@MartinTheFirst look bro, I’m on your side with a lot of shit not being fair about women for example they serve way less prison time than men for anything they do but to say they’re lazy is the reason is a bad attitude. It’s not true, if it was I’d agree

@Morrowind im just kidding

@MartinTheFirst Probably gender studies or basket weaving 😂

@SteelHands Well we know know your idea of "normal" is stuck 100 years in the past. it is not the 1930s anymore. Beating the crap out of your wife was considered normal and raping your wife was not a crime in that same era. Not really sure that is something to look fondly at.

@SteelHands what caveman horsesh*t is that? Cooking, laundry, cleaning is not a "woman's job" or for that matter a man's job. It's called being a responsible adult with basic life skills.

@Pinkstarburst i've got bored of explaining it to you, on a whole, i relay information to ANYONE {whether make or female} so that a Village Idiot can understand it, but YOU are still not grasping it

@Pinkstarburst So [b]facts[/b] are "misogynistic" are they? 😂

@FormerAtheist Those are facts according to your opinion. And yes, your explanation is very misogynistic. Nowhere did you provide anything that would warrant them to be facts.

You are ignorant to the value of women who are actually excelling in STEM while being paid less than men.

@SunshineGirl Of course there will be those who don't quite fit into this neat little picture, but [i]on average[/i], all other considerations aside, what I've written here is generally true. And yes, the gender wage gap would be real if it were the case that, again on average and across most fields, men and women were not paid equally to do the exact same job. But of course if that were the case, then employers would be insane to not hire only women; they're CHEAPER!

@FormerAtheist The wage gap is an objective reality. Larger organisations in the UK are obliged by law to publish these statistics and commit to mitigation strategies.

If people and organisations acted rationally all the time there would be no discrimination in the first place. Unfortunately recruiters and employers are naturally biased towards people who look, think and act like them, and promote those who are less likely to challenge their authority or disrupt established practice.

@ArishMell Never know. There's lots of people who want to see this country ruined.

It's not as if your own wouldn't like to see ours knocked down a peg Margeret Thatcher style like yours was.

@SteelHands I was NOT commenting on how well or not your country might be run if some future President happens to be female.

And I'd leave it to you to exalt or drag her down.

@ArishMell Do not presume to open a beef with me regarding the WORLD'S various heads of states or..

Those halls of power to which any female would find herself fighting if that country elects a woman to deal inside said halls of power.

Plain as I can make it buddy. Time to put that simple idealist nonsensical fairness nonsense to rest.

@PatKirby yep thats it but people who play victim, dont give a shit about anyone but themselves so that wont bother them

@FormerAtheist

Yep, it's a double-scam of a flim-flam shim-sham!

@Torsten

Sounds like the show masters in the DNC and Demonic Party who've perfected it to a modern art form, while bait & switching their promises to their loyal constituents - then abandoning them as usual. Just another day at the office for them.

@SteelHands I don't know at whom that's directed, but I do trust our news organisations on the whole. They make clear what are reports and what are opinions. The newspapers have their own biases to their own extents, but they are well-known and easy to allow for.

@ArishMell Lucky you. Lol

@SteelHands Thankyou!

It's not that difficult to judge if a news source is politically biased: compare its coverage of the same matters with that of other reporters. Examine if it gives reasonably fair coverage of both sides of divisive ones. Examine its critics.

If for example, a particular organisation is attacked as "right-wing" by left-leaning types, while also attacked as "left-wing" by right-leaning types, it must be fairly neutral! Usually the attacks from any one faction are for it daring to let the other faction have its say as well.

While at work, it was not only me lucky generally, but of course, lucky for the women to be treated with respect.

@HootyTheNightOwl Oh, we can make all the laws we need but that won't change ignorance and cruelty that are ingrained attitudes, overnight.

Short? I am short too: I'd have exactly the same difficulties... only I would deal with the bags separately, not struggle with both at once!

