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[DJ]

A friend of mine is an EMT, and last month he had to carry a 120kg guy in a stretcher down three flights of stairs. It was just him and another EMT, and there wasn't really any room in the staircase for anyone else to help carry.

And in construction those wooden beams can get pretty damn heavy. Sure, you could use a crane, but the customer won't like cost of construction quintupling (those things are damn expensive to rent).

[Loud Whispers]

Being a plumber, a carpenter, or an EMT, or a construction worker, or any one of the majority of the jobs you described, doesn't require any sort of unusual strength, it requires practice and some measure of dexterity.

Requires a lot of physical labour, which requires strength. Don't know what you mean by unusual strength, this isn't lifting, but it's laborious. Construction workers - yes! EMTs, YES! PLUMBERS YES!

Those are all tasks any healthy human can do if they have the skill. Being an engineer *certainly* doesn't require any strength, since it's, you know, designing things. I'll grant you firefighters though.

I'd argue that using dexterity is more important in the various engineer specializations, but there are some where physical labour is up in there, and mechanics will always follow wherever there are engineers - you need people to fix up what the engineers build up.

And I have nothing against the working class- I'm a socialist, for god's sake. I have no respect for anyone who thinks that their physical strength makes them better than anyone else, or deserving of different treatment. And I have no respect for anyone who's proud of suffering- you're not special because you work all day, you're getting screwed. You should be angry. Being part of the working class doesn't make you better, it makes you a victim.

Oh god damn this sounds like a good excuse of any to start a new thread, but I don't have the time.

a: I disagree. People in 1770 would have said that handmade clothing would be staying around for a long time too. Ultimately, robots are cheaper to keep around than human laborers, and so they're eventually going to replace them.

They said carpentry would be killed by industrialization too. Both carpentry and handmade clothing have survived till today.

[Capntastic]

Hello, it's been a while!

A person's physical strength or potential physical strength is like, the dumbest place to argue from when considering if people should be viewed equally in the eyes of society.  It is weird to me that discussions about gender politics tend to end up retreading the same ground about "well, men are just better workers because they can, on average, bench more, and thus deserve better pay across the board.  Even the ones that can't, in fact, bench anything at all worth noting."

I feel a lot of the talking-past-each-other in this thread is due to there not being an actual core point being discussed here other than Standard Issue Gender Stuff.

A friend of mine is an EMT, and last month he had to carry a 120kg guy in a stretcher down three flights of stairs. It was just him and another EMT, and there wasn't really any room in the staircase for anyone else to help carry.

And in construction those wooden beams can get pretty damn heavy. Sure, you could use a crane, but the customer won't like cost of construction quintupling (those things are damn expensive to rent).

Stuff like the above quote, dropped in with no actual point being made than simply to share anecdotes, is not actually contributing anything.  Also easily dispelled by woman EMTs and construction workers existing- I don't even have to claim they're friends of mine because their proximity to me means nothing!

[DJ]

Yeah, they have female EMTs in my friend's hospital, they just never send them on jobs like that one because they couldn't do it. And no, the male EMTs aren't paid more.

[Helgoland]

A person's physical strength or potential physical strength is like, the dumbest place to argue from when considering if people should be viewed equally in the eyes of society.

Some people were arguing that men were, in fact, not stronger than women at all. But yeah, different people are talking about different things here.

[Loud Whispers]

A person's physical strength or potential physical strength is like, the dumbest place to argue from when considering if people should be viewed equally in the eyes of society.

Some people were arguing that men were, in fact, not stronger than women at all. But yeah, different people are talking about different things here.

Precisely.

[EnigmaticHat]

Can we add a little questionaire at the beginning of each post?  Some thing to the effect of "I believe that gender inequality (does/doesn't) exist, that this is (acceptable/unacceptable OR justified/unjustified), and that the society I live in is unjust to (men/women/neither men nor women/both men and women)."  And then a short explanation for why you believe that.

That we can argue with each other's points rather than each other's random anecdotes.

[Helgoland]

How about just sticking to one point? Let's argue, for example, whether in a society with perfectly equal opportunities there will still be differences between male and female behaviour, job selection criteria, etc.

[scriver]

That's not really relevant to anything.

[Helgoland]

It seemed to be a major dividing line previously - nature vs. nurture with regard to preferences, physical strength being required for certain jobs, etc.

[ed boy]

Disclaimer: This post concerns itself solely with western culture.

On the subject of physical differences:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yes, men and women are physically different. Apart from primary and secondary sexual characteristics, there are hormonal differences, and this results in physical differences. The number of situations in which this is relevant is interesting. Most jobs have trivial strength requirements, and the ones that do not are usually those that have historically required significant physical ability. Males tend to have a physical advantage, and without information beyond gender you would expect a male to be more physically able than a female.
Although jobs may not have strength requirements, there are lots of non-employment situations that have strength requirements - pretty much everybody has had to move furniture at some point in their life, for instance, which can be quite a physically demanding task.

On the subject of mental differences:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is a case where external influences seem to completely overwrite gender-based differences, if any exist. At an early age, males and females are pretty much the same. At later ages, males and females strongly tend toward different academic interests, which makes comparison within subjects increasingly difficult.

On the subject of financial differences:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As a mathematician, I find the conventional notion of a gender wage gap dishonest. The conventional wage gap is calculated by simply comparing the average wage of females with the average wage of males, without any regards for differences in the sources of income. Females and males strongly tend towards different employment areas (strongly influenced by the different academic interests mentioned above), which tend to align with lower paying jobs. When you compare males and females of the same job, then gender-based wage gaps tend to disappear.

