Are Women Really Treated Equally?

I have a very feminist friend. This topic irritates me a bit, and personally, I think that men and women will always be fighting for equality BECAUSE men and women are different, no matter what society will always be pushing gender stereotypes, even if they differ and there will always be someone who thinks women should be in the kitchen and men should be cutting down trees. I think that women deserve to be acknowledged on an individual basis, not all women are the same and not all men are the same. Some women live their lives in the dream of being a housewife and doing household chores and raising her family and other women will tell those women that they are bad for that.
I've seen myself where men get treated rudely by female superiors and even equals in the workplace. This one guy who is gay works at a gas station, the only other people working at the time were women, and they made the comment "We're all girls here" and I found that to be quite rude. He's gay, not transexual. That comment implies that because he is gay means he is a "feminine man" which he is not.

Men and women AREN'T equal, but to me equality, in terms of how people are treated socially and legally, means acceptance. Men and Women aren't equal, but white women and black women aren't equal either, Native American men and Hispanic women aren't equal either. Heterosexuals and homosexuals are again, NOT EQUAL. I think we are a LONG way off from full equality. Society always needs someone to be on the bottom rung to feel better about itself, so really equality may never come. I know that most women's rights activists aren't saying that women are better than men, but a lot of the ones I know and the ones I read about seem to say so. There is no superior gender and there is no superior race. All there is, is people. Plain and simple. I never use gender specific pronouns or race specific pronouns unless referring to someone specifically. The easiest way to get everyone on equal grounds is to act like everyone is already equal, to not ask a man to carry something heavy because he is a man (unless you have a bad back and he is the only one around and CAN carry it). If you go out on a date, split the bill or if you are going to a movie too then have one person pay for the food and the other the movie.

Women get 40% less prison time than men for committing the same crimes, women are normally the ones who keep custody of the children after divorce. Women can trick men into getting them pregnant and the man still has to pay child support. Domestic violence towards men is almost as prevalent as against women but isn't taken anywhere near as seriously. Girls tend to outperform boys academically. TV shows involving a panel of women can talk all the crap they want about men, but if it was the reverse, a panel show with men talking crap, making generalisations about women would be taken off the air after ten minutes. You would either have to have both types of shows on TV or neither of them. Equality means equality.
Most of the things that you and other commenters on here have talked about like rape, domestic violence etc can all happen to men as well, but like I said, these things happening to men never get mentioned because no-one takes it seriously. Women aren't the only ones who can be treated unfairly.
Women have equal opportunities, you aren't subjugated by men at all.

Men on average pay more after a divorce. Men on average have more dependents to support. Men die earlier and are more likely to have a major injury on the job. The E.R.A. was a proposed amendment to the constitution that would have made men and women equal under the law. (Because they currently are not) This was defeated by women when they realized that this would be terrible for women. You can't demand equality of all the beneficial stuff and not the detrimental stuff that goes along with it. Look it up and stop bitching.

treating women fairly. i heard the president basically say that he wants to see to it that women don't get the short end of the stick. he wants women to be treated fairly. let me just say that any employer who suggests that women should get less of a paycheck is an employer who obviously thinks little of womens' potential.



i believe that treating women fairly means realizing their potential, not lying about it for the sake of those who can't handle the truth. that is the plain-and-simple fact of the matter. treating women fairly means realizing their potential - their TRUE potential. the true potential of womanhood.



likewise, it must be said that treating women fairly means realizing the potential of disability. treating women fairly means realizing the reasons for gender-based sports teams (not to mention gender-based military requirements, gender-based hot dog eating competitions, gender-based fitness centers and gender-based parking spaces meant for women carrying an extra 7 pounds and not for men who are going to be carrying 40 pounds of rocks to the car).



truly treating women fairly means realizing femininity as the short end of the stick, it doesn't mean preventing them from realizing themselves by overcompensating for them with words like "a woman can do anything a man can do" and things like gender-based sports teams. it's not fair to lie to women just to placate their visions of "wonder woman". things are always so gender-based nowadays, nobody even gets the message that is being sent by basing things on gender - the message that women should not compete against men if they want to excel. sure, there are spelling bees that aren't gender-based, but i'm talking about physical competitions which are always gender-based. which brings to mind a "women vs. men" fitness competition at the ymca.



