Society/Culture Feminism - 2017 Thread - Pt II

[El Dubya]

Forcing one gender into an industry isn’t how it would work though - it would be about incentivizing the employer or the individual to take that career path.

Now it would be very poorly received if there were financial incentives given to men to work in nursing. But if there was a gender balance required for entrance into nursing courses at uni that could be a more palatable checkpoint for structural intervention.

So choice isn’t removed - you can still pursue whatever education stream or vocational pursuit you want, but universities, who already use academic scoring as an entrance requirement can add another criteria to their admissions process. As I understand it there are already ‘quotas’ for international students and underprivileged.

That’s just an off-the-cuff idea and I haven’t thought it through in detail - but I don’t think it’s automatically a theft of free choice to incentivize or create situations that are more likely to result in gender equality.

Without this - you have an invisible theft of choice, where even though legal equality exists there is a cultural layer that discourages women (or men depending on the industry) from taking part.

But back to the medical field - I feel that nursing is the wrong example because it’s less desirable that the doctor/specialist side of the equation. Nursing is the lower ranked, the less powerful and less influential role. Nobody brags about knowing “the best midwife in Melbourne” but everyone I know talks up their netwoerk of “best Obstetrician in Melbourne” or “best cardiologist in Melbourne”. These are the roles that have been underrepresented by men and that kind of culture perpetuates. So to provide incentives or opportunities to women to enter specialized fields of medicine is where the effort is required.

And yeah - a lot of it comes down to that question of how important even gender representation is in the professional workforce because any of these changes had better be worth it.

I know in my field, in certain areas I'm more desirable because of my gender, because there's more female English teachers than male, whereas in Maths and Science there's a huge priority to get women into the area, and women who teach these subject areas are given financial incentives to join certain schools with a significant gender imbalance, usually in rural areas.

A male friend who was a nurse found it very easy to get a job at the Royal Children's, because they wanted male nurses to avoid making teenage boys getting sponge baths uncomfortable.

 

[Lethality]

 

[quotemokc]

I am not fussed that there are more women in universities than men.

There are way more tradies etc that are men than women doing laborious jobs which is fine since they all pay well enough to live a good life.

Getting a university education doesn't make you smarter than others.

 

[Lethality]

Well said by Maajid. Maybe now we can at least support the rejection of modesty culture which is occuring, instead of normalising it.

 

[Lethality]

I am not fussed that there are more women in universities than men.

There are way more tradies etc that are men than women doing laborious jobs which is fine since they all pay well enough to live a good life.

Getting a university education doesn't make you smarter than others.

I doubt the tradies make up for it. The concern would be that there are men who would otherwise be in university if any gender bias in the education system was addressed. The number of male tradies doesn't help them.

 

[Leather Poisoning]

Choice is removed if universities deny entry to someone based on having the wrong genitals. Someone who may or may not have contributed huge amounts to their field over the course of a lifetime. This is social engineering.

I still don't think it's removing choice. It's increasing scarcity for one group, while providing more abundance for another (yes, based on genetalia). The choice to apply is still available to everyone providing they score high enough (existing criteria) among those of their cohort (in this case gender, which would be a new cohort). As I said it already already exists. There are international student quotas which don't remove choice for local students. There aren't international-only courses. And I'm not opposed to social engineering if we're socially engineering a better society.

Who gets to decide what is worthwhile? How do they do it?

This is really tricky, there aren't any quick answers. You'd probably trial it in a couple of very vocationally-specific university courses and see what effect it had on industry representation.

Remove barriers and create equality of opportunity, not put more barriers in place and force equality of outcome.

But one of the barriers to equal opportunity is social and cultural norms that invisibly discourage participation, which exacerbates gender imbalance. I see equal opportunity and outcome as two sides of the same coin, not alternative approaches.

But like I said - the university placements intervention point was just an off-hand idea, not a fully considered policy recommendation that I had.

 

[Leather Poisoning]

How does a more diverse group make better decisions than a more qualified group? Are you referencing something you have seen in the way of a study or stats?

For mine the best people in the right roles delivers the best results.

I'm referencing studies that I don't have at my finger tips. Decision making and problem solving were tested in very controlled environments (rather than real-world business decision making, etc). Diversity of cultural backgrounds and gender were tested separately with homogenous control groups performing worst. I'll have to chase those references down.

