Should women have equal pay and opportunities?

. Well someone is bored this morning.
Well done Bumface . Good result. What else will you do today for a laugh

Should women be paid the same as men and have equal opportunities? I cannot think of a single reason why not. I was also raised with the story that girls should marry. have children and belong to a man but I believe a woman should be free do whatever she wants with her life, just as everyone should.

When someone prefaces a comment with, I was brought up to believe, or - my mother always taught me that..., it's a provocation. Because the person commenting is suggesting that their mother, or whoever brought-them-up, has some special pipe-line to the truth which we should treat with some respect.

Weren't we all brought up by guardians or parents who taught us to believe whatever subjective opinions they had?

And, frankly, to pose such a question - "should women have equal pay and opportunities" when women through the centuries have fought to be recognised as an equal half of the population rather than a subservient to men, is a tad insulting.

I wonder if Bumface would like to return to the days when women seldom owned property because it was entailed to the male heirs; where women who were not lucky enough to marry had to either become governesses or, if they hadn't had much of an education - menials for the upper classes? Without equal pay and opportunities, how would women support themselves if they didn't have a "breadwinner" to keep them?

... as for men always having the final decision in family matters - why? Are they characteristically infallible because they are men?

Positing this notion in the 21st century among a group of women who have campaigned and fought to shake off the straightjacket of second-class citizenship - some of whom are highly educated professional women - is just provocative.

... and ridiculous. Women have, for various reasons, been both breadwinner, mother and homemaker, all at the same time for decades now. That they should for some reason, because of their biology, have less pay, less opportunities, is absurd.

The OP seems unable or unwilling to offer any opinion on the matter. Strange.

This has to be a joke post...? 😅

Germanshepherdsmum

The OP seems unable or unwilling to offer any opinion on the matter. Strange.

... maybe she has to wait for her man to tell her what her opinion is when he returns home from his bread-wining?

I really was brought up to believe this garbage and I am not that old.
We may delude ourselves that we have completely moved away from the bad old days, but how do you explain the following:-

Latest figures for average gender pay gap 14.3%.

Schools still run on the assumption that one parent does not have a full-time job. Holiday, before and after school care does exist in most, but not all, schools but it comes at a price.

According to a recent survey women do 80% of the housework.

If children are ill it is almost always the woman who has to stay home from work.

If the house is dirty or the children misbehave the woman is more likely to be blamed.

In broken homes it is still nearly always the women who has custody of the children and it is not unusual for the man to start a new family without a backward glance.

It is still more acceptable for a man to live away from home if his work requires it.

Don't get me started on adverts, though quite a few now show men doing housework.

Andrew Tate and his ilk.

I really didn't mean to stir up a hornets' nest but I am loving your responses. BTW I was born a girl and I still identify as female. I could go on but I need to sort out the washing and dust the living room.

Should women have equal pay and opportunities?

Yes.

Your thread is a strange way of making your point.

Bumface where are you !? I can't be anyone can even consider your question re. equal pay. Are you for real ?

Ah there you are !

Germanshepherdsmum

Your thread is a strange way of making your point.

👍👍

... yes, it is.

Deliberately so.

And now the OP can deal with all the fall out from it 🤣

FGS, all the spiteful remarks and yet the OP has returned and said what she thinks, sheesh!
As I said on the first page of the thread, many ethnic minorities
Still think the same as the OP’s family from the past, and they live in the UK.

A slightly different slant on things here, my mother was born in 1896 and never went out to work. However she did all the invoices and accounting for my father's plumbing business. My mother was in charge of the family budget and made all the major decisions. All is not always as it seems,

Bumface

I really was brought up to believe this garbage and I am not that old.
We may delude ourselves that we have completely moved away from the bad old days, but how do you explain the following:-

Latest figures for average gender pay gap 14.3%.

Schools still run on the assumption that one parent does not have a full-time job. Holiday, before and after school care does exist in most, but not all, schools but it comes at a price.

