Yesterday, my workplace had a board of directors meeting in which we discussed how to get our research out there into the community better. One of the projects discussed was a demographic study of women - births, deaths, fertility, marriage, divorce, employment, earnings, education, crime, political participation, identity, satisfaction, the lot.

One of the directors, an Old White Man, said that he wouldn't want to show up to a talk or seminar on women because women's issues are a boring and outdated topic. He said something like "As a fifty-seven year old man, I don't want to sit there listening to people going on about how hard done-by women are. All my employees are women and they have every opportunity!"

He also said "I don't think there's any problems women have that don't also affect men."

Grhghfhfhcjjjght. I thought that if you don't give a crap about what's going on with half the population in your city, that's your problem, not that of the people holding the talk.

What do you think? Is it outdated to be talking about women's issues in this day and age?

As long as you aren't approaching such issues like a radical 60s feminist, then no it is not outdated. The unique issues women face may be different (and arguably less) than in the past, but they are still there. Old white man saying old white things sounds about right.

I could name several, off the top of my head. Since they're rooted in biological differences (for example, a woman carries around a lot of extra weight for about nine months before childbirth, and then there's that process as well) they're unlikely to go away anytime soon, and can reasonably be addressed at a presentation. I'm sure that your presenters found even more issues in their demographic study, and could present them better.

Grumpy Old Director is not in the target audience of such a presentation, and therefore sees no appeal in attending. That's ine, but that doesn't mean that he should prevent those who are interested from attending (by cancelling the presentation).

I don't think that talking about women's issues will be outdated while women are around and having said issues; which implies that they will remain relevant as long as the human race exists in a recognisible form, capable of long-term survival.

Bearing in mind that this is not an effect inherent to the topic and likely also local both in geography and time.

But i have the impression that discussions about womens issues are especially prone to become mudslinging matches. There is a group of feminist true believers, who treat everything that is not exactly their partyline as blasphemy. Then there are anti feminists, who do the rhetoric equivalent of ringing the doorbell and running away.

Thoose 2 factions tend to take over discussions quickly, and thus many saner people start loosing interest in taking part in thoose discussions, further aggravating this problem. Once someone calls either of the factions what they are, both faction will treat them as belonging to the other faction. From then on anything they say that does not really fit into the designated faction will be treated as rhetoric windowdressing, but not taken serious as opinion. People who don't particulary follow thoose topics, will usually give only one of thoose factions credit for making sensible discussions impossible, whichever faction did annoy them more recently.

I also would be reluctant to take part in a gender discussion, with people, who i don't know already, for that reason.

I think it is a little sad that such rantings on both sides have turned you off the subject entirely. I think the ranting overshadows facts that are both interesting and important.

I would like to debate to what extent awareness of gender matters when it comes to making government policies on economics, social welfare, labour practices, education and so on.

For example, Hong Kong's public pension system (such as it exists - it's actually a mandatory individual contribution to a privately-run mutual fund scheme akin to what George Bush II was proposing back in 2004) only covers people who are employed. You put in 5% of your wages per month into a mandatory mutual fund, and you get the money out when you retire. However, our census data says that female labour force participation plummets by upwards of twenty five percentage points after marriage (and presumably, childbirth). In Hong Kong, 95% of unmarried women in their thirties are economically active, but only 67% of married women are. It's similar for women in their forties and fifties. Now what happens when a woman in her fifties who hasn't held a steady job in twenty years reaches retirement age? Does society say "Well, you didn't work, so of course you shouldn't get a pension. If you wanted one you should've held on to a job."

Is this just yet another tiresome women's issue?

I still think, that this is an interesting topic. What i dread is debates on that topics, where the topic came before the participants of the debate, because then in my experience the trolls and trollbaits show up in force.

It's different when the debaters come first, as it is if i talk to some friends, or as it is here. I also don't think that i can contribute much by trying to join any of the official debates. It happens that people say things close to what i believe, or at least bring forward opinions that are more sensible then the mudslingers. But they get a camp assigned and then are ignored, i don't think that would be different with me.

As for the pension issue. With unemployed wifes, presumbly the norm is, that the husband is the provider. First he provides with his income, then with his pension. The question is, does she inherit his pension or part of it, if her husband dies? And what kind of financial support is she entitled to get in case of a divorce?