...it was was only cardio.



treating women fairly means realizing femininity as the shorter gender - the husbands of female schoolteachers (and even some adolescent students in school) have no choice but to look down upon the female because females predominately are of lesser height. females are also predominately of lesser width since adolescence, when their hips widened to accommodate childbirth (as the young mens' shoulders widened to...well, let's just say to accommodate carrying more than a watermelon over the threshold). lesser height, lesser width...maybe there IS a lesser gender. all i know is that there was a song in 1991 called "things that make you go hmn...". so, am i your freedom williams? i sure want a washboard like he had.



treating women fairly does not mean giving them a false sense of self. actually, even if their sense of self is improved because it's a little more masculine, the truth is that femininity is being overcompensated for with words like "a woman can do anything a man can do". the truth is that a woman simply cannot do anything a man can do, much like a man cannot do anything a woman can do. a woman's body was designed for motherhood, from the milk-faucets upstairs to the bloody egg-faucet downstairs that doesn't shut off unless there's a bun in the oven (that was implanted by the seed of a man, might i add). a woman's body was not designed to carry 40 pounds of rocks out to the car, "i carried a watermelon" was a line that jennifer grey had in dirty dancing - and there's no shame in that. there's no shame in being physically disabled, there's no shame in being a masculine dysfunction (unless you're a gay "man," but gawking wide-eyed and open-mouthed at another member of one's gender is more a dysfunction of identity). come to think of it, the female who thinks she can do anything a man can do is as much a matter of dysfunctional gender-identity as the masculivoid who doesn't feel whole unless his *** is being filled up by the masculine gender.



hmn...sometimes i am my own freedom williams (without the washboard). sometimes, things just dawn on me and make me go "hmn..." - like this one time, at band camp, when i put "womb" and "man" together to arrive at "woman".



yes, i amaze myself. both with my wit and with my ability to offend wombn. maybe the "traumatic brain injury" that i had in 1990 didn't leave my brain totally dysfunctional. just a little eccentric, and i'm fine with that.



dylan terreri, i

www.dylansbraininjury.com

www.jaggedlittledyl.com, LLC

treating women fairly. i heard the president basically say that he wants to see to it that women don't get the short end of the stick. he wants women to be treated fairly. let me just say that any employer who suggests that women should get less of a paycheck is an employer who obviously thinks little of womens' potential.



i believe that treating women fairly means realizing their potential, not lying about it for the sake of those who can't handle the truth. that is the plain-and-simple fact of the matter. treating women fairly means realizing their potential - their TRUE potential. the true potential of womanhood.



likewise, it must be said that treating women fairly means realizing the potential of disability. treating women fairly means realizing the reasons for gender-based sports teams (not to mention gender-based military requirements, gender-based hot dog eating competitions, gender-based fitness centers and gender-based parking spaces meant for women carrying an extra 7 pounds and not for men who are going to be carrying 40 pounds of rocks to the car).



truly treating women fairly means realizing femininity as the short end of the stick, it doesn't mean preventing them from realizing themselves by overcompensating for them with words like "a woman can do anything a man can do" and things like gender-based sports teams. it's not fair to lie to women just to placate their visions of "wonder woman". things are always so gender-based nowadays, nobody even gets the message that is being sent by basing things on gender - the message that women should not compete against men if they want to excel. sure, there are spelling bees that aren't gender-based, but i'm talking about physical competitions which are always gender-based. which brings to mind a "women vs. men" fitness competition at the ymca.



...it was was only cardio.



treating women fairly means realizing femininity as the shorter gender - the husbands of female schoolteachers (and even some adolescent students in school) have no choice but to look down upon the female because females predominately are of lesser height. females are also predominately of lesser width since adolescence, when their hips widened to accommodate childbirth (as the young mens' shoulders widened to...well, let's just say to accommodate carrying more than a watermelon over the threshold). lesser height, lesser width...maybe there IS a lesser gender. all i know is that there was a song in 1991 called "things that make you go hmn...". so, am i your freedom williams? i sure want a washboard like he had.