On the subject of cultural differences:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is the big section, which I consider responsible for the differences outlined in the previous two sections. Although the gender roles have changed greatly in recent history, they are still prevalent. In general, males are seen as the more responsible/accountable/blamable gender, whereas females are seen as the more innocent/blameless/childish gender. This has bad effects all round, such as this (incomplete) list:
-Females are discouraged from an early age from adopting independent or responsible roles. Not only does this lead to large differences in employment areas (and by extension, wage), this also affects non-employment roles.
-Females are discouraged from participating in sports and other physically intensive activities. Being extremely physically able is seen as an attractive quality in males and an unattractive quality in females.
-Females often have their value seen as dependent on their physical appearance, even in areas that have nothing to do with physical appearance. This tends to be the case both for attractive females being highly regarded and unattractive females being lowly regarded.
-Males are often seen as the exclusively irresponsible or negative gender in sexual areas. Males are seen as sexually untrustworthy (especially when it comes to pedophilia and children), and male victims of sexual abuse are often ignored
-Males are discouraged form acknowledging individual problems or failings. They are also discouraged from seeking help with said problems, often making them worse
-Males often suffer from being 'guilty until proven innocent', especially when females are also involved. For instance, when a male and a female are convicted of the same crime, the male typically gets a much harsher sentence. Furthermore, there are numerous areas (e.g. domestic violence) where males are often assumed to be the sole offenders
-Males are seen as less intrinsically valuable. This results in violence against males seen as far more acceptable then violence against females, even it is identical violence. This also results in dangerous activities being seen as the sole domain of males, with females being strongly discouraged from participating.

[Helgoland]

I'd dispute your reasoning for the last two points. Males are seen as generally 'tough' - a true man must be able to takee a beating, and defend himself as well. Thus assaulting a male is less reprehensible than assaulting a supposedly defenseless female. It's quite similar to the perceived difference between beating a child and beating an adult.
The same 'toughness' reasoning applies to dangerous activities, too - males are expected to be able to sustain more damage, and generally be less flimsy. To a degree, that may be true biologically - however, it's a bias of society as well.

[ed boy]

But the phenomenon is observable no matter the scale of the violence involved, and is especially evident in media. A stranger coming up to you and shooting you in the face is equally lethal, no matter your gender or age, but a man being shot in the face is something people are a lot more comfortable with than a woman being shot in the face.

[palsch]

As a mathematician, I find the conventional notion of a gender wage gap dishonest. The conventional wage gap is calculated by simply comparing the average wage of females with the average wage of males, without any regards for differences in the sources of income. Females and males strongly tend towards different employment areas (strongly influenced by the different academic interests mentioned above), which tend to align with lower paying jobs. When you compare males and females of the same job, then gender-based wage gaps tend to disappear.

Unless you look at the actual data which shows there is still a wage gap present within fields.

It's true that a substantial chunk of the total wage gap is due to higher paying fields being predominantly male, but I don't think you can dismiss this as inherent preferences, unavoidable and acceptable.

A lot of that clustering is due to the social attitudes towards and within the jobs. Again, I posted that example of a Parcelforce job and an Amazon one. Very similar work, but one is traditionally male and regarded as physical so had no women compared to the Amazon pickers. Which, given the more established one is in a heavily unionised field and involved far more safeguards and progression into higher paying jobs, puts women at a disadvantage compared to men.

Then there is the whole reason I get so frustrated with these discussions of average strength, etc. It's because these things are completely irrelevant to any individual recruit (who should be weight against the requirements of the job) but colour the attitudes of those who would recruit them. The attitude that women are, on average, weaker than men becomes an attitude that women are incapable or completely unsuited to a particular job or field. Which is no more true or false for any individual woman than it is for any individual man. But you can be sure that such attitudes have impacts on who enters those fields.

And this goes double for questions of academic ability or similar.

[ed boy]

As a mathematician, I find the conventional notion of a gender wage gap dishonest. The conventional wage gap is calculated by simply comparing the average wage of females with the average wage of males, without any regards for differences in the sources of income. Females and males strongly tend towards different employment areas (strongly influenced by the different academic interests mentioned above), which tend to align with lower paying jobs. When you compare males and females of the same job, then gender-based wage gaps tend to disappear.

Unless you look at the actual data which shows there is still a wage gap present within fields.

That link doesn't account for a number of factors which artificially inflate the wage gap - a more accurate report is here, which gives evidence for an actual wage gap of between 4.8% and 7.1%

It's true that a substantial chunk of the total wage gap is due to higher paying fields being predominantly male, but I don't think you can dismiss this as inherent preferences, unavoidable and acceptable.

I don't consider this an inherent preference, but rather one that is forced by cultural norms, which I am strongly opposed to.

Then there is the whole reason I get so frustrated with these discussions of average strength, etc. It's because these things are completely irrelevant to any individual recruit (who should be weight against the requirements of the job) but colour the attitudes of those who would recruit them. The attitude that women are, on average, weaker than men becomes an attitude that women are incapable or completely unsuited to a particular job or field. Which is no more true or false for any individual woman than it is for any individual man. But you can be sure that such attitudes have impacts on who enters those fields.

And this goes double for questions of academic ability or similar.

I agree, though I would consider it coloring the attitudes of those who would seek to enter the fields at least as much as of those who recruit within those fields.