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Comment by fnordpiglet | Hacker News Reader

True. We wouldn’t want women to be able to earn as much as men in India. It’s important to take a principled stand against gender parity and punish these guys with your wallet.

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We don't want people crippled from abusive levels of hours doing a task at high risk of repetitive stress injury just so that Apple doesn't have to deal with shift changes. They are trading lifetime quality of life issues for their workers (who don't have much other option) for a reduction in shift changes. As someone whose been at the bottom and seen as throway sorting trash at a recycling facility and whose hands still often ache from that job, F! Apple!

Sorry, but men were already allowed to work these hours and shifts. It was women who weren’t. The shifts still conform to standard work week in India (48 hours). 12 hour shifts are not uncommon anywhere, and they come with generally better pay and more contiguous time off, which can be more meaningful to some people than more time off in a single day. I feel like perhaps the clickbait headline worked and it may be there’s not much of a story here other than women being granted equal footing with men in the labor market.

Hmmm there's a logical fallacy in there just waiting to be unearthed... I feel it...

Is your argument seriously that it’s unfair that women aren’t overworked in India

My argument is that it’s unfair that there’s one set of rules for men and one for women. “Overworked” is qualitative call. 4 days at 12 hours is what we are talking about here, which is not an uncommon labor structure in the west or east and has a lot of advantages to the worker. It’s not 12 hours a day 7 days a week. It’s 48 hours a week, a standard work week in India. Those shifts also pay better, and have more contiguous time off. Why, on the basis of their gender, were women not allowed to compete for those jobs against men?

Note absolutely no one is forcing anyone to do absolutely anything. It’s just opening the possibility for women to hold a job any man can have. Who are you to tell them they’re wrong for wanting it and should enjoy their station as a woman?

I am not saying what should and shouldn't be done - your points about it being unequal between men and women is totally valid. I am simply saying that pretending that this isn't coercive labor is so silly - apple clearly wins out here in terms of benefits, and they are couching it in an equality argument when , in reality, their bottom line and labor allocation is all that matters to them.

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