To their detriment. As a product of both coed and all boys private schools, there is a stark difference in teaching and disceplin in single sex schools that research shows improves outcomes. Hit http://scholar.google.com/ with "single sex education." There is a huge discrepancy in male performance especially that most teachers admit a preference to teaching girls as they "behave" better.
Bigotry and sexism exists, but the "problem" is an effect of the US obsession with political correctness and an overly sensitive and litigious society. There are cases of systematic discrimination in organizations, but they are not as pervasive as a few decades ago, so there has been progress, especially in corporate environments. An example is a female cousin with a law degree. Being a women of breading age, she was specifically asked if she intended to have children in the next 5 years which was a non-starter. These were small firms that couldn't afford to have a junior partner off for maternity leave. She had no problem with that at a large corporation.
On equality, if you start giving men maternity leave in the same way as women, and effectively change societies views on gender roles in the home, you might start seeing that form of discrimination disappear as in the scandinavian countries.
There is much to be said about differences in men and women's personalities. Normal banter between men about women kept on the "acceptable in a sitcom" when not directed at any specific women, in my view is not sexual harassment, but clearly some people disagree with that. So as long as the kid gloves are on...
I agree.
>Normal banter between men about women kept on the "acceptable in a sitcom" when not directed at any specific women, in my view is not sexual harassment, but clearly some people disagree with that.
I definitely disagree with that at work. If you want to discuss your sexuality, comment on people's body parts, or articulate your unified theory on the differences in the natures of men and women, get some friends. People have to work in order to eat - allow women (and men) to get through it without having to constantly bite their tongues or else be seen as the problem. We've made a decision as a society that racial, sexual and religious discrimination are problems at work. Find another subject.
Right. Bite my tongue and put on the kid gloves. Wouldn't want to discuss last nights episode of Game of Thrones in the break room, less be seen as a sexist jerk. People do have friends at work, and normal human interactions do take place there.
If your friends at work refuse to meet you away from work for your crucial sex talk, they may be uncomfortable with it too. If your self-righteousness is because you feel put upon by not being able to say what you want when you want, I entirely lack sympathy.
If someone is uncomfortable with something they should speak up. If someone says they are uncomfortable with something that should be respected (within reason).
Its not that hard when everyone just behaves as adults instead of spoiled sheltered children who cannot communicate with each other
And even so they should still speak up. Even if someone has some unreasonable discomfort (ie it makes me uncomfortable when you wear red) it may be so minor that it can easily be avoided. You couldn't expect people to not wear red, but if a co-worker said that to me i'd probably just try to not wear red.
Without communicating/talking about it, reasonable or not, there is absolutely no chance of the situation getting better.
I agree there is a place and time for everything. However, true friends are rarely made in polite company. I prefer to work with friends.
It's a subtle thing, really. One person can make remarks about women and shoes and it's funny because we know that's not his real opinion, another does it and it's offensive because he thinks it's true. It really is about what your real opinions and intentions are.
Perhaps step one should be "find out their real opinion and intention". But too often people just go straight to "thermo-nuclear melt down".
In a world where sexism is still a huge problem, it seems that forcing students into a monosexual environment would only contribute to stunting their social development even more. Compare, for example, the relative incidence of sexism in a heavily male field like programming or philosophy with the amount of sexism in a gender-integrated field like biology.
This idea of separating students by gender to increase performance is really treating them like little test-taking machines: students, by and large, do not choose to take gender-segregated courses unless their parents require it of them. They're human beings. They have a fundamental right to develop in a natural social environment. And, like it or not, schools provide a large proportion of a child's social interaction, which isn't going to change anytime soon.
But most importantly, any improvements are highly controversial and tend to disappear once researchers attempt to correct for confounding.
"The Pseudoscience of Single-sex Schooling", Halpern et al, Science 2011: http://womenstudies.wisc.edu/documents/ScienceSingle-sex09-2...
The most successful school systems in the world, in Northern Europe and East Asia, are all coeducational. There are also a whole lot of interventions that don't require such drastic measures. Cracked of all publications wrote a surprisingly well-researched article on the subject:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19254_5-surprisingly-easy-way...
Using a microphone and turning on the lights is a far less severe encroachment on students' freedom than, well, segregation. Seriously.
That's sexism, plain and simple. Who are they to assume she's going to take extended maternity leave and be the primary care giver? They would never ask that of a man (most male law partners are married and have kids), because they would as assume that his wife would take care of the kids. That's sexism.
Why is it legal to discriminate based on data in some situations but not others? I think the only solution is to remove the logical justification for discrimination: force men and women to take equal parental leave.
as a result car insurance prices for women increased significantly, while mens remained the same.
additionally annuity rates for men dropped, while those for women remained the same (the provider is no longer allowed to factor in that men on average die several years earlier).
I'm all for fairness. Equal is not fair in all cases, nor is fair equal in all cases...
No reason it can't be both. It is stupid, but it's also the dictionary definition of sexism.
Schools like to separate girls from boys, and points towards improved and safer environment. Conferences like to create women only sections, in the idea (with some irony) that it would improve gender equality, and like schools, make a better environment for teaching out technology.
I call it stupid because it fail some basic common sense. A mixed classroom, work space, or conference room is better because it increase cooperation, make society better, and switch the focus on the individual skill level rather than their sex. Schools have almost gone through this stage and fully gone over to mixed classrooms. The work space is learning the same lesson, but slower. As to conferences, I can only assume that they are looking at the workplace and fail to connect the dots.