This "pro women" thing?

Thread from 2019!

(reported the silly spam above)

Working in education, I did find positive discrimination and box ticking a real pain - yes, it got on my nerves.

However, I think it was needed then, somehow, that real push, to overcome barriers and provide positive role models for the students.

For a time, we had some staff obviously not up to - or thriving in their roles but it led to us all questioning the traditional way of doing things, the outdated approaches, the whole culture of the place.

It was unsettling and brought changes, some good, some bad. Still, you had to work full time to make progress - and many women were part time. Job sharing never took off.

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It’s horrible when this happens

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I think you've understood what people mean when they say things like this.

It's not "I hope the deserving man is passed by just to give it to a woman". It's more like "I hope society has come far enough to support young girls in their dreams that a woman will be the most deserving this year."

I can hope a woman wins while also hoping the most deserved wins. The same things goes for, "Companies need more women/ethnic minorities/disabled people at board level". It says something about our history as a nation that 99% of board rooms are filled with white men. Yes, they may very well be the most qualified. But we need to address why they're the most qualified. As an example, most black Americans live in inner cities with dysfunctional, impoverished school systems. It's a viscous cycle that makes it tough for anyone in that situation to get out. I do want more minorities and women in board rooms because the system is built against them/us (moreso minorities than women I suppose).

Mumsnet has lots of women who are in high-pressure responsible jobs.
Many of them also have the major responsibility for childcare and household management.
So, even if they are being as flexible as can be, it is at a cost to themselves not to their male partners.
Although society has changed a bit, this still has to be negotiated and sorted out between individuals in each partnership/marriage.

Apologies should be "commitments." Above not "comments"

Been a long and very busy week.

POGS, there is much I can agree with in your post @11:55 today (21/06/19) with the exception of this one paragraph.

POGS Quote [I think there is certainly a case for looking at discrimination in pay and conditions if the job description and working practice are ' identical ' to both male and female then so should the conditions and pay follow suit.] End Quote

POGS, any employer holding differentials in Salaries between genders when the positions have the same job description and working conditions would be in breach of the Equalities Act 2010.

The problem in the above comes about when greater flexibility is offered by those working within similar contracts and conditions, as in such cases some will be paid more than others due to that flexibility.

By example to the above, let us consider our company has two Assignment Handlers both with thirty-five-hour basic contracts, but one regularly offers to work extra hours while the other cannot carry out similar due to home comments.

In the above, the first employee will receive higher pay and/or bonus payments due to the percentage of the total hours he/she has committed to bringing about the assignment revenue total.

When training is considered that employee will be given the first opportunity as a preference over the other employee because he/she is a more significant economic asset to the company than the second employee due to that flexibility.

The above eventually means higher grading and higher basic salary due to the flexibility that the employee can offer to the company.

Unforchanetly, greater flexibility of working is in the main offered by male employees over women even when both have families to consider in their personal lives.

Far North

I like to think that the likes of French and Saunders, Victoria Wood, Phoebe Waller-Bridge et al received their recognition as female comedy writers because of their work, not because they were born female.

Probably it is the same situation with comedy writing teams, that women have so often not even been considered for them that's it's been felt necessary to give women compulsory inclusion.

I actually know nothing about comedy writing teams but that's my guess.

Political parties who use all-women shortlists for candidates, do so only in some of their seats.
It is to try to combat the norm of women automatically being overlooked in favour of men and thus to get a reasonable proportion of women elected.
The pro-men discrimination has always been the case until very recently, so I don't see any problem with discriminating in the other direction for a change.
The House of Commons is still overwhelmingly male, so I don't think men are suffering too much.

As for misogyny there is an equal amount of ' misandry ' taking place in general and I am not making that point to any individual poster nor Gransnet contributor and will not get into a spat. I do mean in general.

I don't like either being practiced or spouted as I prefer to keep it simple , Can a female /male do xyz in the same way or not, if not then common sense says there should be equally a different outcome.

Likewise I do not think that ' All female / All Male ' lists are anything other than tantamount to being discriminatory and I find a certain irony occasionally in their usage.

An example would be the recent ITV decision to ban ' all male ' comedy writing teams. If the reverse had happened and ITV set a ban on ' all female ' writing teams you can just imagine the uproar that would have produced.

