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Let's straighten something out...

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Sexism or racism in a country hasn't ceased to exist simply because there are successful women or black people who have made it as a result of their own choices.
It really isn't as simple as being refused a position based on your colour or gender.
I'll stick with sexism, since I am a woman and no one can tell me I don't know what I'm talking about.
I don't want to be employed because of some affirmative action/quota. I don't want to be employed in an industry that has few women/no women so they can say they've got a woman on the team. My husband used to work for an IT company. No women worked there on the tech side. Not one. Very simply because none applied to work there. So it isn't about my husband's company not wanting or having women. It's about why women aren't applying for tech jobs. It isn't that no women are capable of tech jobs. So what might it be, and why might it be about an institutional sexism that goes much deeper than just turning women away at the door?

However much attitudes in the UK have progressed, women still aren't feeling welcome in the STEM world. It's not overt like it used to be, but it's there. We know we'll be in the minority. We know we'll have to put up with hearing, 'really? That's a difficult path to go down' when we announce our ambition at young ages. Our brothers don't hear that.

It's illegal now to ask a woman at interview if she'll be having a baby soon, but it doesn't change the fact that 'how will you manage childcare' is asked by our peers, if we talk about wanting kids as we climb the ladder. Nobody asks prospective fathers that, because for some reason we still don't think childcare is their responsibility.

Yes, we call men in senior positions out for past sexual transgressions, but I have never, EVER heard, 'he slept his way to the top'. Men sleep with powerful, capable women, but nobody questions if that is why they get the job. Even now, when we're much less prudish about women and sex, it's still more acceptable for men to have had a sexual past that may include multiple consenting partners.

Nobody asks the male 30 something celebrity when they will be starting a family in an interview. Taylor Swift has had a lot of comments about her lack of children. Child free male stars never hear about it. Men who don't have kids aren't referred to as 'miserable dog men'.

Of course we can be successful because of the choices we make. I don't want to deny how far we've come, or deny the success of women who have made it big.

I'm not asking anyone to do women any favours. I don't want it to be easier for us. I just want it not be harder.
Sexism and racism isn't about being unable to be successful in life through your own hard work. It's about it sometimes being that bit harder to get there when it doesn't need to be.

I don't want a female PM or Presidential candidate to be there because we need more women in politics, or because someone's decided there ought to be a female candidate.

I want there to be a recognition of why it really is that 50% of the electoral population don't think that job is for them. It's too many people and it's been the case for too long for it just to be about 'choices'.

The sexism isn't with the voting public. It's with the systemic sexism that results in strong, capable, successful women not getting up there in the first place. It's things like, 'she slept her way to the top'. It's things like having to be twice as good to compete.

And every single woman who is a success as a CEO, an IT specialist, a scientist, a car mechanic, will tell you about those little extra hurdles.

It's not as bad now, but I remember our first lady PM being talked about in the papers. I might not have much truck with Thatcher's politics, but why the hell did we have to hear so much about her hair, her pearls, her clothes? Nobody gave a shit about her successor's tie and suit as long as he wasn't scruffy.

When she left office, my stepfather, who was an ardent supporter of hers still said, 'we won't have another female PM.'
When I asked why, he said she was divisive, many people didn't like her at the finish. I pointed out that a lot of people hadn't liked Harold Macmillan, but nobody said 'we won't have another male PM'.

As it turned out, he wasn't right, but it would be about 15 years before another woman came to power.

Women shouldn't be successful because they are women. It would be nice if we could reach a point where nobody can say it was 'in spite of it'.

RE: Let's straighten something out...

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Well said. Part of the "sleeping [her] way up" is simply the normal age disparity in sexual relationships, which stems from biological windows. Women are at their reproductive prime right around the time they enter the workforce. For men, that window is longer. If age and influence tend to increase with age, then that sexist phrase -- yes, let's call it what it is -- is based on an age-old reality that we will not escape unless we re-engineer our own bodies and hormones.

RE: Let's straighten something out...

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That explains a biological imperative, Simian, but still doesn't excuse the presumption that a woman who at one point in her life, slept with an older and influential man, owes her entire career to that encounter.
This isn't about fertility. It's about the presumption that women who have made it must have got there because they slept with some man. We don't need to change our bodies to put that sort of thinking to...ahem...bed.

And even that age-old biological imperative is changing with modern healthcare ensuring babies born to older women being more likely to survive and advances in fertility treatment. Not to mention the fact that, here in the UK at least, young girls are much less likely to enter into age gap relationships.

You are not just a penis, despite the biological imperative. Some evolution has occurred which means we aren't merely shagging and finding food. Women are not just wombs. It's just taking longer to understand that. That women enjoy sex for sex's sake, like men do. That, just as men don't only have sex to create more humans, women don't only have it to fill their wombs. Modern advances means we, too, can have the pleasure without the responsibility. We aren't chained to our bodies or any ancient biological imperative. Surely by now we should also be able to have the pleasure without having to worry whether every single achievement in our lives is going to be viewed as merely a result of who we shagged.

RE: Let's straighten something out...
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RE: Let's straighten something out...

