Frontline (RTE1, 11/4/2011): "A Man's World?"

iptba

I thought I'd start this thread both to highlight the programme and in case anyone was interested in discussing what was said:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0411/blog-frontlineblog.html

A man's world?

Monday, 11 April 2011

Is it still a man's world? Statistics show that women have better health and do better in school but despite that only around 20% of management positions are held by women and of course women's representation in the Dáil is paltry. Is this because women are making different life choices or because a 'glass ceiling' built by men is still in place?

Are the problems of young male suicide and lower male school performance down to a culture that has become more approving of women than men or is it down to men's own attitudes and expectations of themselves. That's what we'll be debating tonight in the company of John Waters - Irish Times columnist and a well-known advocate of men's rights - and Camille Loftus of the National Women's Council.

Dave!

...John Waters...

Can't watch now!

Galvasean

God, I can't stomach John Waters. He's so unbelievably self-righteoud and hypocritical.

previous user

Some interesting topics mentioned above makes a change from
'the economy' being discussed ad nauseum.

Dave!

Pat stirring the shít like a boss

baldbear

Pats dead right. Men are getting shafted. I vote for a march on the Dáil and we burn our jocks.

Seth Brundle

Bugger all that!
I'm watching TCM. Dirty harry is on and will be followed by Enter the Dragon.
That's proper mans viewing!

baldbear

Joan screeeched her way out of that job.

Dravokivich

I always find the way they use "numbers / stastics" to be a bit trivial.

Equality in the workplace does not mean a 50/50 gender balance in each position, because that would bring a gender based quota which can result in descrmination based on those requirements. Even then, I can say for certain in my office, there's more women envolved in higher level management then men... does that make my workplace more progressive in regards to allowing women to "take control," or just putting the person in the job who seems to be able for it?

I also don't like they way they go on to say "more" men/women, without clearly explaing what "more" actually is. Are they using an actual figure, or a percentage from the total of men / women avail as 2 surveys based on their gender?

IE:

Men Working / Men avail to work = 100% men
Women Working / Women avail to work = 100 % women

and then comparing from that?

but even then, that still goes back to my first point...

Dave!

Philsoc guy = wtf...?

Wibbs

I will agree with John waters* on one point, the level of aggression towards women in private male speak has defo gotten higher in my lifetime. Now before the right on guy pipes up, this isn't all men, and no precious flower it's not you blah blah, but its a lot more than it was. There is a lot more uncertainty, suspicion and antagonism than I recall 20 years ago. There really is. On both sides. I does affect both. We've both been affected by the nuttier elements**. Shít look at the mating/dating game. Large tranche of blokes who feel frustrated they can't meet someone "nice" and another equally large tranche of women who also feel frustrated about the same thing.











*and I very rarely would, nice enough fella but there are medications that would make his clockweights drop. IE I'll listen to you complaining about bitches(tm) J when you stop whining like one.

** I'd tag it to the loss of the extreme leftism after the wall came down, the ****wits more strident of those pie in the sky bourgeoisie looked around for something to bite into

Logical Fallacy

Wibbs wrote: »

Large tranche of blokes who feel frustrated they can't meet someone "nice" and another equally large tranche of women who also feel frustrated about the same thing.

Neither mean nice, they mean "good looking who will sleep with me".

The world is filled with nice people but you gotta be at least pretending that personality is more important than looks in this day and age.

As for the man's world thing, it was never a man's world. At points in the history the rights of a man have been to go to war and die, or if you lived through it go back to the same poverty ridden dust bowl you came from and die.

It's was a few men's world, for a while. Now it's not.

Wibbs

Logical Fallacy wrote: »

Neither mean nice, they mean "good looking who will sleep with me".

The world is filled with nice people but you gotta be at least pretending that personality is more important than looks in this day and age.

+a squilion.

As for the man's world thing, it was never a man's world. At points in the history the rights of a man have been to go to war and die, or if you lived through it go back to the same poverty ridden dust bowl you came from and die.

True.

It's was a few men's world, for a while. Now it's not.

I'd argue it still is LF. Not that much has changed at the top or indeed the bottom. The change has been in the middle.

syklops

I work for a software company. In our building there are about 300 employees, of which 7 are women. Does that mean that my company is sexist towards women? No. Does it mean, all us ignorant men favour men when giving out jobs? No.

In fact the opposite is true. They would love more women. I personally would love more women in the office for a number of reasons, one of which being that I think a healthy balance is more healthy. The problem is, few women want to work in the areas of IT and Engineering. For some reason it is not an area that appeals to women. The flip side is, our Facilities department is nearly all women. Our receptionists are all women, again not because we are sexist towards women and only like them in submissive roles, its because only women applied for the jobs of receptionist.