In reference to your second point I like football analogies for this though - the difference being that footballers expire by age 35 whereas workforce administrators have decades to reinforce power, authority and decision making. Most coaches make a few spots available in the best 22 for young players to get experience knowing that they're not going to be able to really hold their own until they get to 50 games, and during those 50 they get a good sense of what that player's ceiling is.

Some times you have to pick on potential and possibility rather than proven results and yesterday's performance.

 

[The_Snake]

Isn't it odd how feminists in the West continue to tell us that hijabs, burqas etc aren't forms of female oppression forced onto them by males? Whose side are Western feminists on, exactly?

 

[Lethality]

Isn't it odd how feminists in the West continue to tell us that hijabs, burqas etc aren't forms of female oppression forced onto them by males? Whose side are Western feminists on, exactly?

They're concerned with defending Islam because they feel that it's a persecuted minority. This seems to supersede the persecution of other groups. Basically it's Muslims>women>homosexuals>etc, in some sort of order.

Iran has had a cool undergrowth of progressive youth for a while, hopefully they can succeed in their revolution against theocracy this time.

 

[ShanDog]

I still don't think it's removing choice. It's increasing scarcity for one group, while providing more abundance for another (yes, based on genetalia). The choice to apply is still available to everyone providing they score high enough (existing criteria) among those of their cohort (in this case gender, which would be a new cohort).

I understand your thinking on this, I just disagree with the ideology behind it. Nobody should be limited in the choices available to them if they are capable of achieving them based on something they have no control over, such as the gender or race they were born. It's anti-libertarian and not something I'm OK with.

As I said it already already exists. There are international student quotas which don't remove choice for local students. There aren't international-only courses. And I'm not opposed to social engineering if we're socially engineering a better society.

Can you provide a reference for this? I did a quick google search and found nothing about international student quotas. It might have been the way I framed the search but the first hits I got were articles from a few years ago lamenting the dropping rate of international students and the issues attracting them to our universities (which has since changed I think). There was also mention of removing quotas for domestic students to combat it.

Social engineering is not something to be entered into lightly. The ramifications of a change like this are massive, and the unintended ones could be anywhere from negligible to catastrophic. It's like soldering some computer circuitry at random just to see what happens.

But one of the barriers to equal opportunity is social and cultural norms that invisibly discourage participation, which exacerbates gender imbalance. I see equal opportunity and outcome as two sides of the same coin, not alternative approaches.

I strongly disagree - the two ideals couldn't be more different in both outcome and method to getting there. One involves prioritising the individual and improving their social mobility and choice, the other involves specifically removing that from people based on arbitrary characteristics of a person such as their race, gender or even socio-economic status (all of while are bestowed on the person through no choice of their own). It's encouraging people to find their own path vs oppressing people in order to determine what someone/s decide it should be based on what's between your legs. As I mentioned before, not all people are equal. They are of equal value as people, but they are certainly not all capable of the same things, nor are they interested in the same things. To try to force every workplace to look like a cross-section of the wider community is to attempt to correct a problem that simply doesn't exist in order to achieve an ideal predicated on something that simply isn't true.

I've seen a lot of citations using the Scandinavian countries as an example of where removing as many social barriers as possible in order to achieve a gender balance has actually produced the opposite effect, i.e. where they believed that more women would enter STEM fields, more men would enter hospitality, nursing and other female-dominated industry, the actual effect was that removing all other influences meant that biological traits were magnified and the disparities increased. What does that say about us meddling in things like personal choice and opportunity?

 

[Leather Poisoning]

Isn't it odd how feminists in the West continue to tell us that hijabs, burqas etc aren't forms of female oppression forced onto them by males? Whose side are Western feminists on, exactly?

What do western feminists respond with when confronted with this? Haven't seen any debates on this issue.

 

[strung_out7]

What do western feminists respond with when confronted with this? Haven't seen any debates on this issue.

They don't respond

 

[Lethality]

 

[The_Snake]

What do western feminists respond with when confronted with this? Haven't seen any debates on this issue.

Usually either silence or deflection. The plight of women under strict Islamic regimes is an inconvenient truth and doesn't fit the narrative, so it's best ignored.