To make a "one spouse is the provider" setting viable, you need some divorce rules that don't leave the non provider spouse totally out in the woods and you need some form of insurence for the death of the provider.

Personally i believe the provider model should be possible, but the state should not activly subvention it, like for instance with paying pensions for unemployed wifes, where unmarried unemployed don't get similiar benefits. Should it be the policy of the goverment of Hong Kong, to support provider marriages however, it also should have programs for cases where they don't work out as planned.

I also in general believe people should not be left to starve, regardless of their specific demographics, but AFAIK the goverment of Hong Kong does not agree with me there.

Hmm. With a system like that, I would arrange it that if you are a married worker with an unemployed spouse, you also contribute to their pension fund, and it's theirs right off, not dependent on future marital status.

That covers divorces.

It gets more complex with death. Should a retired worker loose the part of the pension that is assigned to the spouse, when the spouse dies? And the other way round if the retired worker dies first. If they pay a good portion of their income for maintaining their living place, that does not seem like a good idea. They should be able to inherit at least a part of the spouses pension.

It also can get tricky, if 2 pensions give a different payoff then one pension paid with the sum of the payments for the 2 pensions.

So basically thats how it should be done, but there is a lot in the details.

To answer the initial question: of course "women's issues" aren't out of date! People with XX chromosomes take up half the global population. As long as women exist, and are biologically different from men, there will be issues to discuss. Not necessarily all social issues forever; wouldn't it be great to get to a time when discussing specific genders is all about the biological -- medicinal studies, especially -- because we've solved the societal issues? But issues all the same. Seriously, it's like saying talking about human issues is out of style, or we've solved all problems with children, let's shelve that discussion.

About the old white dude: talk about defensive. I think some guys, some completely non-misogynistic guys, get really tuckered out by women's issues because they feel they are doing everything right and yet must take on the "burden" of still being more privileged than their opposite sex. Part of it is probably fatigue from guilt, which comes about from being decent guys but which can turn into a sense of helplessness and bitterness towards women for constantly reiterating the fact that the world is not yet completely safe for women.

But the social realities of being a woman are clear:

I can't go to a bar and leave my drink on the table while I pee for fear of date rape.

I have to straddle a line at work between assertiveness and girlishness to make things smoother and not be deemed a "bitch" and denied opportunity or raises.

I am more likely to be taken seriously as an author if my main characters are male AND -- and this is one that irks me, since it's still true -- if I use initials rather than my first, female, name. My name, being female, may immediately shunt me into a gender ghetto.

If I get pregnant, I can't switch jobs because it is rare for a pregnant woman to be hired, and if I'm laid off while pregnant I'm SOL til the kid is born (a former boss of mine was openly pissed at a hired employee two months after hire when it became clear that the woman was pregnant. The woman was desperate for a job, any job, and even a for a job as wait staff she had to lie to get hired.)

As a woman in Kansas, I can have staff at a pharmacy deny me certain pills for certain things based on their own moral beliefs about how I live my life sexually. There have been cases of women being denied Plan B for stupid's sake.

It can also be difficult to get a doctor to sterilize me, though vasectomies are pretty easy to get for men the same age as me, and it's supremely difficult to get long term birth control like an IUD, in part because I may juuuuust want a baby any day now as I'm a lady and that's what I want, right? I've also been told by physicians to take certain vitamins all the time, juuust in case I get pregnant.

There is an actual, real, live, stupid fing debate in the comedy world about whether or not women are FUNNY. Yes, the comedic abilities of women are called into question based purely on sex! It's absolutely insane, as insane as the debate about whether women are truly capable of becoming mathematicians, or chemists, or friggin' anything requiring rubbing two brain cells together.

It's maddening, and it's the tip of the iceberg in my fairly progressive area of the world. (I'm not even brushing the issue of places like Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to drive.)

And I think, seeing the enormous progress that women have made over the past 60 to 150 years, it's maddening for some men that women keep pressing the issue with things that seem so trivial compared to stuff like not being able to work at all, or not owning property, or not being able to divorce unless adultery can be proven, or not getting custody of children when divorced (which was pretty common for women before the 1950s-60s). It feels like nit picking.

But the truth is, those nits need to be picked! My hair may not be falling out thanks to the treatments given before my time, but that doesn't mean I'll tolerate the lice that's left! I'm still scratching, guys.

