Just completing some Equality Act 'training' and apparently I got this question wrong...

[ChatterChattee]

Question: Statistically, men have an advantage over women in education and the workplace.

I chose 'True.'

Apparently, I was wrong. The correct answer is:

'False: Men are paid more than women in the workplace. However, girls and women now outperform men at school and university."

There are soooo many things wrong with that statement! Conflating 'an advantage,' 'being paid,' and 'outperforming,' for one thing.

I am hearing more and more about falling birthrates and am not surprised that women are choosing to have fewer children, or none at all. Governments are worried. Perhaps this will be the catalyst to real change in the way maternity and motherhood/parenthood are considered.

History suggests we'll just get women forced to have children and make it illegal (with the use of sky fairies and "god") to practise contraception or abortion.

@Orangecircling

Falling birthrates are linked to improved education for girls. I can only see this a good thing. The global population needs to peak and fall.

I agree, but we live in a consumer society so going forward the current excesses in production aren't required which means big business are going to start panicking about future consumers.

Women are definitely going to be required to have more babies.

Not RTFT just first few posts.

For a yes/ no answer you should never be ambiguous/ join questions.

Can't quite remember the OP but

Do men have advantage in pay over a working career

Do men have an advantage in education

Or whatever.

Whatever they were asking about, that's a very poor question construction.

Also of course.

Lots of people will say yes women are worse off.

And then get NO you're wrong!

So I see agenda.

Been reading :)

I find it interesting that when girls do better than boys in exams there's a hooha. But not versa.

One thing that I find weird is that it was all exams, pretty much. Then there was more coursework. And girls were doing better. I read because they put the time in and are more diligent over a longer period. An attribute that is great for work.

Anyway. Apparently this disadvantaged boys. So they set it back to more exams again.

This was about 10 years ago. I said to DH I don't get it. If girls perform better at this and boys at that then the obvious thing is to make it 50/50. Why exam heavy?

Rhetorical question!

From Japan: result fixing against girls for years

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/08/tokyo-medical-school-admits-changing-results-to-exclude-women

As a childless woman who didn't take any career break and spent as much time in the workplace as men I fail to see how I have been discriminated against for my sex (not gender).

I took 3 months off to have child. A (male) colleague was off longer with a football injury. Another (male) colleague was off longer for depression.

I still ended up earning less than both of them.

I had childcare sorted around the clock including 4 different family members who could cover emergencies / sickness. I left the office once when my child was taken into hospital.

Do you know what I overheard my drunken boss saying to my line manager on a night out?

I'm going to put Derek forward for that promotion. Horust needs to concentrate on her family right now.

I'm paraphrasing of course but you get the idea. Derek was also a parent, child the same age as mine, and since our workplace was generally fair about these things he took full advantage of flexi-time to pick up his child, called in sick when child was sick etc (rightly so!). But Derek was tall, dark, handsome, and full of charisma. Unfortunately for Derek he was also thick as shit (everyone knew it) and lazy too.

But hey, at least he wasn't focusing on his family I guess?

So lets go back to before I became a mother. I was told if I wanted to get to the next level, I had to upgrade my HND to a degree. Fine. Work pay for this so I went to that same boss with a list of 4 different ones, 2 Engineering and 2 Maths based. He looked me in the eye and told me those types of degrees were for "academic people". Of our group of 12 apprentices (all male) I got the highest marks in our college class, by a long shot. Not because I got more time from the lecturers (half of them didn't know what to make of me, I was a very traditionally attractive and girly teenager), but because I stayed up ALL NIGHT studying. Three of the men I served my time with got approval for those "academic" degrees.

And that's when we compare two roles which are exactly the same.

Shall we talk about how my friend left school and went to college and now makes £19k a year as an Early Years Practitioner, while her boyfriend left school and went to college and now makes £35k as a joiner?

Or a male relative of mine who became a cleaner in a predominantly male environment and made more than I did as a time served engineer?

Why didn't I become a cleaner where he worked, you ask? Because I'm not the sort of person they give "jobs for the boys" to.

This shit frustrates me so much and do you know the only thing worse than hearing it from AVERAGE AF men? Hearing it from childless women.

If either of my daughters tell me they want to pursue a career in "STEM" I will do everything possible to encourage them to learn to code and start up themselves. The every day misogyny really wears you down, and I haven't even mentioned a tenth of it in this post. It's a mugs game, and no amount of staying childless changes that IME.

You should definitely complain because that is very ambiguously worded.

That question is pointless anyway. It doesn't demonstrate your attitudes to anything and the underlying stats seem a matter for debate.

@horust
Yep, that is the type of shit we're still up against. I've seen similar pulled where I work. Pomotions offered to far less competent and experienced men because they're "in" with the boss, play up the "involved father" role which wins them points whereas every f*cking woman on the team just gets on with the job!

It's like some men are happy to let women come into the clubhouse, but once we're in they introduce a new tier of membership that we aren't yet eligible to join. They can't bear the thought that we are truly equal, and hate the idea that we could be better at the job. I believe some of them really do perceive it as a threat to them.

@murbblurb

That question is pointless anyway. It doesn't demonstrate your attitudes to anything and the underlying stats seem a matter for debate.

Workplace training is a tickbox exercise to make money for the firms providing it and a way for an employer to have a get out of jail free card in legal action.

It's not, never has been and never will be intended to leave the students knowing more than when they went in.

If women outperform men at university and are even then paid less in the workplace, then I would say this indicates that women ARE at a disadvantage in education (i.e. not only in the workplace) as their educational achievements are discounted.