For the most part men and women are different. As a result they have different goals and different instincts.

HellFireClub

How come, when they mentioned that women cannot have a proper run at a Dail seat, apparently because there are these obstacles that are there for women that are not there for men, how come when I saw Luke "Ming" Flanagan canvassing with his father and a few mates through Carrick on Shannon, I'm just wondering what would be stopping a woman getting elected on the same basis???

syklops

HellFireClub wrote: »

How come, when they mentioned that women cannot have a proper run at a Dail seat, apparently because there are these obstacles that are there for women that are not there for men, how come when I saw Luke "Ming" Flanagan canvassing with his father and a few mates through Carrick on Shannon, I'm just wondering what would be stopping a woman getting elected on the same basis???

The excuse would be because Ming has no children to look after, and there is no provision for ministerial hopefuls to receive free child minding.

I dont know of any actual obstacles. I cant see them being any great that an 'ordinary' person running for office.

HellFireClub

syklops wrote: »

The excuse would be because Ming has no children to look after, and there is no provision for ministerial hopefuls to receive free child minding.

I dont know of any actual obstacles. I cant see them being any great that an 'ordinary' person running for office.

And a woman without children, what obstacles would there be in that case???

Also, a TD, whether male or female, earns somewhere in the region of 150K-200K a year between salary and expenses, how come men and women on 35K a year can afford childcare but TD's on 150K a year can't seem to afford it???

RJGMovie

how come you never see women working in the sewers? Its a well paid job

iptba

HellFireClub wrote: »

How come, when they mentioned that women cannot have a proper run at a Dail seat, apparently because there are these obstacles that are there for women that are not there for men, how come when I saw Luke "Ming" Flanagan canvassing with his father and a few mates through Carrick on Shannon, I'm just wondering what would be stopping a woman getting elected on the same basis???

Letter in Irish Times last month

Seeking a seat in the Seanad

Madam, – The current and past elections to the Seanad on the university panels shed some interesting light on the obstacles, if any, to the desire of many that more women should be in politics.

Three seats are now being filled on the NUI panel. Anybody eligible to contest a Dáil election can be a candidate. It is not necessary to be a graduate of one of the constituent colleges of the National University of Ireland. No fee is payable. Every candidate gets a free mailshot to each of the circa 100,000 voters; they only have to pay for the printing of their piece of election literature. There are no political party hoops to jump and no time-serving as a “ward heeler” is required. In the three elections – in years 2002, 2007, and 2011 – there were 16, 24 and 27 candidates, respectively; of these, there were three, seven and now only four, women seeking election.

This suggests that no amount of proactive, quota or other systems at the pre-nomination stage will bring about the mystical egalitarian objective sought by so many.

Personally, I am not bothered about the gender of my public representatives; I mainly want them moral, competent and not freeloaders. As for this year’s NUI candidates, I am more uncomfortable that so few of them are or were employed in unsheltered areas, and that so many of them are from one profession, whose members enjoy sheltered, public-sector employment. – Yours, etc,

Another thing about the Seanad is that it doesn't involve the long hours over the week that is involved in being a TD (between work in the Dail and then back in the constituency).

Scanlas The 2nd

I'd love to see some research done on the correlation of testosterone levels and IQ independent of gender on people in the top jobs.

James Jones

syklops wrote: »

The excuse would be because Ming has no children to look after.

This is not true. Luke was, until his election, the primary carer of his children and actually proves that children don't get in the way of someone who wants to become a TD.

Raekwon

The gf was watching this when I got home lastnight and I started watching if from when John Waters was waffling on about baldness or something odd like that, so I asked what was the show about and was told rather bluntly; "Pttf, these women really love to moan, they really don't know how good they have it over here, if they grew up in a Communist country they would not even know the meaning of the word equality".

That was my cue to go to bed!

goose2005

HellFireClub wrote: »

How come, when they mentioned that women cannot have a proper run at a Dail seat, apparently because there are these obstacles that are there for women that are not there for men, how come when I saw Luke "Ming" Flanagan canvassing with his father and a few mates through Carrick on Shannon, I'm just wondering what would be stopping a woman getting elected on the same basis???

Among Independent candidates men outnumbered women 8 to 1, which should silence those complaints about candidate selection.

RJGMovie wrote: »

how come you never see women working in the sewers? Its a well paid job

Not to mention fishing, mining, the military, roofing, etc.

HellFireClub

What woman fail to understand is that it is old fashioned Irish cronyism and corruption that is obstructing their career paths, but the amazing thing is, most men are as obstructed by it as women!

