[Deleted for abuse. This discussion has degraded into personal abuse. Hard to see where it started, and both sides are guilty of it, but I'm drawing the line here. Address arguments not personalities please.]

TZ52HX, I believe you have our dear Anti septic down to a T!
Foxy knows what he is like, but yet it is still difficult not to try to correct his stubborn anti-feminine views.

Foxy, I take my hat off to you.
We always end up leaving these sorts of gender-issue posts to the resident OLO-good-old-boys-club members in the end.

They can collectively beat their chests, pat each other aggressively on the heads and sing 'Kumbaya my Lord' together around a campsite somewhere.
See you all on another thread.

Of the family law courts yes indeed. I have seen
three generations of farmers build up an asset, only
to lose it at the whim of a judge. If she'd married
a shearer, she would have walked away with nothing,
suddenly the court has made her wealthy. Sadly the
courts, with the encouragement and lobbying of the
feminist movement, have turned marriage and relationships
into a lucrative business, rather then what it was
supposed to be.

I think that is a real shame.
Posted by Yabby, Sunday, 5 September 2010 11:06:32 PM

well now, Yabby, it is a real shame that some 'people' including men, along with women, are dishonest and unfair, ruining generations of family farming businesses, however, in some situations, those spouses have given their all for well over 20 or 30 years building up those 'family farming 3-7 generation businesses' undertaking all of the accountancy, book-keeping, and physical hard work, cooking being the least of it.

I am just one Australian woman who was a farmer that left the lot out of respect, fairness and honesty walking away with nothing quite a few years ago. I did not bother about the court system, although if I had, it was estimated today that I would be a billionairess. Something I was well aware of at the time.

Do I regret it?

Never for a moment.

Feminism is irrelevant.

My respect, morals and values are more important to me than capital and assets.

All attempts to address the subject ended quite a while ago. This spiteful sniping is unhelpful, but painfully predictable. In an effort to make it productive, I ask the following question; exactly what changes would people like to see?

Answering my own question, I would like to see pay rises for those people who work in certain blue collar industries, such as agriculture and sawmills.

I would like to see executive salaries and the gap between the public and private sector reduced.

I would like to see less social pressure on blokes to take on blue collar jobs as some effort to prove our toughness. When I was young and silly, I was one of those suckers who worked far too hard for a minimum wage, because I thought it was tough.

If neither of these suggestions help women, it is only because I cannot see any glaring injustice needing to be solved. Convince me that I'm wrong, but lets stick to the topic.

Benk, what you're suggesting is social engineering in order to produce a wage outcome. All social engineering ends in inequality. For example, traditionally throughout history certain professions have had their wages socially engineered so they receive far greater rewards than other professions, like politicians compared to nurses or lawyers compared to teachers. The list is near endless. Lawyers and politicians don't work harder than nurses and teachers, their intrinsic human worth is not greater than nurses and teachers. No, politicians and architects receive greater salaries because it has been socially engineered to be that way.

In the same way, men's wages have been socially engineered to be greater than women's wages. Traditionally men have been paid more money for doing exactly the same work. That's social engineering. That's political correctness. It only stopped in the late 60s and early 70s. Since then another type of social engineering has continued; because men consistently don't, or are unable, to take 50% child rearing responsibility, their wages overall are to this day greater than female wages. Within this overall current male wage superiority there's pockets of female wage superiority, as shown by the article that's the subject of this thread; it applies "only" to unmarried, childless women under 30 who live in major American cities.

But the paranoid and overtly sexist among us see those "pockets" as a socially engineered attack against men; as if to suggest that traditional MALE wage superiority is NOT a result of "engineering".

In other words if it benefits males it's seen as quite ok and in the natural order of things. If it benefits females it's seen as an attack on men's rights.

Benk:"exactly what changes would people like to see?"

First and foremost I'd like to see an end to the massive govt spending on "women's issues" and on supporting discrimination in favour of women.

My daughter cam home from school on Tuesday covered in stckers saying "girls can do anything". Apparently she'd been to "girl's group", which is ostensibly designed to allow the girls a chance to discuss matters of concern, such as pubertal issues, relationships and so on. I've not been given any information on this program and I intend to find out more There is apparently a similarly-tasked "boy's group", but I didn't see a single sticker saying "boys can do anything".I did see quite a few stickers from the local TAFE on boys' bags though.

Now I don;t mind the girls being fed positive messages, but why can't the boys be getting a similar one, instead of being efectively told to limit their expectations to attending TAFE?

Second, I'd like to see some honesty in the reporting of issues surrounding gender. As it stands at present there is a large list of female reporters who see one of their primary roles as promoting feminism. Their reportage suffers as a result and we're all the poorer for it, even women. The Press ouncil should do something about it, but I bet they got a grant of some kind that prevents them from doing so.

Third, I'd like to see a genuinely inclusive anti-discrimination act that doesn't only worry about women and leave men to suck it up. The current Act perpetuates discrimination against men by failing to recognise any form of such discrimination. It's patronising of women and damaging to men.It leads to poor outcomes.

I'd like to see the various nastily anyi-male "Offices for the Status of Women" abolished. they create nothing and advance no good cause. Women's status has always been assured (the old powewr of the pussy again) and we don't need an institutionalised white knight to make it so.