Y'know, there does reach a point as a middle-class, not-wealthy, now-unemployed white dude where I do get a little tired of people telling me how much worse off everyone else is and how much better I have it because I'm a white dude. Just sayin'.

(For the record, a recession may not be the best time to start harping on women's issues, at least in the US. The proportion of women whom are employed invariably rises in a recession - women get more jobs, and keep those jobs, more often than men during recessions.)

FB just mentioned the other big reason: people don't like to look at societal trends as a whole because they see themselves as individuals who don't follow the societal trends. I'm not like that, therefore it must not be true.

Edit to add: not to say you're contributing to any sort of problem, FB. You just sparked a realization.

The real point is that harping on these issues - and this includes minorities as well as women (who cannot be called a "minority", as they are actually the majority of people on the planet) - doesn't really address issues. Problems are far more class-based than demographics-based, but we keep dividing ourselves into camps and thereby reducing our influence, allowing the upper class to keep control of things.

I'm not saying there's not problems. I'm saying that punishing people like me (and it DOES punish me, don't try to argue otherwise; the main reason I lost my job was because I was a man in an office full of middle-aged women, and thus the simple fact that testosterone motivates a lot of my moods meant I had fewer allies in the upper ranks of management than I would have otherwise) doesn't fix those problems. You don't make society more equal by making middle class white dudes - who actually have comparatively few advantages compared to everyone else that isn't an upper class white dude (who do have the advantages we're all assumed to have) - have less opportunities. You just make the middle class white dudes angry at you, which makes them vote for upper class white dudes, who then implement upper class white dude policies and propagate the system.

I have been denied innumerable opportunities because I am a white dude. I have had fewer avenues to pursue education, less support should I choose to craft my own business, I can't even walk down the glob street or comfortably step outside my front door because children live in my complex and everyone assumes a single dude is a dangerous predator. Hell, the only reason I can post THIS is because I'm in a manic phase so I'm not really thinking about my actions - otherwise my "white dude guilt" would keep me from saying anything.

EVERYONE HAS PROBLEMS. Trying to make yours worse because you're the member of a minority or a woman isn't fair to anyone. Society does NOT treat me better just because I'm white and male; it's money that matters, not gender or skin colour.

The thing is that looking at society through the gender lens does reveal instances in which boys and men are worse off. And those things are important too. It's long been known that more women than men go to college. And here in Hong Kong, if you are a teenaged high-school drop-out and male, you are more likely to be unemployed than if female. Because females without much education go into the service industry where there are plenty of jobs, but men pretty much get stuck doing physical gruntwork, much of it in a declining and highly seasonal construction industry. And yes, men in the US have been hit harder by the recession probably because of the construction sector going belly up (although the official unemployment statistics may disguise women's unemployment to some extent because you only count as unemployed if you're actively looking for work, and women are more likely to redefine themselves as homemakers when laid off).

I believe you when you say your life isn't great, and I can sympathize with how frustrating it is when people who aren't much worse off than you (if at all) complain about their lives. But their problems are just as real as yours, and the onus shouldn't be on them to quit whining so that you don't misdirect your anger at them instead of at the Rich White Dudes who are benefiting disproportionately.

And I don't want to be too nosy, but you sound really unhappy and I'm concerned. I hope that things get better for you eventually and that you're able to get some help with those mood problems.

The first of these is kind of understandable - it's much easier to DO the vasectomy.

As for IUD's... you can take them out early and quickly resume fertility. It's a little wasteful of cash, but doable. If they tell you you can't, or you wouldn't want to waste money, tell them that if you want a baby, you'll sure want it enough to cover the added costs.

For the sake Mr. Weatherwax, make sure they get it in all the way - really all the way. Stabbing yourself with a 'thread' that feels like a titanium serrated needle is not fun.

From what I remember getting my IUD, the cervix has to be opened in order to get it in place. This can be supremely uncomfortable and sometimes impossible to do unless you've already given birth. Even when the cervix is still fairly widened shortly after delivery, it's STILL really uncomfortable and can be problematic if it slips. Another reason is they prefer a certain amount of history so they know what to look out for following insertion.

And definitely make sure they tuck those strings away. They can cause more than just pain for Mr. Weatherwax. Mine was non-stop bleeding for 3 months until the doctor got them tucked away just right. One of my friends gets pain when she does certain things. The pain usually means that it's slipped out of place, but her's was fine. She opted to keep it for a while longer, but they wanted to take it out immediately.