Quote:
Originally Posted by paulgiamatti
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Women do not get to walk around in our society without the fear of rape. Women are raped, and rape committed against women happens every single day of every single month of every single year. Give me a 24-hour truce during which there is no rape.
The pay gap has more to do with systematic/structural oppression than flagrant discrimination, although discrimination is certainly a form that oppression can take. Systematic oppression is a result of the patriarchal aspects of our society - it allows male-dominated industries and legislation to go unchecked, while keeping women subjugated and beneath the dominion of men. Although we've certainly made progress since the start of the 20th century - the ways in which oppression and subjugation occur are now often difficult to pinpoint and expose - there is still progress to be made.
Systematic/structural oppression also means that women are and have always been less educated than men. This is a big contributor to the pay gap, but I'd also argue that it reinforces the very subjugation that keeps women less educated and less informed. This is why whenever I hear the argument that women statistically perform worse than men in any field, it doesn't resonate with me at all. Of course they perform worse than men do, that's the whole point of the oppression and subjugation in the first place.
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Rape culture:
"Behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, sexual objectification, trivializing rape, denial of widespread rape, or refusing to acknowledge the harm of some forms of sexual violence. The notion of rape culture has been used to describe and explain behavior within social groups, including prison rape, and in conflict areas where war rape is used as psychological warfare. Entire societies have been alleged to be rape cultures"
Too me, it seems overblown to call the entire USA a rape culture. Most people agree with me. There might be pockets of rape culture, like prison, parts of the catholic church, and certain sports sub-cultures; but rape isn't generally accepted by the public, or denied to be a problem. Not in 2015 at any rate. Maybe its because I live in Oregon, where you become a registered sex offender and get up to 5 years for grabbing someones ass uninvited. I don't really know -- but one thing is for sure, feminist scholars have not really provided good empirical data to support the claim.
There is never going to be zero rape. Ever. There will never be zero murder either. Men will always have to worry about getting their ass kicked by stronger men (or groups of men) as well. All this sucks, but is really beside the point.
Historically, women were less educated than men. This is no longer going to be true. It is actually going to be the opposite, because their are more women in college and professional schools than men. There is a problem with businesses not offering paternity leave for pregnancies. But part of that is legitimate business concerns with the bottom line. The government will have to provide reimbursement to business for this to ever truly go away.
As for whole professions being discriminated against, there's something to it -- but its overstated. The main reason engineers get paid more than teachers is because engineering is less popular. If far less people were willing to work as teachers for the current pay offered, their salaries would go up. Women choose not to go into engineering -- despite being actively being pressured by academic and career advisors. It's not as if there's a guy on top of a building twisting his mustache and figuring out ways to pay women less. It's the same with computer science. There are simply less women interested than men. Its not the market or the business being sexist. The reason for women being less inclined to computer science (at least in modern times), has to do with social pressure outside of school and potential employers. Girls friends, family, etc. But people prefer to blame some dark figure in a board room instead.
The problem with pay gap conversations are the way they are pitched. There's people holding up signs about the pay gap in front of city hall....as if it is city hall doing the pay discrimination. The truth is, a male engineer and a female engineer with the same dedication to the job and level of experience, get paid the exact same the vast majority of the time. The pay gap has to do with choices women make. The way to address the issue is to discover why women make those choices -- not complain about teachers pay being sexist.
I'm not going to get into the weeds about anecdotal observations. Feminists not agreeing however, is well established. Evidence is available for anyone with google and shred of intellectual honesty.
01-19-2015, 11:26 PM
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