treating women fairly does not mean giving them a false sense of self. actually, even if their sense of self is improved because it's a little more masculine, the truth is that femininity is being overcompensated for with words like "a woman can do anything a man can do". the truth is that a woman simply cannot do anything a man can do, much like a man cannot do anything a woman can do. a woman's body was designed for motherhood, from the milk-faucets upstairs to the bloody egg-faucet downstairs that doesn't shut off unless there's a bun in the oven (that was implanted by the seed of a man, might i add). a woman's body was not designed to carry 40 pounds of rocks out to the car, "i carried a watermelon" was a line that jennifer grey had in dirty dancing - and there's no shame in that. there's no shame in being physically disabled, there's no shame in being a masculine dysfunction (unless you're a gay "man," but gawking wide-eyed and open-mouthed at another member of one's gender is more a dysfunction of identity). come to think of it, the female who thinks she can do anything a man can do is as much a matter of dysfunctional gender-identity as the masculivoid who doesn't feel whole unless his *** is being filled up by the masculine gender.



hmn...sometimes i am my own freedom williams (without the washboard). sometimes, things just dawn on me and make me go "hmn..." - like this one time, at band camp, when i put "womb" and "man" together to arrive at "woman".



yes, i amaze myself. both with my wit and with my ability to offend wombn. maybe the "traumatic brain injury" that i had in 1990 didn't leave my brain totally dysfunctional. just a little eccentric, and i'm fine with that.



dylan terreri, i

www.dylansbraininjury.com

www.jaggedlittledyl.com, LLC

This is like that stupid "documentary", Super Size Me.

Allow me the shame of playing devil's advocate.



In so many cases, the root problem lies not with anything, and barriers established by men, but the inability of women to speak with one voice and one common goal.



It's not men who prevent women candidates from being President, but women who work, for example, worked to defeat Hillary Clinton, and other potential women candidates before her, never seemingly being able to agree on a woman candidate.



In the work place, too often it's women who make demands that men don't make, right or wrong. Too often, when women do achieve positions of power, they themselves often reject well qualified women in favor of men.



It's almost appears to me that women feel threatened by other women and still feel some need for male protection.



This debate has no end much like any political debate but I submit that women are their first worst enemy.



It's wasn't men who forced women to give up most clothing seen as feminine, thus less than man. It was women who adopted all things masculine in some self-determined idea that men by nature of their clothing are stronger thus to be a successful women all things feminine like allowing a man to open a door for you is a sign of female weakness.



My suggested is for women to unite! Won't happen so men will remain secure in their seats of power.

Women globally are the most oppressed group in the world. So many cultures want boys. Women circumcision, rape, force and arranged marriages, working unpaid, not allowed to receive education, burning, domestic violence, prejudice, kidnapping, white slavery, postitution, cutting and physical abuse, poverty, brutal divorce and so many others issue to heavy to ignore. Only children are the poorest on the planet.

Men are the most dispensable members of any society.



Titanic anyone?

Well here's a thing I noticed.



After school, guys are more likely go for fields like engineering, IT, sciences, math.

And those who take the healthcare route, are more likely to continue high studies.



Those are highly paid professions.



While women are more likely to go for fields like psychology, sociology, child dvlpt, English, business...etc



Those are less paid professions.



Besides, there are more homeless men than women in this world:

http://library.thinkquest.org/10374/html/facts.html



and homeless men remain like that for longer time and more likely to be in worse conditions:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8243048





Fact is, that a woman who is broken or very poor would still have the chance to find a man who would support her financially. While broken men usually find no partner, most women want to marry UP after all, not marry down, so these men end up homeless.



And the world's recession is affecting the typical men's jobs more than the typical women's jobs.



In wars, and in most civilizations, young men are the dispensable tools by the governments/rulers.



Believe me OP, the men's world isn't rosy as well.

Equal Opportunities not provided. BIG LIE! In fact women are preferred for recruitment in colleges.(At least in IITs). There was this company I applied for where 90 males and 10 females appeared for 10 positions. Guess what! 4 of the selected candidates were females.



Dont dare to say that women aren't given equal opportunities.

Men and women are mostly equal. Its just they are not equal in the ways you want them to be. For instance in the family courts everything is skewed towards women un-equally (child-support). In the dating scene women are not expected to pay much. In the workplace and military women are not expected to do the dangerous jobs. So it's all a wash, it's equal but not the sense you want them to be; everything finds a balance.

You're right.

Equal rights for women still aren't fully developed, but when people adress this, the response is often that this is just an redicolous idea, and then they say how it used to be worse 50 years ago.

But girls are educated to be afraid sooner then boys, to take less risk, be less competitive, and to speak their mind less, even in developed countries with equal rights in the law.

