This comports with what we already know about the importance of female role models.
I'm not sure what that would look like. But I think there is a power issue here with very deep roots, such deep roots that merely letting women get paid jobs doesn't fix it per se.
I'm frankly tired of my incredibly broken life. I'm feeling like all this shit is just unfixable.
> I don't think role models are enough. I think women need stronger rights.
Absolutely. Proportionate representation, stronger rights, role models, and more. (And that, awakeasleep, is the takeaway of the article.)
The needle will probably only be moved by organizations that support diversity and are able to out-perform others.
I'm still trying to educate myself about what stronger rights are missing that would make a difference in the parity along the various axes discussed above.
European women sought societal support to help ease the burden of being child-bearers and child-rearers. In contrast, American women seem to have taken the traditional American political position of "Don't tread on me!" European women have generally done a better job of closing the wage gap.
The US is the only developed country on the planet with no national maternity leave, as just one example.
So you might start there in looking for stuff to read, though my kids are grown and I'm post menopausal, so that is largely irrelevant to my life currently and fails to fully explain my personal frustrations.
The reality is that in many heterosexual relationships, her job mostly relieves him of traditional male responsibilities. In most cases, even if he's currently unemployed, she comes home and cooks and cleans.
Trying to make the transition to a real career post divorce has been very long and hard and feels mostly fruitless. I appear to be the highest ranked woman on HN. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard (under a different handle). No, that in no way seems to open doors for me of a sort that lead to better income.
I've accomplished many things that are pretty unique. I get zero credit for it. I get nothing but pissed all over for even trying to state what my accomplishments are.
I know there are a lot of factors, such as the fact that I'm medically handicapped. But so was Stephen Hawking. He had public recognition and a real career.
I can't seem to find a solution and I'm tired. I just want out of this prison.
I'm tired of this shit. And I'm very much at a point where I feel the crux of the issue is my gender and it will simply never be fixed because of that and I very much resent it.
Money grows out of power. Not the other way around. Women mostly don't have real power. That fact seems unyielding.
But also, depends on circumstance. Don't have to see gender as being a problem unless you want to. Anything can be used against you for anything that can be used for you. That's both sides of everything. Nothing is ever an advantage, especially when being united (especially in technology!!!) is more advantageous than all the knowledge you could have access to.
I'm a software developer, female.
I need $150 to be okay-ish the rest of this month. It's not a huge sum. I'm failing to come up with it.
And any time I bitch about my financial problems, I'm told to basically shut up about it. Anytime I say sexism is part of why I remain poor, I'm told I'm wrong.
Etc. Ad nauseum.
I think I'm a contributor. When men contribute here, it eventually translates into money. But it mostly doesn't for me. And it seems to make zero difference how I try to approach that problem. It remains unbudging.
Edit: to be clear, the whole "I'm looking at starving for five days next week in spite of X, Y and Z accomplishments" is the crux of why I feel so negative at the moment.
I just feel strongly that women are missing some important detail and that detail is about power per se.
Is it that men won’t allow women in the circle due to pride? Or perhaps the only place men give women any kind of full power is within romantic relationships? Or maybe men don’t trust women to help them save face and even nurture them after a power struggle is lost (I think men sort of do this for each other)? I have no idea, but I want to see some brainstorming on it from smart people!
I think a very large piece of it is that when hetero men are sociable to further their careers ("networking"), everyone is clear what the purpose is. When a man and a woman try to build those same bonds, it rapidly becomes problematic.
I think in a nutshell, most men are hesitant to talk overly much with a woman they aren't looking to sleep with because they don't want her, their wife or other people to get the wrong idea.
I find that most men don't really want to engage me in discussion unless they are hitting on me. When I try to engage them, they frequently misinterpret it as romantic interest.
I don't think most men are intentionally trying to exclude women, though some surely do. I think most men are just trying to avoid scandal of a sort that could ruin their own careers.
I don't have a ready solution.
When a woman is networking with a man - akin to a man networking with a woman - the intent of "looking to sleep with" can and most probably will be derived from it in the same way, instinctively. When women are networking between each others, everyone is also clear what the purpose is, professional only, akin to when men are networking between each other.
There seems to be many other factors at play behind that "social understanding" for lack of a better term. I suppose one of them being the fact that the """norm""" in relationships being that of an heterosexual one, therefore leading to the unconscious acceptance that same gender people networking together is only professional, whereas two people of different gender might have another layer of intent behind it?
The only difference being that there are more men in high seniority position than women, therefore leading to a context where women need to network with men more than the reverse.
No; in short, because patriarchy.
> When a woman is networking with a man - akin to a man networking with a woman - the intent of "looking to sleep with" can and most probably will be derived from it in the same way, instinctively.
No, this works quite differently by gender; a man is both less likely to need to seek professional connections with women to advance a career, and less likely to be seen as providing a sexual conquest opportunity each time he does so.
> When women are networking between each others, everyone is also clear what the purpose is, professional only, akin to when men are networking between each other.
I disagree that same gender networking is either actually or in perception purely professional, even when there is no sexual charge (which can be present though it's less likely than in opposite gender networking; not everyone is either heterosexual or keeping an iron wall between sex and professional life), or that the distribution and nature of non-professional ancillary dynamics are the same for one gender as the otherp; men and women are socialized to engage even in same gender social relationships differently (and there may be inherent/biological differences that are correlated with sex/gender that have an effect even aside from differential socialization.)
Even if that were the only difference, that's a really huge difference that de facto closes a lot of doors for women.