For as long as I can remember, I've been hearing various women's rights campaigners telling me that it is OK for a man to have a woman manager or to have to deal with women in authority - and, to be honest, it's never really bothered me.
Over my working life I've had several female managers and several male managers. Some have been good, some have been bad - but I've also had regular dealings with women in authority too. Some of those have been clients of the company I work for and some have been people I had to deal with in public services - teachers and the like. It's never really bothered me that the person I had to deal with was not the same gender as me. I'm a grown up and I deal with people in grown up ways regardless of what gender they are.
But having spent the last 40 years of my life being told - by women - that it should not matter if the person in authority is not the same gender as me, why are so many of the sort of women who would make that assertion now be telling me that it matters to women that the person in authority is not the same gender as them?
Either it doesn't matter or it does - which is it? Why are men required to put up and shut up if the person in authority is female, but women are supposed to make a big deal of it if the person in authority is a man?
This is the big problem with progressives - they claim one thing and then deny the opposite. It's discrimination if you only employ men, but it's equality if you only employ women. It's racist to deny black people opportunities, but it's good practice to deny white people opportunities. It's homophobic to not include gays, but it's perfectly OK to exclude heterosexuals.
To any sensible adult these things should not matter - it can only matter if you are a racist, sexist, bigoted snob.
Showing posts with label Sexism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sexism. Show all posts
Friday, May 14, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
And this helps how, exactly?
To be honest, I don't know the details of the dispute between Birmingham council and the unions over equal pay for women. It's something to do with bonuses being paid to "men" which were denied to "women".
It doesn't sound quite right to me, because, as far as I can make out the bonuses were paid to people doing different jobs - for example, refuse collectors got a big bonus while care workers didn't.
I don't actually see what that has to do with equal pay for genders myself. After all, there are plenty of men working in social care and they didn't get the big bonuses either - and there is nothing to stop women working on bin collections which means they could have got big bonuses if they'd decided to do that job - but hey, I've given up trying to make sense of the equal pay rubbish (I can't make sense of it, because there is no sense to it).
What I do wonder is who has actually benefited from this court case. As I understand it, Birmingham City Council have stopped paying bonuses to people doing "man's" work - so they lose out. The women who are supposed to have lost out will get a couple of grand each maybe - but they've probably all lost their jobs by now or seen them transferred to a private care company who will give them even worse pay and conditions and Birmingham City Council don't actually have any money other than that they take off the taxpayer.
So the men working for Birmingham City Council lose out, the women working for Birmingham City Council lose out and the people of Birmingham City lose out. As far as I can see, the only people to benefit from this are the lawyers who now see an opportunity to milk councils up and down Britain for more cash.
And all this at a time when we are facing the biggest cuts since the nineteen seventies according to some think tank.
It's a bit like handing a glass of water to a drowning man.
It doesn't sound quite right to me, because, as far as I can make out the bonuses were paid to people doing different jobs - for example, refuse collectors got a big bonus while care workers didn't.
I don't actually see what that has to do with equal pay for genders myself. After all, there are plenty of men working in social care and they didn't get the big bonuses either - and there is nothing to stop women working on bin collections which means they could have got big bonuses if they'd decided to do that job - but hey, I've given up trying to make sense of the equal pay rubbish (I can't make sense of it, because there is no sense to it).
What I do wonder is who has actually benefited from this court case. As I understand it, Birmingham City Council have stopped paying bonuses to people doing "man's" work - so they lose out. The women who are supposed to have lost out will get a couple of grand each maybe - but they've probably all lost their jobs by now or seen them transferred to a private care company who will give them even worse pay and conditions and Birmingham City Council don't actually have any money other than that they take off the taxpayer.
So the men working for Birmingham City Council lose out, the women working for Birmingham City Council lose out and the people of Birmingham City lose out. As far as I can see, the only people to benefit from this are the lawyers who now see an opportunity to milk councils up and down Britain for more cash.
And all this at a time when we are facing the biggest cuts since the nineteen seventies according to some think tank.
It's a bit like handing a glass of water to a drowning man.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
The perfect excuse
Perhaps one of the daftest headlines I've seen for sometime is this one from The Telegraph.
Men owe women for 'creating beer' claims academic
You may not be surprised to find that the "academic" in question is a woman. Her claim is based on the evidence that for hundreds of years it is was the job of women to brew beer.
