How are women "oppressed" by men?

College Life
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<p>While male athletes are certainly stronger etc., the Air Force has done research showing that women have better reflexes, which I’d have thought would be more of a factor than raw strength in a sport like table-tennis. I’m not saying that a top female table-tennis player could beat a top male one, but it might certainly be just as interesting to watch. In the end, though, it is very subjective, and if more people want to watch the men because the men happen to be stronger and so forth, that’s fine. I agree with you that that is not sexist. </p>

<p>With regards to the whole women in engineering thing, LogicWarrior, I think the point the others may have been trying to make was that it is very hard to be “fair.” It’s like we have a scale, and one side of the scale is weighted down with all the nonsense women in engineering have to face. The problem is that we don’t know exactly what this weight is, and it varies from woman to woman, so it is very hard to counterbalance and “equalize” it with scholarships for women in engineering (if that makes sense). </p>

<p>Men may be better at maths and so forth than women, and women may be better at art and so forth, but I don’t think we should really take the whole “genetic” argument too far. My point is that we should not “lower the bar” for women to want to do maths, or men who want to do art. </p>

<p>It is not sexist to pick the “best person for the job”, regardless of gender. This takes any individual characteristics into account. Not all men are born the same, just as not all women are born the same. There are many, many overlaps, and what would be sexist is to pigeonhole people into narrowly defined “gender boxes”. Judge people on what their individual characteristics are, whether that’s down to genetics or something else.</p>

<p>If there had been no oppression of women in the workplace, why Obama did sign the equal-pay legislation? I agree that it’s a lot better in Western societies than it is in places like Saudi Arabia, but we still have a long way to go. If you Google “women still oppressed,” try reading some of the articles you find. You may not agree with all of them - I do not agree with all of them - but they will provide an interesting new take on things. I would really recommend this.</p>

<p>Why are women objectified and judged on their looks a lot more than men, even in things like politics where the way you look has absolutely no effect on how good you are for the job. Just because some girls judge guys on their appearance doesn’t discredit the fact that it is a lot worse for women than it is for men. Look at most ads and see the way women are portrayed compared to men - men can be funny, active, old, ugly even, but women are usually shown as being young and beautiful. Even the women in skincare ads for older people look about 30.</p>

<p>Men earn more than women in most fields. The only two fields where women earn more than men are modelling and prostitution. That says a lot about what women are judged for, even today.</p>

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<p>I am fairly sure that in just about every test made men have faster reactions than women, can you please link me to the study saying otherwise? Theoretically since women are shorter they should be able to have faster reaction times but there are other factors making male signals go faster through the body anyway.</p>

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<p>I read about the Air Force Research a while back (I was actually wondering because I’d read that women had faster reflexes on a martial arts site, so I wanted to see whether that was true or not). I did some digging, and I didn’t manage to find the exact study I read before, but I’ve found this:</p>

<p><a href=“http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/D_Perrin_Neuromuscular_2001.pdf[/url]”>http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/D_Perrin_Neuromuscular_2001.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>It seems like a fairly rigorously done study to me, especially as it must’ve been done at college level or higher. I don’t think most pre-college students would have access to the same kind of equipment you get at college (I should know), and so studies done before then aren’t as likely to be rigorous.</p>

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<p>Hmm, maybe it is just that women have faster reflexes and men have faster reactions for things which are not preprogrammed?</p>

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<p>Faster reflexes in women is obviously the result of social conditioning.</p>

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<p>And women being shorter is due to people not feeding them well enough during their childhood, it is all a grand conspiracy!</p>

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<p>It’s clear that there are several biological differences between men and women. However, being members of a (seemingly) evolved society, those differences are now negligible and shouldn’t affect our lives and opportunities any more. We don’t need men to bale hay and slaughter animals for us any more, and we don’t need women to stay at home breeding more children to help with the work. Men and women CAN be entirely equal in our now service-oriented economy, but the traditional gender roles from agrarian times have stuck around.</p>

<p>I believe that we should be able to reject these conventional ideas of femininity and masculinity in our society, but that’s obviously pretty difficult if everyone just refuses to believe they exist (although you could ask pretty much any sociologist or psychologist about WHY little girls tend to allow boys to speak over them, WHY girls do better in all-female math and science courses, WHY boys are encouraged to explore and get dirty while girls are told not to make a mess, etc. etc.–they’d tell you it’s a result of unnecessary conditioning from birth).</p>

<p>Side note: There are scholarships specifically for women in engineering because ALL the rest of the scholarships are for men, seeing as they’re overrepresented in the department. It’s the same idea as to why they have clubs like the Asian Student Association–all the other clubs are “White Club”!</p>

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<p>However, I would think that even with every cultural externality removed, the gender ratio at most jobs would still not be 50:50. We should not stigmatize people of any gender that go into a non-traditional field, but I don’t think exact numerical equality is the best goal either.</p>

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<p>The rest aren’t just for men. They’re for anyone. More men get scholarships in engineering because more apply for them, but the average man gets less than the average woman because of gender specific scholarships. Women can apply for both types and men can only apply for one. It boggles my mind that people on CC have such a hard time understanding this.</p>

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<p>that isn’t going to happen while masculine men and feminine women are idealized. Look at the attractive ideal in either gender. If you think that we’ve evolved past this, I really hope you aren’t like 99% of other women who act on their outdated evolutionary instinct and are attracted to more masculine looking men. That is - tall, broad shouldered, strong jawline, etc.</p>

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<p>“Side note: There are scholarships specifically for women in engineering because ALL the rest of the scholarships are for men, seeing as they’re overrepresented in the department. It’s the same idea as to why they have clubs like the Asian Student Association–all the other clubs are “White Club”!”</p>

