(cont'd)
The number of female graduates who drop out to part-time is reflective of our sexual aspirations. (probably an important reason why HECS was brought in ... as a group, male graduates are far more productive than their female peers)

A 'family man' is a man in charge. when children come, 'good men' may double their workload. Personally, I approve of my husband's productive habits. Motherhood may bore me brainless, leaving me suffocated and lobotomised, there is no way I would choose to physically leave my baby in the hands of others - raising my own child seems as a birthright to me.

While women are routinely expected to sign as guarantor for their husband's business aspirations, proportionally far fewer men will put their financial lives in the hands and control of their wives.

In many if not most cases a woman must dance backwards, if she is to dance happily with a man. I would argue this is as men would have it... modern women must invest and risk so very heavily to win the 'right' to legitimately conceive and raise children, that there is often very little emotional energy left beyond the high-risk and drama of the dating game that continues so long into the fertile years.

At the same time, many women are ultimately unwilling to make the same sacrifices in terms of responsibility to succeed in the world of work. Nor will she be aided by her partner - she may even be emotionally 'punished' - if she were to attempt to spend the time, effort and importantly MONEY required for her to develop her professional skills to the highest level.

In my view the Fair Work Australia bid for increases in female-dominated areas of work is a total crock.

Playing 'the victim' and appealing to a bureaucracy for a legislated increase to allowances is no way to win respect and true equality for women in 2011.

Women must be honest and responsible about our financial and personal ambitions, even if at the risk of our sexual success. There are enough children in the world, anyway.

Oh dear, it would seem that thousands of years of genetic selection where the neurological basis of survival skills and human behaviour are hard wired into the neuro cortex gets left out in the cold, and a few short decades of 'equality' is all that is needed to rewire the thousands of years of the genetic selection process.

firstly 'equality' has become one of those extremely rubbery words, open to being manipulated to the extreme. Even with one's own gender not all people are treated equally. Some will have added advantages because of 'skill', 'looks' or just plain luck or hard work.

The extremely lopsided focus on gender equality where as more is the case these days, women's inequality is more imagined than actually real. Or is a matter of corrupted interpretation, or perspective.

If we were really serious about 'gender inequality' then both sides of the equation would be examined. But then if both sides were examined, with equally serious intent?

What would we find or uncover?

"Damning report exposes journalists who cry wolf."
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/read-all-about-it-damning-report-exposes-journalists-crying-wolf-20110624-1gjlz.html

A written statement I recall, I think says it all.

"If women only had sex with men who walked on their hands, pretty soon almost 50% of the population would be walking on their hands."

Equality, I do not think will ever be achievable.

Firstly because nobody has ever set down a set of principles to define what equality is, so that we know when it has been achieved.

What has happened it that the 'principles' keep getting moved. Once it was the vote, then is was property, wages, education, career.

The health care one was a bit of a furphy. Once the primary causes of early female deaths was addressed, sometimes in collaberation between the genders. The complications of pregnancy and child birth, women started out living men.

Interestingly many of the early industrial laws protected females workers, but not male workers.

Even today in our society we put much more value on the safety and wellbeing of the females than we do for males. In our society saving a female's life is much more valuable than that of a male.

Oh dear.

Peter, I don't agree with your premise, and you don't agree with mine. For a start I don't equate difference with inequality, as you seem to be doing, and as I'm arguing society does, to everybody's detriment.

To me, it's self evident that in our culture gender expectations and roles are imposed on a child at birth, or before. Your arguments confirm that.

I think that your fundamental argument, that difference equals inequality, is deeply flawed. Society is organized around just such a flaw and that's the problem.

Why are you *unequal* because you don't get pregnant and give birth? Who is attaching this value to you? Who is valuing you less than a pregnant woman? Using what criteria?

The world is full of people who are different fro me, for a million reasons. Are they all unequal to me? Am I unequal to them? Not unless the society we're in attaches a value to them and me that is unequal based only on our difference, rather than our abilities and achievements.

Fair Work Australia found that workers in the community sector are paid considerably less than others,even when they have tertiary qualifications, and the conclusion they arrived at was this is because the work is considered "women's work," and therefore undervalued and underpaid.

So there is a strong concept of "women's work" in our society, and the value attached to that concept is less than the value attached to other forms of work not considered to be "women's." This is entirely gender based, and nothing to do with ability, commitment, education, or anything else.
Jennifer

“I think that your fundamental argument, that difference equals inequality, is deeply flawed. Society is organized around just such a flaw and that's the problem.”

The other possibility is that you’re wrong.

You are reduced to arguing that things can be different without being unequal. But they can’t, because the whole point of things being different – in anything – is that we attach a different value to them. If we didn’t, we’d consider them the same. For example, in mathematics, when we say 2 + 2 “equals” 4, what we’re really saying is, 2 + 2* are the same as* 4.

When you go shopping for a dozen eggs and 500g of butter, you don’t say “Well I can get a dozen eggs here, and a ton of eggs there, so I’ll get the ton, because to me, even though these quantities are *different*, they’re still *equal*. And though this 500g of butter costs $1, and that 500g of butter of the same quality costs $2, I’ll buy the $2 one, because they are both equal in my eyes.”

That’s not what you do, is it?

It’s cognitive and moral nonsense. It would transform the world and society into a senseless jumble. It’s not even possible, let alone desirable.

When you, and everyone, makes such decisions, you are sending signals, via the price mechanism, up the line of production. And the signals you are sending to the producers say to them “I am prepared to pay for what it takes you to produce this butter because I want to butter my sandwiches, but NOT so as to pay any extra for your lifestyle choices unrelated to making butter. I do NOT regard your desire for maternity leave as “equal” to my desire for buttered sandwiches.”

*That’s* what’s causing the phenomenon you see, not imposed gender roles.

If this were not so, then butter advertised as made with maternity leave would command a premium among consumers, especially feminist consumers. It doesn’t because they, like you, don’t even agree with your own theory.

Briar rose, has it ever occurred to you that all tertiary qualifications are not equal? Those who settle for light weight qualifications do have to settle for light weight job prospects.

Then you persist in this fallacy that gender expectations are "imposed" at child birth. Your desire to be a victim is very strong.

You could equally well suggest that for a male, the prospect of being killed by the mammoth you were hunting to feed your tribe was "imposed" at birth. If this is what you are arguing, you are not doing it very well, as I have gained the opposite impression. You seem to suggest that he is only having fun.

Yes, the impression give is that you believe that our inherited instincts are a burden for women, but only women.

I have only met a very few men for whom breading was important, a few, but very few. In fact, most men I know would prefer not to be fathers. Most of them have become fathers to please a lady they love. The lady who became increasingly desperate to breed as her age increased. If any "hood" is imposed by society it is fatherhood, not motherhood.

The fact that most women find motherhood somewhat less full filling than their hormones told them it would be, is not the fault of any man. The man involved has very often given up some long held dreams of his own to grant his ladies desire.

I have personal experience of this. My eldest daughter had sailed over 2000 nautical miles by the time she was 9 months old, but I had to give up my lifestyle because of her mothers growing fear. This lady who could handle a yacht in any howling gale before motherhood, was now fearful on the boat, even in port.

Continued