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Just a brief comment...from the articles I've read, people aren't upset about Kamala having sex with an older man. It's that he began handing her appointments once they were together. His own constitutuents were making a stink about it at the time because they considered it cronyism.

Unrelated comment...my daughter is a software engineer manager. Within the companies she's worked for, there is not another female in sight doing what she does. Other companies are constantly trying to poach her, tempt her over to them. So being a female has been no barrier for her at all professionally in a job that is 90%+ male dominated.

We do need to recognize that men and women are not the same. Engineering brains are less frequently found in females. It's not sexist, it's just different. My daughter is an exception. My point being, there aren't a lack of female software engineers because they are discriminated against. If anything, there is a bias towards them to encourage them.

It is, without a doubt, a very complex issue...unraveling racism/sexism, cultural or gender differences, or the more recent sky-rocketing of victim mentality.

Early America: "Despite my 'setback' I overcame and became a success.
America Now: "I am a victim (gender/race/sexuality) so you better accommodate me, and overcompensate me, change laws for me, and if you don't, you are a racist/sexist/etc.

This is making for a really different quality of human being.

RE: Let's straighten something out...

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Cronyism is rampant in politics - always has been, so it is racist and sexist to call her out for it while giving a free pass to all the white men who are guilty of the same thing, especially when her actual political opponent (a white male) is the king of cronyism.

But I am still waiting for someone to explain exactly what these appointments were, and what the evidence is to back it up. I posed this question to Simian on the other thread and he didn't respond, nor did anyone else. Can you answer these reasonable questions? If not, one can hardly take the claims seriously.

On the other hand, it is indisputable that Trump appointed his daughter and son-in-law to key positions in the White House despite their complete lack of political experience. And that is just the tip of the iceberg with him.

If people are unwilling to call out Trump to the same extent they are calling out Harris, of course reasonable people are going to attribute it to racism/sexism.

RE: Let's straighten something out...

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I am genuinely shocked and horrified that in 2024 I am reading a comment stating that engineering 'brains' are rare in women. What utter nonsense!
60 years ago, my husband's mother was the only female in her university class training to be a pharmacist. The popular narrative then was pretty much that women's brains weren't suited to that level of medical expertise. Those, like my husband's mother, proving them wrong, were 'rare exceptions.

Today, we see women as pharmacists and doctors all the time.
Female engineers? Far more than there used to be.

We were told we couldn't vote because women couldn't understand the complexities of politics. A whole group of women fought to get laws changed. Was that wrong? Changing archaic laws like that is how we not only overcome adversity but pave the way for others not to have to fight. Should we all have to go through the same battle because nobody before us changed the root cause? What was the root cause of women not being allowed to vote? Were the women who clamoured for change merely whining because they couldn't overcome that adversity?

The point about making good choices is you have to have the freedom to make those choices in the first place. And sometimes to do that, you need the law on your side.

I don't want women to simply blame everyone else. I just want them not to believe shit like 'engineering brains are rare in women'. It's social conditioning. History, which would have us believe there were a great many things that it was 'rare' for women to be good at that so many now do, shows us that. And I don't think it's asking for a handout, or a favour, or asking to be handed something on a plate to suggest that instead of telling women what their brains can do, we let them do it without prejudice. Instead of telling women that someone at the pinnacle of their career once had a bit of a leg up from a bloke she slept with is only there because that happened, we acknowledge that you don't get that far on a shag, a nod and a wink.

I'm asking that we stop defeating women for reasons we wouldn't defeat men. I am asking that, when interviewing successful career women who become celebrated, we stop asking them 'so, what about marriage and kids', when we don't ask that of their male equivalents.

I never learnt to drive. It was my own fault I never overcame my fear. Doesn't change the fact it might have helped if my driving instructor hadn't told me I struggled because I was a woman. I should have been brave enough to ignore it. I knew enough women who had learnt to drive easily. But why should I have had to overcome that extra barrier placed before me. Why should it have been there in the first place? Why can't I stand up and say, 'actually, it might be better if you don't say that?'

We owe so much to women like Billie Jean King, for example, who DID stand up and say, 'this is wrong', and did it for all women in her sport. Instead of saying, 'oh, well, I fought and overcome, why can't you do it' she fought for an end to women in her sport HAVING to fight.

I don't want to be told what my brain can do by someone who doesn't know anything about me other than my gender. I don't want someone who doesn't know me telling me I only got where I am because of who I slept with. And I don't want to have to explain why I don't have kids when nobody ever asks my husband why he doesn't have them.

RE: Let's straighten something out...
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RE: Let's straighten something out...

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Scarbrems, I am guessing from what you wrote that you don't work with a lot of engineers. I do, and I employ quite a few of them. By my observation, women in engineering typically approach things quite differently, and they also tend not to enjoy the work and leave the profession early. This is particularly true in certain subsets of engineering, such as mechanical and electrical. There are always exceptions, and that is why we have statistics.

RE: Let's straighten something out...

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I forget why I have no interest in participating in these threads. And then I'm reminded.
Have a great day!

RE: Let's straighten something out...

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Thank you for participating, Julie. Here's a banana.