<p>That’s wrong. First off, those other scholarships in engineering go to men because more men want to go into engineering, not because the scholarships are specifically for men. I’m pretty sure there are very few scholarships out there that say “Only Men Can Apply”, and you certainly wouldn’t find it in a male dominated field unless sex played a large role in carrying out tasks on the job (such as heavy duty blue collar jobs). Likewise for Asian clubs, there is no such thing as a “white club” (well unless you count the KKK). It’s that the majority of people in the US are white. This isn’t just an American thing. You can probably go to other countries with lots of immigrants and it’s the same crap. The population majority is not going to have clubs just for themselves. Anyways, this is digressing since the topic isn’t about race, it’s about gender, specifically women getting oppressed.</p>

<p>Where women are oppressed is in the work place for the most part. That they get objectified in the media and men like to stare at them in the streets is not oppression. The former is simply due to an industry that is fueled by men. The latter is simply a cultural thing. For example, I read somewhere that in some European country men do not stare at women walking down the street the way American men do in the US. Think of it like this, if women enjoyed porn or paying for sex, there would be a lot more men in the media parading around practically naked. But that is not the case. Here’s the other catch to that though. Even if the case were that women dominated the workforce, marketing research would still dictate most business decisions. The sex that sells on tv isn’t meant for women (unless you’re into women like that), it’s meant for men. It’s marketed at them. Someone down the line must have done their marketing research and found that men must respond better to it. It’s not like a bunch of men at a meeting one day and said “Alright guys, so how bout more half naked girls on tv? All in favor say aye!” No it doesn’t quite work like that. This is also why there is less media coverage for female sports. Yes there are people out there who want to watch it, but there are A LOT more people who want to watch male sports.</p>

<p>On a side note: haven’t there been intra-gender games in the recent past? i think a while back there was an event in golf where a woman played, i forget how she fared against the men. recently there was even a girl who made it into the japanese baseball league.</p>

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<p>Michelle Wie played golf on the men’s tour and didn’t make the cut. The girl in question is a knuckle-ball pitcher who currently plays for a minor league team. Knuckle ball pitching is technique, not athleticism. She’s thrown about nine pitches, from what I can find on the internet.</p>

<p>A very good female may be better than an average male at a particular sport, but that’s not to say that they’re athletically equal and all pro teams should be co-ed. Discrimination in the workforce is an issue. Men and women are equally well-equipped to handle the vast majority of jobs in America.</p>

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<p>Why do you burn bras that’s just stupid it’s not like you want saggy breasts either oh my god why are women so stupid</p>

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Not that I favour any of the sexes on this but on what basis did you make that claim? Boys and girls perform differently on tests the second they are out of the womb, girls responds better to faces and boys responds better to mobiles.</p>

<p>The differences are not large enough to exclude either group from any job but they are certainly large enough to create unequal distributions on what field people chose to specialize in.</p>

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<p>I’m not disagreeing with you, but the differences don’t put either gender outside of the bell curve with say, a cubicle job. We’re talking differences of a few percentage points, well within one standard deviation of the population average. As I said in an earlier post, even if we get rid of all societal pressures on men and women, I believe there will still be an unequal distribution of men and women in certain fields, due to personal inclination.</p>

<p>Men and Women are different from each other. That’s not the same as to say that one or the other is inferior.</p>

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<p>Hmm, what did I say here:

And we are not arguing about excluding either sex from any job, we are instead talking about if there are traits which makes one side better at one thing or not.</p>

<p>For example men are better at lifting heavy weights since we are on average stronger than women, however that do not mean that every woman is unfit for such jobs since there are exceptions with women who are strong enough for it. This is the main reason we got so few women firefighters and women garbage persons.
Now, is it so damn hard to extend this to mental tasks? Like, on average women are better at languages and reading social situations while men are better at thinking in 3d and making logical conclusions. Neither skillset is really better than the other but it means that women on average are better suited for different fields than men on average.</p>

<p>And if all this would just be social constructs then women would not be better than men at language skills 60 years ago, but they were.</p>

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<p>Dude, we’re saying the exact same thing.</p>

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That was my point in my last post, your post before this was totally redundant since I had already acknowledged that before. Just as this post, I just said this…</p>

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<p>My thread was designed to find evidence where women were oppressed exclusively by MEN. In each of your cases… the oppression is done by both men AND women. </p>

<ol>
<li><p>Girls call each other “sluts” and “b itches” more than men. So how is it men’s fault if girls freely use such derogatory words themselves? Eg. Paris Hilton, high school LGs</p></li>
<li><p>Again, women also hates manipulative women. They call them using words above. Less women CEO than men doesn’t mean oppression. Since women often care for the children they have less opportunity, but that’s natural not “oppression”. How does a man breastfeed a newborn?</p></li>
<li><p>I think most sexual harrasement cases are filed by women. So if they’re better at “taking a joke” then why are they suing the men? </p></li>
<li><p>If women decide to watch women’s sports exclusively then there would be more media coverage. Since they also don’t like women’s sports then that’s not men’s fault.</p></li>
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There’s a biological reason for why females choose their mates. Females have a limited number of eggs. They need to be selective to ensure that their children will have the best possible genes. Males just need to spread their seed. If they were selective, the whole species would die out.</p>

<p>FACT.</p>

<p>I got it from a documentary called “Why Sex?”</p>

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<p>I’ve noticed this too. While I think men are the main perpetuators of this bs, I do think that women play a large role as well. It’s been proven that most of the matriarchal societies in animal species in the wild involve FEMALES WORKING TOGETHER, forming groups, and uniting.</p>

<p>However, in this patriarchal society, that is not the case. In large corporations, it often seems as though younger women fight to take the positions of older women, not other possibly incompetent men. Women are not as united as we should be.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t say it’s all our fault though. I think a number of factors are involved.</p>