Fair enough, I'm not disputing that claim, but that doesn't prove it was a woman who "created" beer any more than it proves that it was a woman who created bread. It just proves that for hundreds of years it was left to women to do the job of making beer.
And for hundreds of years it was left to women to do the job of laundry, child rearing, sewing, cooking, cleaning and looking after the home.
So if men have women to thank for beer - then, by the logic of this academic, women only have themselves to blame for creating housework. So excuse me while I pop to the local for a swift half and a game of darts while the missus gets on with the ironing.
Men owe women for 'creating beer' claims academic
You may not be surprised to find that the "academic" in question is a woman. Her claim is based on the evidence that for hundreds of years it is was the job of women to brew beer.
Fair enough, I'm not disputing that claim, but that doesn't prove it was a woman who "created" beer any more than it proves that it was a woman who created bread. It just proves that for hundreds of years it was left to women to do the job of making beer.
And for hundreds of years it was left to women to do the job of laundry, child rearing, sewing, cooking, cleaning and looking after the home.
So if men have women to thank for beer - then, by the logic of this academic, women only have themselves to blame for creating housework. So excuse me while I pop to the local for a swift half and a game of darts while the missus gets on with the ironing.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Cameron should take heed
Suzy Jagger wonders what happened to the feminist parliamentary dream represented by the "Blair Babes" of 1997 over on The Times.
Are the likes of Caroline Flint and Theresa Villiers the true heirs to Lady Thatcher? What was the “outstanding contribution” to public life that Gordon Brown attributed to Hazel Blears when she resigned from the Cabinet last year?
In part, she answers her own questions. Even though there are more women MPs now than there has ever, the majority of them are neither heard nor seen while those that have been promoted to the front benches - on both sides of the house - have invariably been rubbish at the job.
That is inevitable when the decision on who should get a particular job is not based on whether they have the requisite experience, flair or capability - but simply the fact they are of the "right" gender (or religion, sexual preference or ethnicity).
If there is a lesson to be learned here (and let's face it - the liberals love to tell us how "lessons have been learned") it is that women only shortlists for prospective parliamentary candidates today will mean a dearth of seriously capable politicians available to hold high office tomorrow.
Merit is the only factor that should matter when it comes to choosing your candidate for a parliamentary seat - particularly if it is one you hope to take from the opposition and hold on to. Parachuting some dullard into place on the basis that they fulfil a quota is a bad idea.
Finally, you have to wonder about the hypocrisy of it as well. As a white, heterosexual male I've spent the last 40 years of my life being told that I'm a sexist, racist homophobe by the liberal left - but I'm not the one saying that women are more inclined to vote for women, blacks or more likely to vote for blacks, Asians are more likely to vote for Asians and gays are more likely to vote for gays.
If all that is true, then it is must be true also that women are more sexist than men, blacks and Asians more racist than whites and gays are more bigoted than heterosexuals. Either that or the really racist, sexist, bigoted bunch are the liberals.
Are the likes of Caroline Flint and Theresa Villiers the true heirs to Lady Thatcher? What was the “outstanding contribution” to public life that Gordon Brown attributed to Hazel Blears when she resigned from the Cabinet last year?
In part, she answers her own questions. Even though there are more women MPs now than there has ever, the majority of them are neither heard nor seen while those that have been promoted to the front benches - on both sides of the house - have invariably been rubbish at the job.
That is inevitable when the decision on who should get a particular job is not based on whether they have the requisite experience, flair or capability - but simply the fact they are of the "right" gender (or religion, sexual preference or ethnicity).
If there is a lesson to be learned here (and let's face it - the liberals love to tell us how "lessons have been learned") it is that women only shortlists for prospective parliamentary candidates today will mean a dearth of seriously capable politicians available to hold high office tomorrow.
Merit is the only factor that should matter when it comes to choosing your candidate for a parliamentary seat - particularly if it is one you hope to take from the opposition and hold on to. Parachuting some dullard into place on the basis that they fulfil a quota is a bad idea.
Finally, you have to wonder about the hypocrisy of it as well. As a white, heterosexual male I've spent the last 40 years of my life being told that I'm a sexist, racist homophobe by the liberal left - but I'm not the one saying that women are more inclined to vote for women, blacks or more likely to vote for blacks, Asians are more likely to vote for Asians and gays are more likely to vote for gays.
If all that is true, then it is must be true also that women are more sexist than men, blacks and Asians more racist than whites and gays are more bigoted than heterosexuals. Either that or the really racist, sexist, bigoted bunch are the liberals.
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