I've worked in jobs in this country, in some large organisations, where promotion was based exclusively on who you knew, and for being a pushy little sh*t in the workplace which passed for demonstrating "management potential".

Men are every bit as affected by this Irish culture of nudge nudge and wink wink when it comes to career opportunities in the workplace, as are women and I can personally speak for that.

I can't understand how any rational intelligent person can argue for equality and a quota system for women in the same breath.

What is needed is legislation that provides for a fair, transparent and competency based system of access and promotion for jobs and opportunities, along with a whistle blowers charter so that we can get all this corruption and crap out into the open and expose it and then start dismantling it and doing away with it.

The problem is not some kind of latent and imaginary campaign against women, the problem is a culture of the mod and the wink and the stroke and the bit of pull to get an advantage. Then someone who is hired or promoted along these lines, knows no better way of doing things and so the cronyism and corruption gets to live for another generation and on it continues.

Also, I have to say I was sickened at the attitude displayed by some of the women in the FrontLine audience last night, coming from what were clearly men haters who let their personal issue with some man in the past govern their opinions of all men on national airwaves...

HellFireClub

goose2005 wrote: »

Among Independent candidates men outnumbered women 8 to 1, which should silence those complaints about candidate selection.

What are you talking about, "candidate selection"??? An independent candidate selects themselves, and it is clearly as open to a woman independent candidate to select herself as it is open to a male candidate to put himself forward for election.

How come Lucinda Creighton can do it but others can't??? Where are all these women who want to be elected to the Dail, claiming unequal treatment??? I can't see any of them....

James Jones

HellFireClub wrote: »

What woman fail to understand is that it is old fashioned Irish cronyism and corruption that is obstructing their career paths.

I disagree. The only difference between men and women when it comes to the Dail or the Boardroom is childcare. Women refuse to share this responsibility with their partners or the fathers of their children and, until they do, they will not be treated as equals. When we hear women fighting in the Family Law courts for the fathers of their children to share parenting to enable them to take an equal role in the workplace, we will have some chance of achieving equality, as the mythical "glass ceiling" will dissolve and gender quotas will not be required. Maybe then we will see women stepping up to the mark on fishing boats, in construction and on farms, the 3 most deadly occupations in this country. And maybe we will see a woman on the back of a bin lorry???

Maybe, but remember, "The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world".

iptba

HellFireClub wrote: »

goose2005 wrote:

Among Independent candidates men outnumbered women 8 to 1, which should silence those complaints about candidate selection.

What are you talking about, "candidate selection"??? An independent candidate selects themselves, and it is clearly as open to a woman independent candidate to select herself as it is open to a male candidate to put himself forward for election.

That's his/her point - they're agreeing with you.

iptba

If anyone is so inclined, they can put a comment on the RTE site on the programme, etc. http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0411/blog-frontlineblog.html . Nobody has posted so far.

Jesus Wept

syklops wrote: »

The excuse would be because Ming has no children to look after, and there is no provision for ministerial hopefuls to receive free child minding.

I dont know of any actual obstacles. I cant see them being any great that an 'ordinary' person running for office.

He's a father of two.

James Jones

iptba wrote: »

If anyone is so inclined, they can put a comment on the RTE site on the programme, etc. http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0411/blog-frontlineblog.html . Nobody has posted so far.

I already did last night but it hasn't been posted yet.

The-Rigger wrote: »

syklops wrote: »

The excuse would be because Ming has no children to look after.

He's a father of two.

Not just that he is a father but he was their primary carer (hate that phrase) before the election.

The reason I hate that phrase is because it has no legal validity and was made up by social workers to exclude fathers from their children.

parker kent

syklops wrote: »

I work for a software company. In our building there are about 300 employees, of which 7 are women. Does that mean that my company is sexist towards women? No. Does it mean, all us ignorant men favour men when giving out jobs? No.

In fact the opposite is true. They would love more women. I personally would love more women in the office for a number of reasons, one of which being that I think a healthy balance is more healthy. The problem is, few women want to work in the areas of IT and Engineering. For some reason it is not an area that appeals to women. The flip side is, our Facilities department is nearly all women. Our receptionists are all women, again not because we are sexist towards women and only like them in submissive roles, its because only women applied for the jobs of receptionist.

For the most part men and women are different. As a result they have different goals and different instincts.

You could easily argue that society has created atmospheres where the above happens, not that either sex is hardwired to enter such roles. Plus computer science is seeing a greater number of females studying the area in University. You can't change the world overnight, it will take time for a balanced attitude towards gender roles to occur.