According to a recent survey women do 80% of the housework.

If children are ill it is almost always the woman who has to stay home from work.

If the house is dirty or the children misbehave the woman is more likely to be blamed.

In broken homes it is still nearly always the women who has custody of the children and it is not unusual for the man to start a new family without a backward glance.

It is still more acceptable for a man to live away from home if his work requires it.

Don't get me started on adverts, though quite a few now show men doing housework.

Andrew Tate and his ilk.

I really didn't mean to stir up a hornets' nest but I am loving your responses. BTW I was born a girl and I still identify as female. I could go on but I need to sort out the washing and dust the living room.

This is absolutely not what I witness amongst the young couples I know and is actually rather insulting to most young men. My children and their partners share domestic duties and childcare equally - and I see the same in all of their contemporaries

Of course women should have equal pay for the same work (statistics often mislead in this respect) and equal opportunities. However when children come along compromises usually have to be made. If women want absolute equality in the workplace and refuse to compromise on that then they may have to choose not to have children unless they are content (and are sufficiently rich) to employ nannies who are available 24/7/365.

Dear Bumface. strange pseudonym to give yourself btw
Sadly, I agree that there is still plenty of prejudice against women in the workplace, often by other women.

Yesterday I attended a lecture about Mary Somerville who was the first Scientist (of either sex to be called a scientist)
Born in 1780, died 1872
She was a polymath, mathematician, astronomer, teacher, prolific writer and artist.
She was able to work at her science because her first DH died leaving her a bit of money and thus the freedom to develop.
Her 2nd DH was much more accommodating but nonetheless she bore 6 DC.

Her picture is on the Royal Bank of Scotland £10 note and an Oxford college is named after her.
I hadn't heard of her until yesterday.

Even today I was reminded that although the majority of people who work in the science labs at Edinburgh University are women, most of the chiefs, the high earners, are men.

oxsci.org/mary-somerville-her-legacy-for-women-in-science/

My parents tried to get me to believe these things but by age 11 (the age I decided never to have children) I had more or less rejected them.

I told my grandmother once that I had never met a man who was my equal and to whom I was attracted. She said "I think you will have to knit yourself one".

I told my grandmother once that I had never met a man who was my equal and to whom I was attracted. She said "I think you will have to knit yourself one".

I love that! 😆

biglouis

My parents tried to get me to believe these things but by age 11 (the age I decided never to have children) I had more or less rejected them.

I told my grandmother once that I had never met a man who was my equal and to whom I was attracted. She said "I think you will have to knit yourself one".

The one thing that puzzled me as a young teen back in the 50s was why, as a woman, I was supposed to respond to a man's (well, boy's anyway) attentions purely on the basis that he had granted them. It was almost as if I should be grateful and flattered to be noticed.

What made me think like this was because if I spurned such attention, I was made to feel unkind, ungrateful and, somehow, not normal.

There was one particular persistent young man I'd been at school with, very handsome, but I had absolutely no interest in him whatsoever. My mother was constantly urging me to accept his proposal of a date, and I wouldn't, couldn't, because handsome or not, he made my skin crawl.

How can you explain this as a teenager to a family who insisted he was a "nice young man" implying that there was something wrong with me for not wanting to date him?

Thank goodness times have changed. Otherwise we'd all be knitting the right man...

Bumface

I was brought up to believe that a woman's role in civilised society was to marry a man, run a home and bear and raise children. The man was the breadwinner so his role was to provide the money, discipline the children if necessary and be looked after by the wife. He had the responsibility and the final word when making important decisions affecting the family.

Is this a wind up?

Well, I knew the British were old-fashioned in many respects, but this post really takes the biscuit!

Like most of the others who have answered it, I cannot believe anyone of my generation (I am 72) even if brought up to believe this, still thinks it right, so I do wonder what OP meant posting this.

Oh I wish I had knitted mine

Got them going though…..

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