@ArishMell Education around employment rights and laws might help to make sure that people are given the information they need when they go to work before they leave school, though - but that means that you can't teach careers in the school library because the teacher would be required to actually teach something that might be useful.

They can't... They either juggle both or they get kicked off their course. This created much debate in one shop because the manager was happy for taller people to do what shorter people couldn't - but the assessors stuck to their guns and insisted that shorter people were treated exactly the same.

@HootyTheNightOwl Interesting thought: schools teaching at least the basics of employee / employer law, rights and responsibilities. Along with other grown-up matters like basic finance.

It might even be more important than careers "advice" that anyway can only be very generic, and may be influenced by individual teachers' knowledge and even prejudices. After all, most teachers are people who have never left school!

So it could work, though I'm not sure how.

.....

That shop, or group of assessors, may have been an anomaly. I have never heard of any problems around people's heights, elsewhere. Just as well because I am short!

The basic requirement under UK health-and-safety law is that appropriate equipment is provided to help people do their work safely and properly. This may be selected following a formal risk-assessment; and certainly can include step-stools and short ladders for access to shelves.

Though it's not unknown for managers frightened of responsibilities put on them, to impose rather absurd interpretations of the regulations. Like those assessors who tried to make height an "equality" matter instead of just saying, provide step-ladders. One place I worked had equipment-frames that needed such frequent access, that they were fitted permanently with wooden steps suspended from runners on steel tracks.

Or nervous managers set local rules that mean well but are not thought through. For example, I once saw a store-keepers standing on top of a full-size shipping container (roof about 8 feet above ground) to hook crane slings into its lifting-points. He was wearing a controlled-break type fall-arrest harness, but he could clip it only into the nearest hooking cube, by his feet as he stood at each corner of the container. Errr..... Oh, it's all right. He had his safety-boots and hard hat on.

@FormerAtheist I’d hope if you experienced it you’d confront it immediately. Real men would support you. As you well know, freedoms need to be defended at times. Those who think there’s a problem are only useful if they have the courage to act in the moment - as opposed to just be internet brave and think holding a sign on a street corner is “change”.

@DownTheStreet [quote]I’d hope if you experienced it you’d confront it immediately[/quote].

And do what, exactly? I've never been in a position where, if such a thing had occurred, I'd have been able to do something to change it.

[quote]As you well know, freedoms need to be defended at times.[/quote]

Such brave words. Defended how? Using what?

@DownTheStreet They were all paid properly in my work, where many of my superiors - at one stage including the CEO- were women.

There was even a system to equate relative levels of skill and grade across all fields of the entire organisation: admin, technical and support so no-one was treated unfairly simply by being in one field rather than the other.

@SunshineGirl every job has wage negotiation potential...dismissing that is a huge part of the issue.

@BizSuitStacy Not in the public sector. There is a narrow wage range for each job. You start at the bottom while you are training and progress to the top when you are proficient.

@SunshineGirl who the hell wants to work in the public sector? Odd too, since that's where the unfair narrative always comes from.

@Nitedoc I didn't want to say surveys made with vaguely interpretive terminology, delimited locuses in time and duration, over inclusive sets or ignoring the system dynamics.

Any well bought survey maker knows how to create beans from bs.

@SteelHands True. It's not hard to make stats say what you want them to.

@Nitedoc Can they? Yes, and for some, just call them the go to reality convertor. To magically make the incredulous into plausability lickety split, just contact your friendly poll taking statistical analyst. They can convince any talking head that they're not cartoon talking.

It's no secret any more. Making the absurd real is what many of them do best. Hyperinflation? Just call it publicly supported funding for positive offset inflation reduction. It's not system rigging and cheating. It's misinformation suppression by way of informational timing. Supported by the majority, of course.

Lol

@G0ddess https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-enduring-grip-of-the-gender-pay-gap/#:~:text=The%20gender%20pay%20gap%20%E2%80%93%20the,80%20cents%20to%20the%20dollar.