I think there is certainly a case for looking at discrimination in pay and conditions if the job description and working practice are ' identical ' to both male and female then so should the conditions and pay follow suit.

I don't think so Razzy and the people commenting were not his friends but other people in the same field. This was a professional invitation only event, not the sort of thing you take your friends to. In fact a lot of them might best be described as competitors.

Reading some of the posts above seems that some companies think that they have a good way of ensuring that the gender imbalance remains the same, instead of looking at how they can increase flexibility. ( Males offering more flexibility). Hope they challenged soon!

But trisher is that not just a case of male bias? Most men think they are better than women. Perhaps this woman deserved the award. Obviously all his friends will say he should have got it, that’s what friends do. Many men complain if a woman wins something because they think there is a man who is better.
Ask the general public who are the better pilots, the majority will say men. Even though there is no evidence. Why are men seen as the default CEOs and winners? Why are they not criticised for not spending more time with their kids, yet working women are? Why are male traits seen as the default preferred attributes for many top jobs?

This made me wonder about the deaf characters in Summer of Rockets. You can read about them here www.broadcastnow.co.uk/drama/summer-of-rockets-bbc2/5139525.article
Quite remarkable acting in my opinion.

Fair enough, trisher.

Day6, I didn't see that deaf actor but maybe their acting was an accurate representation of a deaf person. Real life doesn't always flow nicely.

FarNorth I think he was relaxed about it because he has had some successes and many experiences of knock backs, knows he is in a very competitive business and that his work was better. And as he put it "Winning one award won't get her that far unless she does something about the quality of her work." He does have a number of female friends working in the same field whose work he really respects, so I don't think he is particularly biased about women's work, just considers quality important.

Agree with Phoenix.

I completely agree phoenix. People should win awards on merit, not because someone is playing the diversity game.

I sometimes imagine some head of HR saying " Well, all we need now it to appoint a disabled person from an ethnic minority, who is LGBGT, and all the the boxes are ticked!

That, however, seems to be exactly how appointments work these days.

You can play diversity bingo now.

For example : OH and I just KNEW the new couple moving into Coronation St would be black. We think for a street that size it has the most gay people in it than anywhere else on earth. (Why haven't they opened a gay bar there we wonder?) We have someone in a wheelchair, someone with Downs syndrome and a deaf person (whose acting was so atrocious that it was embarrassing and actually held up the flow of the scene.) We have had cross-dressers and transgender people too. We get the message.

It ticked every diversity box to the detriment of reality. They should change the name of the programme to Diversity Street.

I do hope the person who won the film award got it on merit phoenix and the presenter who thought it should go to a women got ticked off for her personal bias.

(News presenters are now biased. Neutrality seems to be an old fashioned concept for reporters.)

Which attitude, knickas63?

trisher I wonder if your DS is relaxed about coming second because he realises that, as a male, he will still have more opportunities than women.

It's faintly possible, also, that the woman's work was as good, or better, than his but that some people didn't realise this because of faulty perceptions, as you mention above.

Agreed. That sort of attitude does nothing to propmote feminism and is why so many young women are turning against it. Equality for all!

I really don't recognise the world you describe, Razzy. I don't know anyone who has or would say those things to their children. It's certainly not the way I raised my children!

On the topic of time off for family, I believe one of the Scandinavian countries allocates parental leave into maternity and paternity leave but it's not transferable. If either partner (usually the father) chooses not to use their leave, they lose it altogether. That's one way in which society could even up the playing field.

But employers could stop sacking women who are pregnant. There is also a petition to extend the appeal length from 3 months to 6 months. Which seems only fair. You're pregnant. You're sacked and you only have 3 months to appeal- while you're having a baby as well. chng.it/8HVrWgVnYj
If you want to know more
www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=pregnant+then+screwed&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

There are a lot of "what if" statements in your above post Razzy which in an ideal world would bring to women the equality that at some point in time must come about.

In the above, the Equalities Act 2010 has done much to ensure that women cannot be prescribed against simply because of gender in almost all areas of life. That is especially true in respect of employment, and in that it is not in the main discrimination that now restricts women's advancement in the workplace but the overall social and gender attitudes of both sexes in our society.

The above is not a problem that employers can solve, and neither should they be expected to.