Women's Issues

Thing is we can't make them want to on a basic level, we can reduce the costs so that they want to on a practice level, but making someone want kids? That's beyond us, we can shame them into having kids they don't want (the current system) or enable them to have kids they couldn't have, but we can't change the basic "would you like kids in a general sense", only the "does your desire for kids currently outweighs the cost of having kids?" We can reduce the costs, not increase the desire.

Dude, we need to lower or population any way, the amount of people we have already is unsustaniable.

We dont need to pressure people to have kids Memers, we need to pressure countries to be more open to immigration, the whole issue your talking about can easily be solved by just importing workers from elsewhere.

Mass immigration certainly should not be an answer to population decline.

But really dropping it, I was actually trying to agree on the changing the system thing which is why I brought up France. It still national pressure though.

edited 16th Apr '16 1:04:54 PM by Memers

Japan could do with more inmigrants, usually they come from cultures where having kids is more common, so the ageing of the population could be somewhat averted, but Japan is so ethnically homogenous that growing inmigrant populations would be anathema to many.

Immigration creates its own set of problems as well, specially when the language, scholarly levels and cultures involved are too different to properly integrate.

The problem with the low fertility rate is also a problem related ageing population, if you don't have a sable rate you're going to end up with more old people and not enough young people to replace them at the work force and definitely not enough people providing taxes and income to sustain a large retired population on pension funds.

And almost no one is talking about euthanizing people older than 70.

Japan and most of the developed world have a net negative population growth and a good part of the blame comes from how hard to grow a family has become.

Dunno if this is the right place to post this, but I'll do it anyway:

A confession on Tumblr about the WWE dropping the "Diva" label and apparently moving to "women's wrestling:"

A reply to that confession:

Any thoughts?

Good

"Diva" sounds more narrow and demeaning, the fact that they're losing out on screentime has less to do with "diva" having been better and more with the management being assholes.

edited 17th Apr '16 7:35:36 AM by AlleyOop

Yeah the complaint seems to be basically be "They got rid of the overt sexism so now it's harder to get people angry about the covert sexism, bring back the overt sexism", which just seems stupid to me, yes it's not as much progress as we'd like but it's progress.

Has whichever wresting channel/network has it, ended the ban on male on female violence that means they can't have female-male matches yet, by the way? It's so stupid that because they don't want to show male on female violence (because all women are delicate and should never be hit?) they banned female wrestlers and male ones fighting.

edited 17th Apr '16 7:55:27 AM by Silasw

Female F1 drivers 'aren't strong enough' and 'will never be taken seriously', says Bernie Ecclestone.

A quick google search of "female f1 drivers" returns: Looking back over the years, there have only ever been 5 female drivers in Formula 1 and competed between 1958 and the early Nineties but they all drove incomparably bad cars. These women are Maria Teresa de Filippis, Divina Galcia, Lella Lombardi, Desiré Wilson and Giovanna Amati.

I wonder if the existence of Pit Girls says something about what F1 drivers and fans think of women.

On a less news-worthy note (because no celebrities are involved this time), I've heard a man said women-only sports are proof women are worse at sports than men, and thus women-only sports should not exist. I mean, women may be biologically disadvantaged, but even then, wouldn't that just mean women-only sports are all the more required to let them shine in spite of their disadvantage? A disadvantage overcome only by hard work and effort?

Then again, that same man said the Paralympic Games aren't real sports and exist purely to please the handicapped and people who support the handicapped. Grain of salt and all.

edited 20th Apr '16 5:42:45 AM by hellomoto

There are sports where it makes sense to segregate, like athletics. But in mechanical sports (like car races) and mental sports (like chess), it doesn't. In those case, the athlete makes little or no physical effort (especially heavy physical effort which would clearly advantage a more muscled athlete), either because something else is doing it (this also applies to equestrian sports, which are desegregated), or because there is none to make in the first place.

Yeah in such sports the argument for segregation only works as a short term one to push diversity. You get it in e-sports to, there aren't many women in e-sports despite to being a mainly mental sport.

Thing is if the sport is dominated (especially at the higher levels) by men then that may itself discourage women from getting involved, so you need women-only leagues to try and draw women in so that you can have leading women figures who can inspire more women to get involved and so on.

In such cases having women-only competitions and leagues isn't meant to be a permanent fix, it's just meant to draw in enough women that you don't end up with professional competitions having only one women in them out of a hundred competitors.

Though e-sports have the additional issues of harassment, the e-sports community is not particularly kind to women, even the Hearthstone community has issues.

Having women-only league and mixed leagues makes even less sense than full segregation. It's basically saying that the women-only leagues are for the weak. Harassment is a real problem, but harassers need to be kicked out entirely rather than separated from their targets (easier said than done, I admit).

Thing is if all women competitors are weak due to women being pushed away from the sports and discouraged from participating then you need a way to break the self reninforcing cycle. When a group is systematically disenfranchised it's going to be at a disadvantage, shouldn't that disadvantage be recognised? Otherwise you're just kinda hoping that enough women trailblazers appear, and waiting for that isn't acceptable anymore.

And yes harassment needs to be dealt with, but it's a deep rooted problem with the audience more then the people who run the stuff, I doubt it stops with women only competitions. In the end there's a reason that one of the top women Hearthstone players doesn't do tournaments anymore, she's sick of harassment she gets from 'fans'.

edited 20th Apr '16 7:07:08 AM by Silasw

Motor racing does demand a good amount of upper body and neck strength to use some of the less assisted steering wheels and endure lateral gs. Add endurance to the mix when you have drivers in Nomex seated in cars with minimal or no air conditioning. Interestingly enough, I recall reading that women could handle such conditions better than men, and were hence sought out to race solar-powered cars.

As to a lack of women in Formula One, it is due to a cultural problem: money. Formula One teams are perpetually bleeding cash (a joke says that to become a millionaire racing, you must start a billionaire). Which means that they must get sponsors... who often have a driver included as part of the deal. Hence, the "pay driver". Sponsors are rather conservative types; after all, Pastor Maldonaldo got on the grid despite repeated displays of erratic driving that would make the butts of women driver jokes wince...

Pharmacies in my home province of Nova Scotia have been charging women up to 21% more than men for anti-fungal creams. The ingredients are the same, the tube is the same, the only difference is the external packaging.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/pharmaceuticals-pricing-gender-1.3543214

@ Khudzlin: Equestrian sports are actualy reversed, women are at a biological advantage.

You want as small of a rider as posible and men are on avrage 1.08 times biger then women, which is a significant chunk of extra mass that the horse has to deal with.

@ Krieger: We also handle G force better IIRC, but yea, the problem no one wants to hire a lady driver....

And I bet the sterotype that we are poor drivers doen't help.....

edited 20th Apr '16 11:02:27 AM by Imca

How are women when it comes to hand eye coordination and reaction times? Also what's the gender split when it comes to shooting and archery?

Hard to point a finger on it, the only one I know where there is a mixed competition is Biathlon but in the running and skiing parts men have to run a few kilometers more than women before entering the shooting phase.

@Imca: In the races with bets (which aren't desegregated, actually), the horses with the lightest riders are handicapped with extra weight (though it's still advantageous to be lighter, since the extra weight is better distributed than if it was on the rider).

A Hosue bill has passed committee to make women in the US register for the draft the same as men. As now that combat roles are going to be de-suggested the previous defence against women not being made to register (that the Do D had judged them not fit for combat, same way that someone in a wheelchair presumably doesn't have to register) is no longer valid.

Amusingly the guy who proposed it did so to try and get women kept out of combat roles. [1]

Cross posted between military/women's issues/US politics threads.

edited 28th Apr '16 7:08:18 PM by Silasw

What, no women fighting against the bill so that they won't get drafted and made to 'endure the harsh military routines'?

edited 29th Apr '16 3:21:03 AM by hellomoto

ugh. I'd rather not have a draft at all, but at least it ends that nasty argument.

Nope, equality means equality.

MRAs just seem to think it would be objected, but seriously, shit like that is what feminisim is about.

Pretty much the only kinds of women I can think of who would object to this are Actual Pacifists who don't want anyone to be drafted period, difference feminists (who are a fringe group compared to modern mainstream feminism), or outright anti-feminists and traditionalists like Phyllis Schlafy who want to "protect" women like they're little children.

edited 29th Apr '16 11:47:06 AM by AlleyOop