Jane, you talk about the increasing choice that women now have... an that is great! Women don't always go on to be 'just mothers', they choose between full-time work, part-time work, or full-time mother.

But what about the other 50% of the population? When men become dads, society has some VERY FIRM rules about what choices they have...
Work longer hours to support and house several dependants, or
Work longer hours to support and house several dependants, or
Work longer hours to support and house several dependant.

And of course, after a few years, the woman has more choices...
stay married, or kick out her "unsatisfactory" husband. This is a light choice, because she knows that she will keep everything... keep his kids, keep his assets, and keep the bulk of his after-tax income... and also keep him on a leash, because she controls the thing dearest to his heart - she controls his kids.

Meanwhile the dad has the choice of copping-it-sweet and walking away from everything he loves and everthing her worked long hours for... or giving up and suiciding...

Fact 1: Australian dads work 5hrs a day longer than Auastralian mothers - that's real Work-work

Fact 2: For every woman who suicides 5 men suicide, THis is the 'official' figure... the real figure is much higher... because you have to add the "accidents" that are really suicides... the Drug O-D's, the accidental shootings, and the car-runs-into-a tree-on-a-straight-stretch-of-road-with-no-skidmarks accidents.

Yep... women have many many choices... and men don't.

PartTimeParentpobox.com
www.fathers4equality-Australia.org

Thanks to everyone who responded.
I hope in the long run - and the change in women's status is still in its very early days - everyone will be judged ( to paraphrase Martin Luther King) according to the contents of their character rather than their gender.
I am not for a moment arguing that women have got it "right" - how could they in just over 40 years? Or that many men do not struggle with unfair lives and lack of choice. I am, however, arguing that allowing only the narrowest of life options - for anyone - is oppressive to everyone. I didn't make women flood from their houses and kitchens, nor did what is called "the women's movement". Women did it themselves, and for all sorts of reasons, including the ability to control their fertility and the need the economy had to use all the available skills and talents. The "women's movement" grew out of the real desire many women had to change their lives.
Some of you do not agree with me, and I have been interested to read your comments, but with all its mistakes, imperfections and difficulties, as the mother of two teenage daughters, I believe it is better to be born female today than ever before. And, talking to the young men my girls socialise with, it seems it is also better for many of those young men. They have more choices too, about work, friendship and, most important of all, how to be an involved and loving husband and father. I know some of these hopes will be dashed - for some of these boys and girls - we all have some of our hopes and dreams dashed - that's life, but why was it okay once for girls not even to be allowed to dream - of adventure, worldly success, fame, intellectual achievement, wealth, whatever? And why would it be okay to go back to that situation again?
Men and women spend a great deal of time emphasising our differences, I have always been much more interested in our similarities.

ena,
What similarities? What similarities?
If you can find any similarity between men and woman you don't belong on this planet.
It has even been proven scientifically that our brains are wired differently.
It is impossible to even think the same when that wiring is then interferred with with different hormones.
If a woman is close to acting like a male, she is not a male. She is butch.
If a male is close to acting like a female, he is not a female. He is effeminate.
The "butch" and the "effeminate" are then ostrasiced from both genders.
No, people don't emphasise the gender differences. The differences are so different that they don't need emphasising.
I, as a male, am so different from you, I can't even understand your letter.
It is time to get the males out of the kitchen. Now I bet you can't understand how I feel?
I am male!

Well, I don't know about you, Glenwriter, but I am human first and female second.

Did you ever hear about the famous experiment, done years ago, where a group of babies ( male and female) were first dressed in pink nappies and adults were asked to interact with them and describe their behaviour ( they soothed and caressed and said the babies were gentle, affectionate and passive) then same babies dressed in blue nappies and adults played vigorously with the babies and described them as active, energetic and curious. When same babies presented in white napppies, adults tried to see their genitals before they could decide how to behave or what the babies were like. Why couldn't they just be babies?

As we share 98% of our dna with chimps, the genetic difference between a male human and a female one must be very, very small indeed. I ain't saying they don't exist, I'm just saying why do we make such small differences the whole story? I have met many men with whom I have more in common than many women. Isn't our shared humanity our most imp. characteristic? when you decide to define me as female first and human second, you make a whole heap of assumptions about what I am like and how I should behave and live - as i would do if I defined you as male first and human second. If i simply respond to you as another human being and let your individual personality unfold, I avoid making a lot of possibly inaccurate snap judgements, or so it seems to me.

Ena,
You say: "Isn't our shared humanity our most imp. characteristic?"
Maybe that is the correct answer accordinging to females.

Ena, gender difference is at least partially hardwired. There are differences in the male and female brain, as well as differences in male and female hormones.

This doesn't make all men the same and all women the same. It does, though, give us a strong sense of gender identity. We experience ourselves as men and women, not as sexless "personalities".

You take a negative view of gender difference, as representing a potential limitation on choosing who we are for ourselves.

But you neglect the positive side. First, there is the responsiveness to gender difference we have as heterosexuals. What red-blooded man would respond to women as "humans" rather than as women? The truth is that most men love the feminine attributes of women. Much of human art is an expression of the male love of femininity in women.

Second, most of us men don't experience masculinity as something oppressive, even if it's not something we get to choose entirely by ourselves. It can be a great feeling to have a sense of your own masculine physicality, or of the masculine drives and instincts. It can be a great thing, too, to sense strongly the masculine "ought" and to have such a standard to live up to in your own life. It gives depth.

There certainly are things you ought to expect of me as a man. You are not oppressing me by expecting these things. Why would I feel oppressed if I am masculine in nature and in self-identity?