For me,as a woman, equality has a sense of equal opportunity to achieve to my potential when, and if, that suits my wants and needs.
My femalesness/gender should not be a consideration in the equation....the law and society should see me as an individual with skill, education and competency so that these features are what is considered in whatever endeavour I paritipate.
That hasnt always been the experience of many women in many professions hence the need for some rules and regulations which give some balance and justice
To get back to the originl post we need to be developing a culture which enables each of us to participate according to our skills education and competence ensuring that there are ways available to meet the needs of managing family or aging parents ie "family" friendly work environments

Grim - 'If Einstein had a right to be proud of his achievements, couldn't his parents have been just as proud?'

I'm sure they were; just as I'm sure your parents are proud of you too.

we are unique - 'behind every man is a great woman'

True. Women have been standing behind their men, and standing behind their men and standing behind their men. They have been standing behind their men for millenia. And I'm sure their parents were proud of them too.

we are unique - 'As for the moon...I would not use that analogy regarding genders in this era Dane. Any day soon.'

Most people feel the reason women make such lousy comics is because they only ever get up on stage and talk about being a woman. So your claim that women will put women on the moon 'any day now' might be a nice change on the stand up circuit.

I suggest you team up with Grim and try for yourselves. Hey, if you fail at least your parents will be proud.

dane you might have a look at http://sciencewomen.blogspot.com/2009/08/women-of-apollo-program.html and if it strikes your interest search for similar material.

There were women involved in putting men on the moon and a range of massive barriers against any woman being chosen for the trip.

R0bert

>…I am not sure if you really mean gender equality or sexual.

I mean sexual equality to begin with.

The interests of male and female are partly in complement, and partly in conflict, owing to their natural differences - notwithstanding the social construction of gender.

No-one has explained how you can have equal rights in respect of factual differences. Clearly, you can’t. Given that fact, the only question is whether the law is to be used to favour one sex over the other; or the other way around; or whether the law is to favour neither.

I maintain it should favour neither.

But feminism has resulted in a whole raft of laws that compel and restrain men unequally so as to favour women unequally. It is not to the point to talk about “self-pity” because the law is neither equal nor fair, so not even the feminists can defend it in their own terms, and there’s no reason for men to accept it.

It is not enough to show that the current laws favour women. The question is whether they favour *equality*, or not; or whether they themselves involve a double standard or exploitation.

However none of the advocates of equality in this thread has actually defined equality. (Grim described it as a state of values – the law should treat them equally.) So there is no way of knowing, by the feminists’ own definitions, whether the pre-feminist state was unequal or unfair.

The argument is that:
a) if you need a whole lot of laws in place to compel and restrain men unequally to favour women unequally, then it’s nonsense to describe that as a more “equal” situation
b) if the law did not unequally favour one gender, and if relations between the sexes were based only on consent, the result would not be equal.

To understand why I say that, we must go back to the factual differences. Do men have an equal right to give birth to a child, and if not, why not? (I’ll show why I’m asking, after you answer it.)

"But feminism has resulted in a whole raft of laws that compel and restrain men unequally so as to favour women unequally"

In the early days this was probably true as part of positive discrimination where there were laws and social norms that did not allow choices for women such as having to retire once you were married, and lower pay rates for the same work. Men are burdened by the lack of choice to stay at home and to be the provider by and large, but this is also changing. Men were discriminated in terms of child custody arrangements until recently with probably still more room for improvement. The equality for men (in choosing to stay at home) is probably not going to eventuate due to simple changes to economic pressures for dual income families which affect men and women alike. Women tend to stay at home in the early stages of family due to breastfeeding.

At one point, men who raped their wives were not considered as having committed a crime despite the lack of mutual consent. I don't think changing the law on that front was to make the situation more unequal for men - it is a personal liberty thing.

As for sexuality well that is a tricky one. Sexual harassment laws for example, are only as good or bad as they are applied and one has to trust the system to some extent to temper the ridiculous with the legitimate. Admittedly there are situations where I can see PC getting in the way of commonsense.

Cont/...

"Do men have an equal right to give birth to a child, and if not, why not? (I’ll show why I’m asking, after you answer it.)"

Rights are human constructs - there are no natural rights per se, only those that we bestow as important to the maintenance of a fair and just society that take into consideration factors such as personal liberty and potential ill-effects or harm.

Naturally the answer is No. Men do not have an equal right to give birth to a child because they cannot so it is a moot point.

Women might lose in a wrestling match against a man. Do they have an equal right to win? No, only if they can, if they can't they can't. It comes down to physical strength and ability.

The trouble with terms like natural factors is who decides what is natural other than the obvious (such as reproduction or physical strength). Different societies have different social structures suggesting that much of what happens is not due to only the presence of natural factors.

If we went by natural factors alone women might be permanent slaves to men as we do not have the physical strength to compete for the most part. Naturally human good will, altruism and commonsense to know that better societies are not formed through force override physical superiority.

Hope that makes sense at this time of night.