This "pro women" thing?

Women’s right - have we gone to far? Hahahahaha and the best example you can give relates to sports commentators? Hahahahaha. Speechless absolutely speechless at such misogyny. ?????????????????

With you Siobhan
As a teacher I was always horrified by the words 'But women don't do that', coming from boys or girls (or staff!). Until we have half the MPs female - that's where the power starts - with roughly the proportion of ethnic MPs that represent the country, there is no equality. White men holding the power teaches all our schoolchildren that white men are in some way superior.
Equality isn't what is happening this minute, it's about past experience too. E.g.s
How many families of our generation moved area/house for the wife's promotion, how many for the husband's. Are they equal? No. So it's not surprising that women don't get comparable pay/pension to men's.
When surveyed, men's commute tended to be straight to work, straight home. Women's tended to be come home via picking the kids up (unless they had a lovely gran to do it!) and doing a bit of household shopping.
Our granddaughters deserve better, getting on for half a century after the Equal Opportunity Act
This is balanced out by someone on the radio saying it would be nice if a woman go it. Thank you to whoever said it, they may have opened a few kids eyes up, that women can direct films.
And thanks to whoever poster about Simon Mayo, they've introduced me to Scale Radio on my TV and tablet. Simon's on now.

There are so many facets to equality; I can see how bitterly unfair it is for a woman to be excluded from consideration in certain employment because of potential pregnancies. I have also been employed where one woman had three children over the space of eight years and did
nothing for the budget of the small organisation. I have a relative who is a firefighter - he has expressed real concern for the safety and the ability of two women now employed on his watch who could not lift a man in a rescue situation - but any discrimination, even at the time of call out for a fire, is not allowed. Being of 'a certain age' I remember only too well the culture of passing over women for certain roles - not physical - and of listening to stupid remarks about women bus and lorry drivers. We are different, usually physically less strong, but strident insistence that everyone can do the same work is just not true, and surely positive discrimination doesn't help anyone - it must breed resentment.

Regarding the sports commentators, the women Sky football pundits are excellent, and try to avoid the cliches we're used to. After watching live TV football for almost 30yrs, I'm slowly getting used to it.
As for using the wrong terminology - what? No way.
That they're all attractive? That the patriarchy for you. When do we get old, unattractive female newsreaders btw, 40yrs after Angela Rippon? Some of the male newsreaders clearly aren't chosen for their looks.

No one absolutely no one is saying that we can all do the same work and btw there is no positive discrimination in this country, it’s illegal. Equality is not about us all being the same - why can’t people get that simple fact? Colour blind men cannot do a whole range of jobs and that’s quite fair as long as differentiating between colours is a necessary part of the job.

Johno I don't know what man-hating feminism you refer to but I am not aware of these sorts of attitudes being widespread - of, for instance, women making men's lives a misery by calling them lewd names, subjecting them to lewd behaviour, threatening to rape/kill them if they express an opinion, etc, etc. That sort of behaviour - and the mysoginistic attitudes that underly it - is experienced every day by all sorts of women throughout the world, and indeed globally.

Your reasoning that "if you are good enough, you will get the job" means, in effect, that those groups of people, such as women and non-white people, who are not represented in senior positions are naturally inferior. I don't believe that's true.

throughout this country I meant to say

A supermarket near me took on a young man with a mild learning disability who usually worked at the check out counter, serving people when they took their shopping to him. My daughter and son-in-law were staying with us and went shopping, and took their purchases to the young man. Apparently he was rude to them in some way (can't remember the details as it was about 6 years ago.)
I used to go shopping with my husband and we often encountered the young man, who was very chatty and friendly to us. Then my husband suffered a stroke and went into hospital, where he stayed for months. The young man always asked me in a friendly way how he was,
One day he actually came up to me while I was shopping and said "How's your husband? Is he dead yet?"
I went out of my way to avoid him after that, especially after my husband died. .
I believe that in the end the supermarket had to let him go, as they had a lot of complaints.

Sorry only read the OP.

Good luck with that Phoenix, not a chance. Think of a grant application for anything even vaguely public. If you are a healthy, straight, white male you will read the first paragraph and not bother to apply. I'll stop before I say so much more.

I'm basically in agreement with you all on this too.

I even go as far as to question whether all lines of work can be done equally well by both sexes, or whether there are some jobs and some positions that are best held by men and others that should be the province of women.

I've never really be able to reconcile myself to the thought of male midwives. I sometimes wonder too if there are not fewer women than men who are ruthless enough to head really big firms.

I think until childcare and housekeeping are shared equally between cohabiting men and women, there will always be more men than woman in top jobs.

Who gets funding for this that or the other should depend on whose project is best, but in all the fields where there are fewer woman than men, it is still difficult to be taken seriously as a woman.