But because it's psychological and not directly visible in law, a lot of people see it as a lie.

And ofcourse it's not true that ALL woman are brought up that way, it's an overall picture.

The feminist movement has resulted in more women having to support themselves. Women used to be largely supported by their husbands and family. Now men can't get jobs and women have to support themselves.



Because of this women do not value relationships as much as they used to.



Since men no longer need to support a woman to **** her they mostly just **** them.



Feminism has screwed up the world and you still complain about pennies on the dollar that you aren't getting paid.

I have had lots of really negative experiences with women professors and supervisors. I found most to be cold and bitter to the extent that they couldn't function professionally. I am married to a professional woman and I have known several women who were much more capable at traditionally male jobs than almost anyone on the planet. That includes my grandmother. My point is: Women cry that they are poorly treated, but maybe, it's because they just can't hack it.

Well, gender equality depends on society, people's mentality, education etc.

wommen will always be of value to man, but never equal because of the physical.

Women who do the job of a man as well as a man should be paid as well as a man ..But we are not the same..

I kinda understand your point, women are not treated as equally as men. race comes into it too

AND he has NO COLLEGE education I DO; but, he makes more than 4 times in salary than I have ever been offered!!!!!

NO THEY ARE NOT! I have been working long enough to know that and they are still hired, promoted and given raises based on how they look! FACT! Just ask my brother-n-law who only hires attractive women to work for him!

If a woman comes up to me and hits me hard enough to cause real damage, she can expect retaliation, at least legal, if not physical. Just because someone is fragile, even for the sake of argument, doesn't mean they can go around hitting people. Women aren't exempt from getting a retaliatory punch if they try to break your nose. Besides, all physical advantages and disadvantages are neutralized the moment you get any sort of weapon. A beer bottle to the head is just as effective coming from a woman as it is from a man.

I believe that everyone should be equal...and most of us here probably do. But unfortunately, in our world today, there is no real equality...In America, we still have social classes. We have people who live on welfare, we have people who are homeless, and at the same time we have people who make minimum wage and live paycheck to paycheck barely able to get by, and finally we have the upscale people who live in mansions who get paid for doing a lot less than that person that lives paycheck to paycheck. There are no equal rights, because cops profile and businesses discriminate against who they are hire and don't hire.



This may sound sexist, so anyone who this offends I apologize, and it is not my intention. This is something that has been bothering me for years. Not very many people actually want equality, many people only want to be treated better than they are. For example, which is a very sexist one and that is why I apologized, but it was the first thing that came to mind because I first started thinking about it while watching the beginning scenes of Boondock Saints. But say, a woman says she is being treated on fairly because she doesn't get treated like a man does. Now, not all women are as fragile as many people may assume. I know some really tough women. For the sake of this example, let's say she is. If this woman were to complain for equal rights, and she gets the treated like a man does...does that mean that it is morally acceptable to punch her in the face? If a guy comes up to me and punches me in the face I'm going to fight him, but if a women punches me in the face...I'm not going to hit her back. I may try to restrain her, but I would certainly not attempt to fight her back to cause her any harm. It's because I believe it's wrong to hit women, but women don't complain about that in their arguments for equal rights. Now I'm not saying we should all just go around and beat up women to show them they don't want equal rights. I'm saying, people don't realize what they are truely asking for.



Don't take this situation as negative as I put it, but use it more as an equation. Sidenote: I'm really only violent when provoked. Back to the point, look at this as Pethagoreum's Theorum (sorry if that is spelled wrong). "A" = Violence; "B" = Women; "C" = Equal Rights...A+B=C...



Apply this equation to other scenarios were "C" would be Equal Rights...there are so many problems like this in the world. It's really tough to really gain full equality because people will complain when they get what they ask for because as humans we want more of what is better for our ownselves. We are selfish creatures...It's human nature. Unfortunately for the anarchist that I am, there are not many people who are really able to break from that path which nature set us on. I'm not saying I'm better than anyone, I'm just saying that we can all be equal if everyone were able to let go of the petty crap that we "want" and focus on what we actually need...

Very well argued, Fourier. I am pretty sure that those who have the ability to go beyond the first sentence and understand the points you make will agree with you, or will at least have something to think about.



The circular argument that less representation of women in public domain indicates they are not capable of it and therefore we need not bother about equal opportunities is well, circular and therefore immune to logical arguments.

