Good news for businesses as RTE announce women are now working for free until the end of the year

Gender equality for employment, and salaries/benefits are a reality. If a woman feels that she is being discriminated against, she has the right to complain both at the level of HR or to a State department. It's not as if HR isn't, in the vast majority of cases, populated by women, and it is them who tend to determine pay scales, and promotions. Same with investigations over complaints.

Some women may be discriminated against due to their gender. The possibility is always going to exist. The same for men to be discriminated due to their gender. However, we already have a society that seeks to protect against it, and the mechanisms are in place for people who believe that such discrimination has been applied to them.

There are issues affecting women and girls such as over-sexualisation and the blurring of boundaries between sex and gender, but woke feminism doesn't take issue with that - instead it latches on to this clear fallacy.

True enough, although considering the range of women employed by media outlets, and in fashion, the over sexualisation of women is often as a result of women themselves, as much as it is coming from men. There are definite advantages to being considered sexy, beautiful, etc, and the conditioning that exists in society to place emphasis on physical beauty affects both men and women.. except that most of the advantages (in addition to the disadvantages) of that conditioning relate to women and their place in society.

In feminism, they need an enemy to justify their demands, and that enemy is the male gender. They're never going to acknowledge the effect that women have on developing the societies we live in (or the negative consequences of that involvement).

Just as they're never going to stop going on about the Gender wage gap, the need for more women in <insert> industry, or departmental level... even when women have reached parity, or actually outnumber men in those positions. They can't back down because being a feminist in modern society is a profession as much as an ideology.

What they’ve done in Iceland is very smart in my opinion. Start from the bottom up - restructure the system. Since 2000, mothers get three months leave, fathers get three months untransferable leave and a further three months can be taken by either parent. It has been augmented since but it’s seen a whole change in their working lives from the bottom up. Fathers are more active in childcare and women are more active in management at work. It’s much more effective than any quota system. Women aren’t monopolising childcare and men aren’t monopolising management. Worth a read.

http://www.nordiclabourjournal.org/i-fokus/in-focus-2019/future-of-work-iceland/article.2019-04-11.9299118347

Women earn more than men in the under 30 age bracket. Should there be a campaign to pay men under 30 more?

The focus is wrong though. Women under 30 tend to earn more because children aren't part of the equation, with most people deciding to have children around that period. Whenever we hear about employment inconsistencies, the attitude is to look at parents, and how they should benefit from that status. But the reality is that the numbers of people who are single/childless are growing, and it is them who invariably are picking up the slack.. and typically, there are more males who remain single than women... hence the difference in salaries and benefits over time.

While I understand the logic that says we need people to have more children, I don't think anyone is really considering how single people fit in, and I suspect the singles (male/female) are losing out to those who get married and have children.

It's interconnected though. The rise of apps like instagram, ticktok etc all started with the respresentation of beautiful people, especially the sexualisation of women in photos or videos... which has since evolved into a similar application of young teens. The same can be seen in a variety of aspects within society.

If you look at American society, there is a rather large group of mothers/parents who push their female children into cheer-leading, beauty competitions, etc all with serious desire for them to "win". You can see competitions with very young children mimicking the competitions that adults have. All of that is going to affect society and the way that people perceive/treat each other. There have been similar competitions and fashion shows done in Europe with children competing in ways that are directly comparable with how adult shows do.

The point remains that women are just as involved in the sexualisation of their gender as men ever were, and these days, due to equality, probably have more influence in continuing/encouraging that sexualisation of the female gender.

Working part-time, taking time out to parent, less likely to take senior roles because of raising children. This leads to less pay overall, but it doesn't mean a lower rate of pay, which it is dishonestly being presented as.

Are they really? or are the looking for justification for their own policies?

Look at the UN equality commission, and invariably the focus is almost entirely on the place of women in society, and the discrimination they face internationally. However, there is very little attention given to the conditions of males, unless they're children, and even then, being female trumps in the amount of attention and funding directed towards the problem.

There is a rather strong emphasis from all government or similar type organisations on the plight of women, as a gender... as opposed to seeking genuine equality among the genders. Feminism is firmly established in most such organisations... and that's not going to disappear/decline any time soon.

I posted this a number of years ago. Still relevant today.

Oh I never denied this is pushed by women. It absolutely is.

Nobody really considers all the men who don't succeed in gaining promotions and getting ahead in their careers. The focus is on women not succeeding and gaining those positions, to gain representation of them as a gender. The focus is entirely on the genders involved rather than what brought about success in the first place, with the area of pregnancy and motherhood automatically being thrust forward as the reason.

And now, when women are being represented in all these managerial positions, we find that it's not the kind of work environment they want. Articles abound about competitiveness in the workplace (as a negative), the long hours required, the marginal increases in salary vs the increased workloads, or even that the increases in salary don't matter (as they did for men) compared to the desire for flexible time to have a family, or simply not to be working. And so, the focus shifted to changing the environment away from what had succeeded, or what was needed previously to stay competitive in a tight marketplace.

Of course there is going to be differences in what people earn, because people have different levels of ambition, or their desires for the kind of life they want. The drivers that society conditioned men to have, are not going to match well with what women want, and that will affect the returns, especially when most women want less time working as they get older, whereas men are more likely to want more work as they get older.

But yes, the focus is mostly on the needs of women in the workplace, which makes sense since HR departments are generally populated by women, and HR specialists are the people who do most research into employment practices.

When I started working in Finance (AR/AP) in the late 80s, most of my colleagues were female, and all my managers until I reached 30 were female. Oh, senior management were mostly male, with a few women, here or there, but the industry itself was seriously dominated by women. There are many industries where women have been well represented for decades... except at middle and upper management. While discrimination was definitely a factor, the requirements for overtime which women wanting to have a family rarely would commit to. Besides the numbers of people (male and female) who never applied for such upper positions because they were comfortable where they were.

It turns out I was incorrect, one of the girls did some basic internetting and found out that since the 2 I was speaking to were under 30 and had no kids it was actually the lads who've been without pay since September.

Or maybe they're all getting paid roughly the same with some extra for experience, time there, seniority, extra pay for certain hours (I don't know McDonald's policy) etc.

In my limited experience the women I know who are on good money did the normal thing of college, job, promotion. The ones who could have done the same but didn't are the kind who'll talk for 2 months about maybe going for a promotion and then deciding against it despite plenty of encouragement. The women who advance tend not to. Same with the men who do well, funnily enough. Hell, me and my best mate talk about just about everything and a couple of months ago he drops "Yeah had a job interview the other day, got through to round 2".