I have 2 daughters and a son. Eldest daughter went into a major company after graduation and stayed there for several years, then discovered she was being paid less than her male counterparts. She left and has learnt that life isn’t necessarily fair, but at least now she’s properly paid for the work she does. I think people forget that a working woman puts in the same amount of effort as a man and should be paid the same.
I stopped listening to WH ages ago. I think they make women sound whingeing children!

My sentiments exactly, Phoenix. I’m getting to the stage where I think ‘I would rather hear a man reading the news, etc’, and Radio 2 is now ‘overrun ‘ with women presenters.

The men are also the most useless bunch
What's the reason for that, *Johno"?
Equal stupidity all round, it seems to me so why suggest that the women were unfairly pushed into the jobs?

Totally agree. Best person for the award/job/whatever should get it.Also agree with commenters about Women's Hour which goes totally over the top on an aggressively pro women/anti men agenda.

The one which is getting my goat at the moment is Cambridge saying 25% of places should be given to those who do not meet its strict entry criteria but who come from underprivileged groups.

All these reditributive policies are doing is selecting against those who deserve their talent, merit, genius and work to be rewarded.

Think about it. A music conservatoire has two candidates with equal natural musical ability, perhaps perfect pitch.
One has put in the 10,000 hours of study and practice it takes to becopme a concert pianist. Should they give the place to the one who can play 'Chopsticks'?

Sorry:- redistributive,

Why does having a penis make you inherently better at commentating on Sport?

Answer: it doesn’t.

Of course the best person for the job (or award) should get it.
But who decides who is the best person?
Who decides what the criteria for deciding are?
When it comes to film directing, I can't think of anything about the job that would favour one sex over the other in terms of how they perform it. Nor can I think of any reason it would attract more of one sex than another (unless it is inherently sexist in either direction which would deter some people).
So logically the people who are 'best for the job' ought to be roughly split between the sexes.
If not, why not?

women first for fighting criminals in riot gear.... no, you don't see that do you.

You most certainly do, Johno. Some of my family, male and female, are in the police force, and of course they are expected to do the same job. They have all been involved in policing riots and other violent situations and have all been injured in the course of their duties. The days when female officers wore stockings, carried handbags and looked after lost children are long gone, thank goodness!

Craicon Hmm I only get to hear the occasional football commentary but have to say I'm not sure any of them are any good. DH gets somewhat miffed what I answer 'yes, of course' when they say things like 'got to get more goals it they wan to win' and loads more blindingly obvious twaddle which even I know and I know very little about football!

I agree with Siobahn!

Agree with you. I would hate to think I was given a job or award based on being a female or anything else other than being the best candidate. There is a lot of hype about gender ethnic origins, sexuality having to be accommodated in loads of jobs. I just hope the surgeon operating on me was awarded the status and the job based on skill, not on any of the popular 'must have' categories.

ALERT!! For those who get irritated by my extolling the virtues of Scotland.From its inception 20 years ago the MSP's serving the country have been much more equal gender wise.More women right from the start ,in the past couple of years it was notable that three of the party leaders were women ..Nicola Sturgeon,Kezia Dugdale and Ruth Davidson ,3 party leaders were also gay ,two of the aforementioned and the UKIP leader whose name escapes me...he was a bit of a nonentity .No one could imagine that these people got their jobs simply because of their sex or sexual preferences and that is how it should be

Well said Hm999. I totally agree with you.

I do think that immense progress has been made in my lifetime towards equality for all - genders, disability, sexuality etc. - although there is still much to be done in some areas. But at least now a woman can fight her corner if she is getting paid less for the same work and there is a general consensus that she is right to do so.

However I do think that sometimes these gains can only be achieved by the pendulum swinging too far one way before settling somewhere in the middle where common sense holds sway.

It is clearly a nonsense for the Arts Council to skew a production by insisting on an ethnic/gender mix rather than the integrity of the performance musically or artistically. This is what is happening - trust me on this one. Sometimes laudable aims have unfortunate results.

We have to acknowledge the huge problems for small businesses when they employ women of child-bearing age. It is rightly illegal to ask a woman at interview whether she is planning to have a family (not always a question that predicts the future, as many women have "little surprises") but maternity leave/s are problematical for these small companies, and it is crazy to pretend otherwise.

Things are improving, as we can see for instance from the large number of people from ethnic minorities represented in the media and in sport - that is a massive step forward from when I was a child.

Nobody who heard Stella Creasy interviewed by Nick Robinson on Radio 4 this morning could say that all women MPs are useless. Nobody who heard Michael Gove being constantly interrupted by the woman interviewer on the Today programme could not have thought that a man might have done the job better.