Thank you. Your inability to respond to any of my arguments and your continual repetition of a completely irrelevant (and factually incorrect) argument showcases the weaknesses in your case well enough.



The snarky little ad hominem addition confirms it.

No ... I did not read your comment beyond the first sentance. Anyone who thinks achitecture is not based in hard science is either very ignorant ... or a liar. An architect must choose every material he uses carefully based on the stresses they can handle. Architecture is very strongly based on math and physics... Achitects are architectural engineers. Makes me suspicious you are so ignorant on this. I can't believe you have a clue what you are talking about. An architect made an error in his mathmetic calculations on a cantelever cement balcony in a building and 30 people died. Architectural design can kill you if the achitecture ENGINEER miscalculates. Not hard science? You must be looking to work for the government ... Civil service people get promoted due to their ignorance ...

There are many kinds of "engineers" ... software engineering for example is not based in math or physics. You do not need a strong background in math for many "soft" engineering dregrees.

What I consistently observe is a lowering of standards to "accomodate" "minorites" or women so they can "compete" for "Opportunities" and it is killing this country.

@missjulie

"Take a college physics class"

Have I not explained to you that I'm an engineering student? I've taken plenty of physics courses. Have you even read my comment beyond the first sentence?



I know perfectly well what an architect is and I also know that architecture is NOT considered a conventional hard-science career because a large part of an architect's job comprises of design and aesthetic aspects, as opposed to purely practical applications of scientific theory (which is what mechanical and civil engineers do). An architect is not an "engineer first". Architecture is not a specialized field of engineering - it is a completely different field with different goals. Sure, they have to know basic mechanical engineering concepts but most of the stress/load characteristics etc are handled by specialist engineers who are a part of the team, not architects themselves. You have still not answered any of my questions, nor refuted any of my arguments. Resorting to ad hominem doesn't help your case any more than your original straw man argument.



Also, if you want to take the hard sciences argument forward, then tell me why the majority of celebrity chefs and fashion designers are also men? Women are supposed to be better at artistic stuff. Where's your Gordon Ramsay equivalent, then? Where's your female Mozart? Why are all the famous painters men?



The distortion in numbers are not caused by unequal skills but by unequal opportunities. You'd do well to realize that.



@gigglets

I don't think there ever WILL be perfect equality. Nor is it necessary to engineer something like that. What we should strive towards instead is equal opportunity. Even if you have already achieved that in America, as you claim, the vast majority of the world (which lives in Asia and Africa) has not.

MissJulie has kinda nailed it. For a woman or a man to be equal they both must share the same education, experiences, training, and so many other traits and qualities. The absence of the same things disallows total equality.



And again, sadly, women are their own worst enemies because they can't come togther as speak with one voice. Feminists verses the traditionalist. As far as I can tell from the figures presented, Hillary Clinton wasn't defeated by the lack of male votes, but the lack of female votes. If you want to play the numbers game there was more women that voted than men in the primaries. Had the women stuck together we just may have had our first woman President.

Architechture is not hard science? That says it all about your knowledge and education level. An architect is not an interior designer ... an architect must be very knowledgeable in physics or buildings and bridges collapse An architect must first be an engineer. ... Take a college physics class ... see how many females there are...

In any case, all this is quite irrelevant. My original point was about equal OPPORTUNITIES, not some kind of perfect, utopian, enforced equality. It's a fact that there are 8 men for every one woman with an IQ greater than 145. The statistical spread of intelligence levels in males is much flatter, spread throughout the spectrum (which also means, of course that there are far more dumb men than dumb women). The spread for women is concentrated at the average. An enforced equality is neither necessary, nor desirable. There will probably always be more male Nobel prize winners than women in Physics. I should remind you here, though, that in the overwhelming majority of jobs, a five point difference in raw IQ is completely insignificant in comparison to other factors, such as multitasking skills, diligence, communication skills and so forth.



What I am talking about here is that every child needs to be given an equal opportunity. In my country and many others, such opportunities are often denied to women. Or sometimes, they are subtly discouraged from particular careers. That is what I'm against. If opportunities are equal and equally talented people from both genders recieve similar rewards, my purpose would be achieved. Once that happens, I don't care how many women CHOOSE to become lawyers and how many want to be hairdressers. Individuals are not statistics. People must be judged by their abilities and not that of their whole gender.