 

[Chubberson]

Muslim women aren't oppressed.

 

[cartwright]

Choice is removed if universities deny entry to someone based on having the wrong genitals. Someone who may or may not have contributed huge amounts to their field over the course of a lifetime. This is social engineering. Who gets to decide what is worthwhile? How do they do it?

Remove barriers and create equality of opportunity, not put more barriers in place and force equality of outcome.

This, I agree with. But the removal of barriers & equality of opportunity needs to start before university: This young girl had to go to a boys school to study engineering....

http://www.smh.com.au/national/educ...g-class-at-a-boys-school-20171212-h0365y.html

 

[King Brown]

This, I agree with. But the removal of barriers & equality of opportunity needs to start before university: This young girl had to go to a boys school to study engineering....

http://www.smh.com.au/national/educ...g-class-at-a-boys-school-20171212-h0365y.html

It’s up to girls schools to provide that subject, isn’t it?

What’s stopping them?

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

They're concerned with defending Islam because they feel that it's a persecuted minority. This seems to supersede the persecution of other groups. Basically it's Muslims>women>homosexuals>etc, in some sort of order.

Iran has had a cool undergrowth of progressive youth for a while, hopefully they can succeed in their revolution against theocracy this time.

Let me provide some info here. Much of feminism is Western centric. Nearly all of our politics is. There is a movement within feminism that wants to move away from this, but its hard. A brief glance of the NOW facebook page; all issues relevent to only Western women. In fact, the right demands we focus only on issues relevant to us.

And nobody is defending institutionalised islam. It's completely ****ed and should be left in the middle ages. Your hierarchy is stupid though.

But it's not hard to see the motive here. Many on the right couldnt give a **** about women, especially muslim women. They're happy to tweet about her, but sure as **** would have her locked up on Manus if she got in a boat.


Hopefully that brave woman does plant the seed for a revolution. Hopefully every cleric, every religious huckster over there gets buried.

But here's a little history. Iran was heading towards a liberal secular government in the 50s. But it had the whiff of socialism. So the West installed an authoritarian government which was very friendly to American interests. The resentment this caused led to the islamic revolution in 1979.

The last thing the US wants over there is actual democracy, so let's hope any coming revolution is secular and not a puppet regime.

 

[Lethality]

But it's not hard to see the motive here. Many on the right couldnt give a **** about women, especially muslim women. They're happy to tweet about her, but sure as **** would have her locked up on Manus if she got in a boat.

Many do, many are women themselves. But it doesn't just have to be the right who are supporting this. The left supported World Hijab Day, and made the hijab a symbol of the women's march. They should be supporting women taking off their hijabs in Iran too.

Hopefully that brave woman does plant the seed for a revolution. Hopefully every cleric, every religious huckster over there gets buried.

Not just over there, but around the world, anywhere where the garment, or the religion, is not exactly a choice.

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

Many do, many are women themselves. But it doesn't just have to be the right who are supporting this. The left supported World Hijab Day, and made the hijab a symbol of the women's march. They should be supporting women taking off their hijabs in Iran too.

What the **** is world hijab day, who on the left supported it and how did they support it?

 

[Lethality]

What the **** is world hijab day, who on the left supported it and how did they support it?

This nonsense.

The international event, set up by New Yorker Nazma Khan, encourages non-Muslims and non-hijab-wearing Muslim women an opportunity to try the hijab for a day.

Wednesday marked the fifth year of the annual event which was launched to show solidarity with Muslim women and celebrate religious tolerance.

In New York, dozens of women wearing headscarves covered in scarves and stripes gathered on the steps of City Hall to mark the occasion.

(Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Activists carried signs protesting against Islamophobia.

Other demonstrations were held across the globe including in Liberia, Bosnia and Albania.

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

So they chose to wear headscarves?

And how did the left support it?

 

[11sjw]

 

[DaRick]

Well, I've never come across someone who identifies as a MGTOW, who wasn't also a misogynist.

My issues with those types relate to their obsession with 'rugged individualism' and the Amero-style libertarianism/conservatism many of them preach. This may be because many MGTOW's are in fact Americans.

 

[Chief]

Why don't you write something? Memes are often pointless.