There is no unfair system at work and if there was it is against MEN as in you can't get out of it!
If you are genuinely interested in this topic, you might check out the book "No Constitutional Right to Be a Lady".
Here is one example of a systematic bias against women: for a very long time there was a system in place where people took a test to determine if they could hold certain positions. Those with the top scores were offered the positions. If you had served in the military, you automatically got 5 points added to your score. At the time, women could only join the army if they got their parents to basically sign a permission slip. Therefore essentially only men were eligible for the advantage. This meant that if a man and a women scored equally on the test, but the man had served in the army, he automatically got a score 5 points higher. (The job was not military related, so the job experience of being in the military was not directly relevant).
On one hand you can see how this was a system set up to help veterans get a foothold in the workplace by giving them an advantage in the application process--a sentiment that most people would probably be behind.
But I hope that you could also see how this system also would regularly disadvantage women applying for those same jobs.
There are also plenty of studies that show that women are regularly perceived as being less qualified than their male counterparts, even when their performance is better. There was a recent study in which students were asked to rank all of their classmates from best to worst. (Article about the study in the Harvard Business Review is
https://hbr.org/2016/06/are-u-s-millennial-men-just-as-sexist-as-their-dads).
Excerpt:
In February 2016 researchers at the National Institutes of Health published a study on how college biology students view their classmates’ intelligence and achievements. The researchers found that male students systematically overestimated the knowledge of the men in their classes in comparison with the women. Moreover, as the academic term progressed, the men’s faulty appraisal of their classmates’ abilities increased despite clear evidence of the women’s superior class performance. In every biology class examined, a man was considered the most renowned student — even when a woman had far better grades. In contrast, the female students surveyed did not show bias, accurately evaluating their fellow students based on performance. After studying the attitudes of these future scientists, the researchers concluded, “The chilly environment for women [in the sciences] may not be going away anytime soon.”There are certainly systems in place in our society in which men are disadvantaged--being the only gender that is forced to register for the draft, for example. But the workplace (or at least most workplaces) is not one of them.
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geogan
8 years ago
Thanks for your reply. I have no doubt women were extremely disadvantaged and discriminated against in the past. I just don't think it applys as much right now. But then again I am not in USA so maybe it is just still bad over there.
Anyway I work with women and I know they are just as good or better than I am at their job. But to be honest there is discrimination in hiring because I know that the boss no longer wants to hire young women who might disappear on maternity leave as he was badly stung on this in the past and feels like he was taken advantage of (where they go off and have 3 or 4 babies in a row so only end up in work for a few months over years). He actually removed the company top-up over the government statutory maternity leave pay (which tops up the government money to what your normal monthly wage was) over it. There was uproar but nothing anyone could do about it, as it was entirely at company discretion. So maybe there is still a systemic bias, I don't know.
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Stovepipe99
8 years ago
I have no doubt women were extremely disadvantaged and discriminated against in the past.
If you look at pretty much any study on hiring practices, there is still a very distinct pattern of discrimination against women. In one study hiring boards were shown different resumes and asked to score them on different metrics and also say how much they'd offer as a starting wage. For different groups they mixed up putting different names on different resumes (so one hiring board would see a male name and picture with Resume A and another hiring board would see a female name and picture with Resume B). The same resume, with a male name, got higher overall scores and a hiring starting salary offer. Same qualifications, just a different gender attached.
there is discrimination in hiring because I know that the boss no longer wants to hire young women
If your boss is no longer hiring women because they might have babies, then, yes, you are witnessing gender discrimination in action!
Gender discrimination in the workplace might not be as blatant as it was in the past (ie Disney flat-out saying that they would not hire female cartoonists), but it still exists.
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Smokey_T
8 years ago
They've done studies on how we think, according to generation. In the baby boomers men and women think and problem solve very differently. That difference is near non existent in the latest generations. Who has a great deal of institutional and government power? What generation runs Hollywood? Not the latest.
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