairs or slept with male colleagues at some point, that makes 70% of the women at it and only 7% of the men. Maybe some women will benefit from their affairs but I would say the majority won't as I have seen it happen all too often before. It's this kind of behaviour that makes us women look unprofessional or that we can get anywhere on our own merits, instead we think we have to sleep our way to the top.

*can't get anywhere on our own merits