The Feminist Pub - come in and chat.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

This is something like the fourth pub chat thread - please pull up a chair at the bar. Everyone welcome.

Old thread is here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1920422-The-Feminist-Pub-continued?

But it's pretty much full so welcome in.

Hi all. Haven't been on here for ages (and in fact am currently NC) but can I go back to the parking thing briefly? DH and I have been talking about this a lot recently because, truthfully, I notice for myself that more often than not, when I see people being stupid driving, it's women. And it infuriates me because I keep thinking that I simply don't believe that women are intrinsically worse drivers. This has led to DH and I over analyse this completely and what we've come up with is...

... it's actually yet another subtle way in which the patriachy brings up girls to believe they are second class citizens, with fewer (or "different") skills. Young girls are not encouraged to want to learn to drive. Young boys are. When young men and women are being taught, the approach to their teaching is often completely different ie young men are expected to be gung ho and get on with it while young girls are "allowed" (I call it 'encouraged") to be nervous. My father, who has no truck with things like this being girl or boy only, taught all of his children and a number of our friends with the exact same technique - tough love. But I remember talking about learning to drive with my friends: all the boys had similar experiences to me, "wow, yesterday we went on the motorway and my Dad made me overtake, in the fast lane, at 70mph and he even let me speed for a few minutes to get a sense of how it felt but then he told me to slow down" and the girls would say things like, "It was my 5th lesson and I was still nervous about changing gears but I managed to get into third."

DH says that while he was terrified while he was learning to drive, he'd never have admitted it to his father (who was teaching him) or to his friends. Girls on the other hand... completely the opposite.

And what this leads to is women who genuinely ARE less good drivers. They haven't been encouraged to learn and practice. Over time, they improve, but they aren't taught best practice right at the beginning and they don't get forced to gain confidence and it affects them for YEARS. And it's because society likes to think of women as helpless the moment they're out the home. Drives me BARMY!!!!

I think that is so true.

I do owe that to my dad, that he taught me and certainly didn't do any of this 'girls will be worse'. Unfortunately he is terrible at parking himself so I still had to learn for myself - but he gave me the right attitude.

I believe someone studied who typically drives in a male-female couple and found that men usually drive, even if both partners can, which I found interesting.

On the case buffy, just checking out the sales first ;)

Actually, never heard of nvivo but it sounds interesting, will have a proper look later. Analysing unstructured data (I.e. text) is still a big challenge but will be big in the next few years.

Define "better" drivers - female drivers have fewer accidents...

But yes, if women are always the passenger in a couple, chances are they will practice driving less and get out of the habit.

Ds2 just said "girls like pink" for the first time , he's nearly 4 and pink has been his favourite till now.

Well what I notice is the man drives to the event. Becuase men drive. But the women drink lemonade and drive home.

Shoe - I really hope you and all your male friends weren't doing driving lessons on the motorway .

I am guilty of the 'DH drives' thing. Mostly because I do a lot of ferrying around of the kids during the day (currently a SAHM) and don't particularly like driving, and he hardly drives during the working week and does like it. When I'm not pregnant, he does his share of 'designated driver' though. In fact, he does it more than I do.

hello all... weebarra hope you are doing ok

I wanted to share this with you all from the newsletter of the professional body I belong to....just.... gah.

"The 2013 Women in [my profession] national programme was recently launched and aimed to attract female delegates from universities in the regions….. The events were aimed at inspiring the next generation of female [my profession]…. The events.. had a networking event to close the day. Ms X from Style Company X delivered an influential speech on how females can dress appropriately in the workplace. She was also on hand in the networking session to guide students on how to use colour to maximum effect when styling their outfits. … Ms Y, a student…commented “I’ve always wanted to learn more on how to represent myself, on grooming and what is appropriate wear to the workplace”…… delegates filled in a questionnaire giving them a chance to win a professional makeover worth up to £400."

This wrecks my heed, quite frankly.
Pint of lager please

All the best, weebarra.

benid WTAF. Write in to complain.

I did once because some so-called professional event was named inappropriately. Something that implies that women have to fucking change themselves to be successful.

I also managed to point out to some male colleagues why treating their female colleagues with old-fashioned "ladies-first" and apologising-for-swearing etc courtesies serves to point out how we are different and don't belong. Thanks FWR for helping me articulate this.

It is all the new UNpleasant me.

O yas upto I shall write in to complain and will be back to ask for help on how to word it. I am just waiting for an email from the national professional body office to let me know whether the regional office were the organisers or whether this type of thing is what the national committee think is appropriate to do.

Ha buffy yes probably.

See, when the young woman said she wanted to learn what was appropriate wear for the workplace, I imagined she had previously thought that this would be ok.

Well done for being unpleasant too upto

DH said that in a previous workplace a million years ago it was the men who had to be told what was appropriate to wear for dress-down days. I don't even want to know what they wore.

God that has just reminded me of the dead rat I picked up on the garden path, for some reason. YUCK.

Ten2Two I think. They don't have that many jobs to work with tho and so many are still secretarial based as usually still involve being in an office.

Weebarra - hugs.

Cider, please, bar sister

Wow, the pub's been busy .
Lots of new names, welcome.

It's been a long week here...

benid that's bad, glad you're complaining!

buffy i still can't quite work out what nvivo is supposed to do with data, it claims to help you glean insight but simultaneously doesn't do the thinking for you (but it still interests me from an almost-professional perspective as 400 pages doesn't sound much to analyse)

I'm getting the rage about booth babes at CES. Why?!?! I just don't understand why they need attractive women there simply to look good. I know they are at a lot of tech conferences, but CES is the biggest and surely should be doing better??

Booth babes? The mind boggles, I thought even car salemen knew this was ridiculously old fashioned!

I had a maths teacher who, every time I asked a question, would tell me that I was perfectly capable of doing it but I wasn't trying because I was female. Used to give me the rage as an 18 year old, let alone now. Thankfully that was more than balanced by my wonderful guidance teacher who told my parents it would be a waste of my brain (at 14) to do Art at O grade and I should be doing as much Science as possible because I was top of the year at Science. Best careers advice I ever got, but interesting that my Science teacher hadn't actually told me that!

Yes when a couple travel by car it's usually the man who drives isn't it. Driving means you're in charge of the situation, instead of being a passive passenger. Saudi Arabia has taken this to the extreme, to control women's ability to move around.

I was disgusted when I first heard about "booth babes", it's a signal to women that they aren't meant to be the audience. Or the developer, just some random pretty person standing around to be looked at.
I had thought/wished it was a thing that had died out.
Just why. It doesn't make people more interested in the actual product.

Sorry, We’re Not Sorry: The 20 Things Women Should No Longer Have To Apologize For

LRD, I saw this and thought you might like it .

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