Hear hear. My missus says a big reason she decided to learn a trade was that she was sick of working in offices or retail “with stupid dizzy little bitches”

A little bird tells me that woman in the infantry is not a roaring success, trying to kid people that 55KG women can hump 60KG was never going to work.

As for the women who want mixed gender contact sports, be careful of what you wish for, you may get it.

What about the one where the 2 girls refer to the big man as a beached whale or something similar? Reverse the genders on that one and see how it goes. I forget what it was advertising. Not that I would buy it anyway.

Or those stupid westpac ads with couples talking? One of them implies her husband is too dumb to do internet banking, one of them says she can use internet banking to trace her husbands movements and one of them tells us how lucky her husband is to have her!

this would be the same series of ads that portrays the woman as a selfish, stupid, gold-digging shopoholic?

I don’t know, I don’t watch a lot of television and to be honest I don’t even know what they’re advertising.

However, that’s besides the point. I only meant to offer a hypothesis that advertisement in NZ portrays men in a negative light more often than it does women and to give an example of it. Perhaps you’ll notice the trend now that I’ve mentioned it, perhaps I’m imagining it.

I still remember the assembly for 7th formers at the start of the year to point out all the university scholarships that were available to apply for. The teacher got up at the start and actually said these words and laughed “Now there is something for everyone here, unless you are a white male – you have to earn your scholarships”.

It didn’t harm any of us as most of the boys in my year are now successful lawyers, doctors, IT professionals, teachers and even NRL players. But if the trend continued then I can only imagine how bad it is for boys at school now.

this would be the same series of ads that portrays the woman as a selfish, stupid, gold-digging shopoholic?

I remember thinking ‘Gee – that poster must be SO OLD!’

If I am paid out of the Te reo Marama smoking budget then I am IN!!!

At 5 their negotiation skills are usually fine – scream and cry until you get what you want.

At 45 and in the Boardroom surrounded by men that doesn’t work so well.

So clearly some education is required for the gender.

Salary matched job and ability to do the job and nothing else.

Prehaps that is the profit driven right winger in me.

Repton: I don’t think that Jadis necessarily saw a female fireman as noteworthy. She was listing off the occupations previously thought of as male only, and pointing out that there are females in them now. And asking whether we need to get to exactly 50:50 before we say we’re done, or whether it is enough to say that women who want to be firemen can be, and if not very many women want to be firemen, then that is OK.

Rocky: my experience is that women generally earn the same as men where they do the same job. In my organisation, and in the other organisations I’ve worked in, I’ve never seen a situation where a man and a woman sit side by side doing the same job, and the man gets paid more for being a man. I’ve seen situations where one or the other has more seniority or time at level, but for whatever reason they’re doing the same job at the moment. But never same job same skills with different pay.

I can also say that I have seen examples where women have been given opportunities, pay rises or promotions purely because they are a woman. Usually (but not always) they then have to live up to the expectations of that new job, but the point is that they get opportunities that men are denied. As such, in the areas in which I work, I think the pendulum has swung too far.

I also see the huge gender disparity in tertiary education these days. That concerns me – if that disparity were the other way round then the feminists would be screaming blue murder. We don’t have a significant men’s lobby, but I suspect we’re going to start getting one. And that the lobby will focus on issues like prostate screening (the female dominated health department sees that as less valuable than breast cancer screening), education, and probably also the ability for boys to be boys – I’m not sure that we (men or women) really want all our next generation to grow up as namby pambies who can’t put up a shelf, won’t squash the spiders, and catch a cold when it rains on them.

The point is the reasons for women earning less don’t make it ok.

If women are earning less because they don’t have good negotiation skills, then we need to teach women negotiating skills, starting when they are very young. The different social expectations on boys v girls as children probably play a huge role. Find the reasons, and fix them.

[DPF: So arrange a video conference once a year with all five year old girls and Cactus Kate. That will fix the problem]

Seriously tho’ where “there” is, is a matter of individual perception. There will always be those to whom “there” is complete domination and ability to survive and continue without men with all the horrendous (to me) implications of that.

The fact that there is a bit of a resurgence of people who are happy to openly declare that they can find a comforatable place where men and women share most things but have tasks that one or other is better at than the other is healthy IMVHO. Interestingly those tasks roughly fall into traditional role patterns.

Pete – Even I don’t fully believe in “equal opportunity and you can do anything” BUT you’re a damn sight more likely to achieve what you want to achieve with a healthy attitude.

I’m sure it’s different for all of us in some way.

But I don’t fully agree with some things claimed here – equal opportunity and you can do anything if you put your mind to it. Equality is an unattainable ideal – doesn’t mean we should strive for it but life isn’t designed to be equal. Gender restricted sports are an obvious example. We are limited by our physical attributes, I was never going to be a good basket baller physically and could never reach the top in netball genderly.

And I accept there are many things I couldn’t achieve no matter how much I wanted to put my mind to it. I will never be an astronaut, nor will I ever be POTUS. Determination is more likely to got you results, but there are no guarantees and there are some impossibilities.