HRS, I am only talking about paid work. This is where issues like who pays for childcare comes up. I also limit my discussion on this to professional women, who earn good incomes and are expected to work long hours of paid work (and be subject to the same reviews and productivity requirements of their male counterparts). For a professional couple, who should pay for childcare? Usually, it is still the woman who does, and who drops off and picks up the children. Where men are involved, it is usually as a result of negotiation, rather than the assumption that this is their role. Women are generally assumed to be responsible for organising the care of children if they want to/have to work.

"Unpaid work has...minimal expectations of continuous improvements in productivity" - I dont agree. There are constantly time-improving products on the market. These gadgets help reduce time spent on domestic chores the same way as machinery/technology improvements speed up productivity at paid work.

"Men are doing the more arduous, demanding and stressful work, and always have. They are naturally supplied with a special hormone called testosterone to enable them to cope" Load of rubbish! I come from a farming background, and the women have always worked as hard as the men in that field. In fact women are now often preferred to men in farm employment, as they have been shown to be more open to instruction and more careful with expensive machinery. Several large farms will only employ a man if they cannot source a woman to do the job, for precisely the reasons stated.

"Nearly everything is built by a male or invented by a male". Then why do women make up such a large proportion of factory workers? And try watching the New Inventors on the ABC - lots of women on there too.

Country Gal, I agree with most of your comments to HRS.
I grew up on a farm and my mother certainly did her share around the place.

The out of hours care which my son attends seems to have a fairly even split in the gender of the parents I see dropping kids off and picking them up. I'm hoping the situation you describe is changing. Some years ago I seemed to be a rarety at child care facilities (but not extremely rare), now men are much more involved in our area.

R0bert

Country Gal,
I’ve worked in a number of factories and the operators there are often in charge of equipment worth many millions of dollars. Normally those factories cannot get women to work inside the factories (although the women who do work inside the factories can be good workers). However women normally want to work in an office somewhere where the pay is less. Similarly the factories can have many difficulties trying to get female apprentices for trade jobs, as they just won’t apply. They apply for clerk jobs and office jobs, but not for trade jobs, and this makes a significant difference in the pay rates for women.

Also it is very difficult to invent and develop anything if you have no trade or engineering background, which is the main reason why nearly all patents are developed by males.

However I will tell you a true story relating to abuse.

One factory had a female Personal Relations Officer straight out of University who was highly feminist. She wanted to read all notices and forms before they went out to employees to ensure they were gender neutral. She even began asking to read the computer code we were writing to ensure that any comments we inserted into the code were gender neutral.

One day she went to see an employee working in the factory who was nearly 3 times her age, and in the course of talking to him, he called her “luv”. He called all women “luv”, including all other women working in the factory, his wife, his daughters, the woman next door, the bar maid, any women he met on the street etc.

However when he called the feminist Personal Relations Officer “luv”, she marched him up to the manager and accused him of abuse and sexual harassment.

In the negotiations that followed, he had to agree to never call her “luv” again. The word "luv" was outlawed.

That is the feminist world, where anything and everything can now be interpreted as being abuse

Actually HRS, I don't see that the word 'luv' has any place in any workplace at all. It is demeaning for both the speaker and the recipient: In the same way when I am dealing with clients I would never call them 'mate', because they are not my 'mates', and neither are female clients 'luvs', 'dears' or 'darlins'.

How we address people reflect what we think of them, and how we treat them. What is wrong with showing people some respect? Or are you so hide-bound that you cannot see that calling someone 'luv' is a put-down?

I am against what I consider to be the 'excesses' of feminism. I believe that domestic violence is far to common, from both genders, so I disagree with those who claim that domestic violence should be called 'violence against women', because it is violence against women, men, children, siblings and parents. I would like to see definitions of 'domestic violence' to include one parent denigrating the other parent to their children, to include alcoholic behaviour from either gender where it adversely affects other people in the household, even where no punch is thrown, no bruise is raised nor blood is spilt.

I would like to see police empowered to deal with female perpetrators the same way that they deal with males, for instance to never hear again a police officer say, as one said to me: "No magistrate will ever issue an AVO against a 'sick' (ie violent as a result of alcohol induced psychosis) woman."

But I am not against those parts of feminism that act against all women being characterised as 'luv', whether that is spoken by a male or a female.

When I used to call a female worker into my office (even my own wife who was employed there - I had not employed her!) I would always ensure that there would be another female present. Hence, I never had any problems about accusations of sexual harassment. However, other staff members who used to criticise me for being over protective soon or later found themselves accused as to sexual harassment after having called one of their female workers into their office.
It is regrettable but far too often sexual harassment is being used where none may have taken place. Even if a woman misconceived what was stated by a male she complains and the male - unless he had the conversation recorded – basically has no way to disprove it didn’t happen.
On the factory floor a female is only allowed to lift 5 kg and a male 25 kg and men used to complaint that women want equal pay but not equal work!
I never did permit any of the workers to use nick-names, foul language, indecent gestures, etc as I made clear everyone is entitled to enjoy working without being harassed by fellow workers. Once, when a male worker used an indecent gesture I sacked him on the spot. The company backed me up because they found that since I had taken over no complaints had arisen while before my time there were often complaints.
It does not matter if one is a male or female as every worker is entitled in its employment to be free of harassment. At least that was my position and the rule I applied stingily! And decades later former workers still make known to me that they it was the best kind of employment conditions they ever had.

Jesus bloody christ.(yeah I know I took the lords name in vain)

The words 'luv', 'darling' are used as terms of endearments, it is a coruption to take offense at the use of these words.

I have no problem with the use of these words, it is usually the older generation who use these words. If you take offense then get over it and grow up.

People who choose to take offense at the use of these words is a bully. Some may even be power hungry megalomaniacs.

It has been more than a few times that I have heard female colleagues complain that the work place has become oppressive. No fun anymore.