Re: [issues] Anyone know any more about this study?

[lou]

Well, I have found this discussion to be very interesting and I will add my own in here.   First sexism is a social ill so of course women and men are sexist.  I would like to start with the premise that men and women should be equal, they are different but different doesn't mean better than, we do have different roles to play.  The fact that men can't bear children is a fact.  Does that make men better or less than women. Where would we be if women decided to stop having children, wouldn't do well for the future of any company.   Sexism, like any other ism, is taught by society as a whole, not just mothers and not all mothers teach it, but its there.  The fact that some women believe what they've been taught shows how well it works.  Oppression has worked when the oppressed believe in their own oppression.   Workplaces are also constructs that were developed by men and are not favourable to women in many areas.  Now a good workplace would take both genders into consideration not just one.  Many  companies have started doing that, including daycares on company property so that women would be able to continue to work.   "believe that nurture (vs. nature) reigns supreme. I do believe that we can overcome the handicaps of how we were raised"   The point is that there is a handicap on how we were raised and if you have been able to do that, good for you, not everyone has the resources to do that.   "women create sexism as much, if not more, than men do"  Here is that buying into our own oppression I was talking about.  The patriarchal system has been here for well over a thousand years and you blame women for it?  Women have only been allowed the vote for less than a hundred years in some places and were considered property with no rights 150 years ago.  Read your history, you vote because women fought for your right to vote, some lost their families, children, homes, even their lives so you could vote today.  But the belief that women cause sexism allows the blame to fall on women and not where it belongs, it is a smoke screen to maintain the status quo. Less than 200 years ago it was believed that if a woman was educated her womb would atrophy so women weren't educated.   "When women lobby so that men will have a shot of getting custody as often or to send women to the sanctions they'd gladly send men to for failure to pay child support "   I'll be there lobbying for that when men are home doing half the housework and childcare and aren't referred to as babysitting their own kids when the mom is out and take days off of work because their kids are sick.  Then maybe they will deserve to have custody.   "As my fiance says, "so, should we start reading Honor Harrington to our daughter in the crib?" But with our luck, we'd have a girly girl whose career goal was to get married and have children. "   There is absolutely nothing wrong with staying home with children if that is a choice that is made, then support that choice, but if the choice is to excel in a profession then she should have that choice as well, without the glass barriers.  As to the math and science thing, women are still openly discouraged.  My niece and my son both in grade 10, same school, she had 46, he had 26.  She was told to drop to basic math, he was told to smarten up he was going to need it.  She came to me for help,  I tutored her, my son didn't want the help.  She passed, he didn't.  The point being, it was assumed he would need it and she wouldn't.   There are women who "make it" but to me, it only accentuates the fact that there are too few in that category.  Pay inequities are a very real barrier for women, not to mention lack of opportunity for job promotions, when a lot of women enter a work area, that area becomes treated as less important.   A lot of change has happened over the last hundred years because women have fought for that change and changed things, at great expense to themselves.  But sexism and oppression are still here and women are still fighting it.  I find it amazing that anyone expects women to completely eradicate in a century what has been happening for thousands of years and that despite great odds have made so many changes.   Lou