Girls and Software

"that many take this into consideration"

Whenever they do that, the wage gap tends to shrink to a very low number (I think 2 to 4%) - of course most feminist outlets prefer to quote the 23% or other higher numbers instead. I am not convinced that the remainder has to be "discrimination". Perhaps they just haven't thought of every possible factor?

Take women in IT - how many samples did they even find for female programmers? I am highly skeptic about most studies really comparing men and women doing exactly the same job.

I have tried to get data for such studies to check, but it tends to be not available.

"Of course that is absurd. My mother is a feminist."

I never said that no feminists are mothers. Besides I think a lot of feminists don't really understand what they are even fighting for. If you define feminism as "equality for men and women", most people would probably say they are feminists.

Did your mother take time off to spend with you then?

"The whole point of feminism is everyone has a choice to do what they want."

At face value - but they seem to have a hard time accepting that people want different things, and that perhaps women WANT to stay home more often than men. Or rather, as I suspect, are given the opportunity more often.

If you want real equality and you measure that aspect, you would have to force women to go back to work as quickly as possible after child birth, so that the fathers can have their turn at staying at home.

Of course feminists think staying at home with children is a horrible ordeal, but I think if they finally get their wish they might regret it once they have children.

In France where this might have started (with Simone de Beauvoir) there is now a counter movement of mothers who don't want to give their kid to childcare at age 3 months anymore. And afaik Beauvoir didn't demand women should go to work because it would free them, but because she saw the time with children as too easy and tempting to slack off. She wanted to force women to be tough.

"They want men to have the same opportunities to spend time with their children as women and the same opportunities to work as women without societal pressure."

It doesn't sound like that in most publications, though. The idea seems rather that spending time with children is horrible and men should shoulder their equal half of the burden instead of having fun at work.

If you read so many studies, you probably also read that childless women actually tend to earn more than men. So not being respected is not really the issue.

Children ARE the main issue. It is a problem that employers have to worry about female employees dropping out, and therefore the value of a female employee might be lessened. Not only that - thinking about the costs of education, I wonder if it is also less likely to pay off for a woman if she has to take a few years off that could otherwise be used to earn back the money spent on education.

That is a real issue I accept. The solution seems less clear. Feminism seems to assume that women simply want the same things as men. But what if they really want to spend time with their kids? I don't think it is unfair to let there be a cost to that.

It's a problem for women who don't want kids, but what would be a good solution?

"It is simply the belief that men and women should be treated as equals."

It's not, unfortunately. It is the idea that women are victims and should get special treatment because of that. But I grant you that many feminists probably believe your version. The irony is that most feminists demands really hurt women. For example now they fight for childcare everywhere. In result there will be no excuse to stay at home with children, and both father and mother will earn less (because of more people in the workforce) and be unable to afford to leave one parent at home. Capitalism wins - not women...

Uh, men can cooperate very well. Let's not pile stereotypes upon stereotypes.

I've heard that men actually get more competitive in the presence of women, which would contradict your story. But maybe you are right. Nothing against women on teams. But please don't claim that men can't cooperate.

What about the army, for example? How do these regiments work? Why do ex soldiers miss the time with the boys? It seems unlikely to me that they don't cooperate.

You said:

> For example, in the wage gap discussion, I have never seen anybody ask an employer why they pay women less. Who knows, there might be some surprising answers.

I replied:

>> "That amounts to asking employers why they are breaking the law, which makes it a little tricky"

Because your question assumed some employers paid women less, and in eg: the US, systematically paying women less for the same job that you pay men more for, would be illegal.

>> Maybe you haven't noticed, but you are already assuming that employers are guilty. That kind of thing is exactly what makes me speak out against feminist articles all the time, because there are so many unspoken assumptions.

I see were we might have mis-communicated here. If we assume at a given employer, that women are paid less for the same type of jobs that men do, to a statstically signficant degree -- you might argue that it just so happens that women are paid less, that it has nothing to do with them being women -- therefore the employer might not be discriminating.

Now, if you're right, you might get some answers with justifications ranging from experience, to education etc. However if you're wrong, then an employer would be incriminating themselves by answering. That's why it's a tricky question to ask -- if you expect to get meaningful responses.

Note that such research has still been done (see other comments in this thread).

Criticizing how fictional women are dressed is not the same as criticizing how real-life women are dressed. When a man draws or designs a female character with "sexy" clothing, it's likely sexualizing that character for male viewers to ogle. When a woman decides to dress that way, it's personal expression.

When I see feminist criticisms of how female characters are dressed, they're not criticizing three dimensional autonomous characters that happen to wear revealing clothes. They're criticizing usually stock characters that perpetuate stereotypes about women and objectify.

That being said, some feminists (or should that be "feminists"?) absolutely do police women's clothing choices, and that's just as wrong from them as it is from anyone else.

I'm not advocating single-sex education as a general system of education. I'm saying that it can be beneficial to have some lessons or courses segregated in an otherwise co-ed environment, when that can help give all students a more equal base from which to participate. Granted, it shouldn't be the first or only tool used -- but it might be a useful tool.

So, if there seems to be a barrier for girls join soccer games in breaks, it might help to give a small girl only intro class to soccer -- or vice-versa for basket for boys or what not (yes, this is a contrived example). But other things might help, or be enough: encouraging inclusive behaviour in general etc etc.

I absolutely agree that this type of splitting of students shouldn't be done lightly, or even seen as a particularly good situation -- it must be seen in the context of what realities we observe, and what kind of reality we would like to achieve.