Equality in Maynooth

how about the fact that if your a mature student waiting for the grant to get the fee's paid. you are not given a student card. that mean that you cant use the library. if the book is on the shelf you have to take it down and photocopy what you need but usually they're gone and as you have no card you cant reserve a book even just to photocopy it. this puts you at a big disadvantage. you cant even get to see the reserve photocopies. also you get letters from the fee office saying "maybe you should consider postponing doing your course until you can pay your fee's." even though they know full well it's taking CDVEC ages to process claims. everything is equal alright as long as your not one of them low class grant students.

Bigtoe107 wrote: »

Figures can only tell so much, average pay for women is lower because of a number of factors. On average women actually make more money per minute of working than men do. Results are also skewed by the fact that a lot of men hold higher positions then women but these men are retiring and the tide is turning big time, within the next twenty years women will earn on average much higher than men. Plus current workplace inequalities will still remain such men being forced to do most of the manual labour and thus incurring more injury's/death in the work place.

I will accept the childcare point though but this does not only affect women. Tbh I could go on and on about this but I don't want to derail the thread. If anybody wants to discuss this Pm me please

Much of the above discrepancy in unit earnings can be explained by greater proportions of women in part-time employment. Hourly earnings, however, are consistently lower for females in full time employment than their male counterparts, with some exceptions.

According to the national employment survey, female earnings across all full-time occupations in 2007 were 91% those of males. In part-time occupations however, females were earning 20% more than males - which implicates other barriers to labour market access such as childcare, leave entitlements gender-based biases in promotion etc.

It is only when these figures are broken down by occupation that the extent of female progress becomes apparent. Based on hourly breakdowns, females in professional occupations earn 3% above male professionals, yet in sales, female earnings are at 76% that of males (all figures available at CSO through database direct).

Each year the gender gap is closing further at second level, with females continuing to outperform males across many subjects. Studies still show however, that life-course education payoffs (i.e. the contribution each unit of 'extra education' makes to long term earnings) are still biased in favour of males.

Bigtoe107 wrote: »

Fact is per hour worked women earn more, a situation which people gloss over.

This is not the case across the majority of sectors and education levels. Professional / higher professional are the only categories which demonstrate parity and marginal increase. The discrepancy in labour force composition (full vs. part time) is what ultimately matters (Catherine Hakim has published a number of studies demonstrating how negotiations of extended leave at household level tend to favour male's continued participation).

Bigtoe107 wrote: »

Figures are dated as I would wager a lot of men have lost their jobs due to the downturn in the construction industry according to cso unemployment rates are at 16.9% for men and 9.8% for women. This imply's women are in safer more stable job's despite supposed bias toward men. I really don't think childcare can be sighted as a barrier to employment, it is a problem for men and women.

Perhaps, but deep-rooted structural inequalities such as this are typically slow to respond, even to such drastic changes as the past years have brought. in light of emigration (on which we lack reliable data), given the concentration of losses in construction, presumably the emigration 'safety valve' will balance discrepancies otherwise incurred - although wont become fully clear for a few more cycles I would think. The notion that childcare effects both genders equally is simply untrue - statutory leave entitlements are still very much biased against males.

Bigtoe107 wrote: »

Again figures only tell so much, the fact is men do in general many more hours than women, travel further distances to work in a generally much less safe environment and work more unsociable hours. Due to this they have less leisure time, more health problems and lower life expectancy despite the greater amount of tax payers money going on female centred health care.

How do you figure this?

Bigtoe107 wrote: »

Answer me this who has the better quality of life life the man who earns 2000 euro per week of back braking, dangerous labour working in a mine in Australia or the woman who works as a teacher in her local school earning about 800 per five days, with regular brakes and less hours spent in a safe working environment close to friends and family. I know who I would rather be, yet this is a situation faced by many young men.

You're arguing against an ideal type - in any event, what happens when the decision arises (for many) to begin a family? A functional answer would suggest the existing bias in earnings results in a compensation for women's 'scaled back' earnings by that of the male. I'm of the opinion that there are certain issues of biology which will always necessarily incur inequalities, however undesirable.

Bigtoe107 wrote: »

Why should this be allowed to happen, education opportunities should be equal, there should be no reason women outperform men and this will translate into the working world it is simply a matter of time. Sociatal pressure on men to be the breadwinner leads to men being forced to leave education at an earlier stage to look for work but with the down turn in unskilled industries women are taking the lead in the pay stakes and young men are leaving this country in their thousands.

This isn't a case of affirmative action - for now, commentators are simply reacting to manifest trends, although if you examine the ESRI's early school leaver data, you will see that the probability of exiting formal education is weighted very much against males of particular social classes.

The discrepancy in female earnings per sector is further compounding this class inequality - I would argue gender isn't the real issue. With women outperforming in higher professional sectors only for now, accessing top-level university courses, outperforming males in key technical subjects - the invisible dimension in all of this is class.

Sorry if this is light on data - but I'll gladly pm some papers? The ESRI material should be easily google-able

XxMCRxBabyxX wrote: »

That's not limited to matures. Any grant student faces the same problem until their grant comes in

It also applies to anyone who may have other funding that hasn't come through at the time of registration, scholarships etc...

One could say all students who's funds haven't arrived yet are treated equally :pac: