No ducking required. As women began to enter the workforce in mass, it WAS the choice of men (the vast majority of hiring agents) who chose to pay women less.

Fortunately, today, at least in America there are laws which govern over the equality of men and women in the work place (EEOC). This why large companies/businesses now have policies dictating the nature of hiring, and outlining job positions and pay scales for each job. True, a woman can still be hired at the bottom level, while men come in at a higher one. This is a good reason why we still see women's (overall) pay at between 75 to 90 percent of men.

In the OP Fay Weldon is using the concept of woman as wage slaves in contrast to the oppressive form of feminism which has permeated most human societies for thousands of years.

In fact she is in no way belittling the feminist movement rather she is equating women as wage slaves to the success of the feminist movements. If more women are wage slaves, they are, in fact, more equal to men – they have gained great freedom of choice.

The inequality of job positions and pay is actually closing ranks. It will not take generations, nor a great amount of enforcement (at this point) for women (if they choose) to share equally in all jobs and professions and even more elitist capacities like governmental positions.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html



http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-09-12-census-college-enrollment_N.htm

This is fine if he pays the women the same as the men or the gays the same as the straights or the blacks the same as the whites, etc.... And shows he hired based on qualifications and not race, gender, etc...


Discrimination has to be controlled at some level until we don't have it anymore.

Now don't get me wrong here - I'm totally in favor of equal pay for equal work. I'm just not in favor of making it a criminal offense to discriminate. Doing that is no less taking away freedom of choice.

The whole issue of Discrimination has been passed on to us from the not-so-distant times of the Industrial Revolution:
when manual labour has been performed with the use of heavy tools and equipment that required a phisical strength to operate. Naturally, most/all of women have been excluded from such labour -- due to the lack of the required qualities. Women have been mostly confined to the light labour (textile, medical, academic, etc.) and/or home-making activities...
In the post-industrial era, the trend of giving preferrence of employment to men have continued (though, "thanks to wars" -- when most of men had to fight, and women had often replaced some/most of them at the factories -- have proven women's abilities of performing the "male" duties, if necessary!) However, most of employers have taken advantage of various "female weaknesses" -- such as a frequent attention to their looks and/or hygene, for example -- as the reason for reducing their rate of pay! And most of women don't mind that -- for the sake of preserving the ability of attending to their "weaknesses" (whenever time permits)...

Although intellectual abillities, in general, might be equal among different representatives of the sexual spectrum -- males, females, gays, lesbians -- however, the personal preferrences have a certain stigma attached to them! (which is reflected at the rate of pay)!

Discrimination had better be illegal and stay illegal.

We should not do it. Ethical it is not.

In a roundabout way that's my point: women were throwing away everything assigned to the female role so that there would be no distinction left. Cooking, knitting, wearing bras and so on aren't really the things that cause the situation and they've been made so devoid of power that throwing them away is not even significant as a symbolic action.

Doing different things is not the issue. The issue comes from how we evaluate the things females do. Cooking, wrangling children, and home economics aren't things of inherently low value- we call them nothing because women do them. If they were the tasks of men we would take them seriously.


It is now that we can see this. We have a front row seat where we can watch as women in new roles are cast into the margins yet again and those roles that were once valued now amount to trivial efforts in the public eye.

The elusive name of this game has now come into focus and that name is respect. Feminism needs to become a fight for respect if we ever want this devaluation to end.

In one of the European contries -- Sweden, I think -- women are paid a salary to raise children!
That's what I call Respect!!!

Most European countries pay a stipend for children, but I hadnt heard of any actually giving moms salaries,,,,awesome.

LOL, the country has neither immigration or welfare policies!

Then why's it a crime to kill people? Doesn't that take away a lot of my choices?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/opinion/24lipman.html

Well if you think "taking a life" and "not hiring someone" are either ethically or categorically equivalent, then it's no wonder you and I disagree so often.

They're definitely not equivalent- I said that with the full intention that you'd think about how they were different. You're supposed to now explain where the line fits between murder and discrimination.

With what you've said so far I know that some things less extreme than murder are ok and some things more extreme than discrimination are not ok but the reason you think discrimination is petty enough to be allowed is totally shrouded.

Shoku:

Skyhook:

Not only that, Steve, I think he just wants to SHOCKu everybody!!!

In other words, you make a comparison, I don't see how that comparison applies, but I'm supposed to explaing how it does apply???

No thanks. I don"t see any benefit to be derived from the attempt.

There's no c in my name D:<

You do see how it applies. You went right to it saying that murder is more severe than discrimination but you haven't explained how severe something has to be before it's ok to take the choice away.

I'll just type out the real question (that I thought you would recognize) plain to see: why isn't discrimination severe enough?

Shoku:
Obviously, discrimination is deplorable, despicable, etc. -- but it is NOT a criminal offence yet!

Murder, on the other hand, is a crime that's against the law, which provides a certain punishment for such an act!

COMPRENDE???

No, I don't.

No, I didn't.

It's not a matter of degree, it's a matter of category.

With murder, its taking away someone else's property (their body), but with the hiring, it's taking away your own property (your money) as an employer.