@G0ddess I actually tried to go the STEM route when I was at university, but I failed at it because my mathematical skills just weren't good enough to actually pass. 😂

@Anton Why? A women working in the same job as a man at the same company at the same job grade should be paid the same. No distinction.

@zonavar68 Women aren't responsible with money. When they get more than they need they start spending it what ever they want and this overspending leads to them getting addicted to it. Then they demand more. Then they get depressed when they can't have more, then they start abusing their medical benefits for drugs such as antidepressants and sleeping tablets. Then medical subscription fees goes up for everyone and others suffer too. No, women need to be paid minimum wage and in the form of coupons.

@Anton That's a very obnoxious point of view. I think we (men) are far less 'responsible' with money, but in the main it doesn't matter - money and affluence leads to greed and both men and women are the same in that department.

@Strictmichael75 [quote]Women are underpaid compared to men in the same job
A reality
[/quote]
Really? Prove it.

@ArishMell [quote/]Which country, by the way? In some that would be illegal.][/quote]
Exactly, and in Australia, where I live, it's been illegal since I think the early 1970's.

@FormerAtheist my wife was
My daughter is an executive and she is!

@TheRascallyOne Exactly

@SunshineGirl I'm not sure how you can say no direct input/output correlation for agriculture because it produces physical goods, but teaching and caring can't show that almost by definition. Their professions are physically obvious, as they teach or care for real people, but in services that are vital but can only ever be one-way expenses.

Yet the financial "services" seem to be worshipped by what you call "liberal free-marketeers" despite many of them producing nothing obvious for no-one obvious. Obviously I rely very distantly and indirectly on some parts of the financial services for my pensions, but I often wonder what functional value some of the others' work really has, despite it making (not necessarily "earning") high wages.

The farmers, teachers and nurses do have strong unions, but I take your point about the relatively large female workforce.

I think nursing is generally seen as skilled, but caring is not; but by vague status of occupation, not the sex of the employees.

@ArishMell The point with agriculture is that most farmers in the UK do not or cannot sell directly to the end consumer. They are dependent upon intermediaries (the supermarkets and government via DEFRA) for getting their produce to market and making their enterprises economically sustainable (through subsidy). The market does not on the whole price their output correctly (if it did, there would probably be widespread discontent).

It's actually quite easy to evaluate output for teaching and nursing with the correct terms of reference (I used to do it as part of my job at the Treasury). The problem is that this creates inconvenient truths (ie. that the labour of both teachers and nurses is grossly under-priced) that few people wish to hear.

The basic nursing qualification was given parity with a bachelirs degree in the UK. That is a recognition of its technical complexity that has not been matched by an uplift in wages (nursing and caring have had to be excluded from the minimum wage cap for migrant jobs - a recognition that these are difficult to fill jobs, while at the same time undervaluing them on the market).

I agree that financial services are over-valued, and I work in the sector myself. Like many white collar professions, entry is tightly controlled by professional regulatory bodies - in effect creating a cartel for qualified members.

@SunshineGirl Thank you for explaining it.

I have a lot of sympathy for the farmers, and I have never had any connection except as eventual customer. For years the big supermarkets were accused of paying them less than the production prices, which effectively is theft. I don't know if that has been put right. Another problem they face is that even some of the franchise-chains like Central have been stopped from supporting local producers (and selling local-demand goods like descalers), by remote head-office managers. They are also under pressure from all sorts of non-governmental outsiders trying to tell them how to run their own land and businesses.

I think the whole area of fair salaries for all is so messy and so skewed by public perception, I don't see any sensible way out of it. When young people emerge from school or university they must wonder what has the real [i]value[/i], the underpaid but highly-skilled technical role in the sciences, medicine, law or teaching; or the over-paid world of show-business, sports and social-media "influencing".

Incidentally, I wonder how those "influencers" based in the UK, pay their Income-tax and NI?

@Spoiledbrat cuz we have to share it with you bastards (jkjk)

@Alyosha The neo-conservatives are the ones mostly pushing for, creating, and ensuring the survival of inequality and oppression. That makes it a right-wing problem.