A thoughtful International Womans Day to all

"Karen C - Calif" wrote

With respect, I think one of the things we had to fight for was not being stereotyped by race, gender or age.

On International Women's Day, peace on earth, to women and men of goodwill everywhere.

Dawne

I fought hard for the pension side. It irritated me no end that in the early 70s I was doing the same job as a man, literally, and of course being paid less but worse yet, you were docked $10 for a pension contribution and the Crown Corporation I worked for added a $5 contribution. However for my male equivalent the CC added an equal payment of $10.

At the time even the Union was unsympathetic to the idea of equality saying that it was 'different' for women because generally they had two salaries coming in, this despite the fact that I was in an area where I was unusual as a married woman, most of them were single!

The bad old days - that same place now has equality on paper as regards pension payments etc but they still find some excuses on occasion for saying the woman is not quite doing the same job as the male counterpart.

It is very noticeable that when economic times are bad, women get the shortest stick, that's the thing I want my female descendants to be aware of and perhaps cancel out.

Men have changed somewhat over the years though I reckon many men were already very tolerant they just feel able to show that, the pressure is not on them to behave in macho ways. I know David was very tolerant, had to be I guess, but when he died it was amazing how many letters we had saying how kind he had been making sure they had better benefits one way and another. That seemed a wonderful testament to us.

They're quite right, too! Haven't you noticed that when there are several men and women doing the same (office) work, the women do ALL the filing, in addition to the same work as the men? Any extra jobs which are not obviously macho are added to the women's portions. And how much macho work is there in an office?

The women definitely shouldn't be paid the same - they should get more!

Joyce in RSA.

(snip) It is very noticeable that when economic times are bad, women get the

I agree with you, and am glad to say I raised 2 feminists, one now a man, one now a woman. I don't agree that the "younger generation" are clueless; some are, some aren't. My memory is long enough to remember good men and women who saw people as equal from my parents' and grandparents' generation and my own, and on the other hand, men and women who were clueless or closeminded in each generation too. To me, that has always been intrinsic--all people of a particular gender, age, sexual preference, occupation, economic status, national origin or whatever category you want to create, cannot be considered all the same, whether that same is positive or negative. Dawne