Quote from: Grace_C on October 16, 2013, 04:28:03 AM
On average men earn higher salaries for equivalent work, men are more likely to be promoted to higher positions than women, men are more likely to be listened to (and believed) by other men in meetings, etc... As the old feminist saying goes "women have to try twice as hard to be considered half as good as men." And possibly these days it's not quite as bad in some areas of the Western world as it was before the 1970s but women still have a fair way to go before they have full equality and of course it's very bad in some parts of the world, women are often treated as second class citizens or less.
There's absolutely no denying the fact that women were much worse off than men in the past, and certainly still are across great swathes of the globe. But it's worth pointing out that in the West (incl. the US, Canada, Australia, UK, Europe) women now make up around 60% of all university graduates. That has an immediate impact on their career prospects, so virtually all the traditional professions - medicine, law, accountancy, etc - now have a greater number of women entering them, and more women than men up to about the age of 35 (i.e. until childbirth affects women's life choices). That in turn means that young women in the West are now earning more than their male counterparts. This actually causes problems of its own because it means that women can't depend on a man to bring home the bacon, have to keep earning their own money and thus find it harder to find the time and resources to have children - hence plummeting birth rates among the host populations of western countries, especially among graduate women.
One might also add that women are allowed a much wider range of presentation and activity, without sacrificing their femininity/femaleness than men are allowed before they are seen not to be sufficiantly male (I think we, of all people, know this). Women can wear what they like, act girly or butch, do 'guy' things ... In all sorts of ways the pendulum has swung in women's favour over the past few decades, which is great ... unless you have a son to worry about.
But, again, that's not to say that there aren;t still cultures and religions in which women are oppressed, abused and mutilated in appalling and unacceptable ways.
For myself, I was about as privileged as a male can be: white, tall, healthy, from the upper end of the social scale, educated to a very high level at world-famous institutions, great job, the works .. and I'd have swapped it all in a heartbeat for the chance to live my whole life as natural-born woman.
