ladybusiness | (Reply)

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I'm actually having a little trouble pulling examples out myself. I can get to a certain point: 'X causes inequality and X kind of inequality is clearly bad for the world and women' but I don't have concrete studies that will back up my ideas about why inequality is bad with examples and proof that people can see. I would need to do a lot of reading of studies on the relation between inequality, self-esteem and pay I think, or my thoughts would come out woolly.

I have vague ideas though that in order to really get people motivated about sexism we need to tie 'this causes inequality' to loss of material gain. A lot of people aren't really interested in the idea that true equality is its own end...I actually feel a little bit naive and dismissive saying that I do think full equality, beyond equality that affects us all materially, is my aim. Feminism started out partly as a move to increase womens material circumstances and shouldn't I be campaigning for tangible benefits (of all kinds, but still real, definite things) instead of some fluffy idea of fairness?

Related point: Looking at the whole 'boys don't read for pleasure' debate there's some serious argument inequality going on again there. As far as I can see there are limited tangible benefits that boys who read gain over boys who don't read. According to this survey http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2011/110804.html Boys who don't read at 16 have a 10% lower chance than boys who read of getting a managerial job. But boys who don't read at 16 also have a 9% higher chance of achieving a managerial position than girls who do read at 16. So even if they don't read, boys have a 9%, or 22% higher chance of gaining a managerial position than girls (depending on whether the girls read, or don't read at 16).

The tangible benefits of being a teenage boy reader are less than huge I guess, compared with the tangible benefits of being male? But still people are up in arms about any perceived inequality to do with boys reading, while they're unable to get excited about inequality that affects girls unless it has some tangible negative consequence attached. (I hope that makes sense).

Maybe Ana could tell us if more definite 'real' things that people proved happen to boys if they're not reading for pleasure from her studies...Otherwise I'm calling bull on how people approach inequality differently when it's related to boys.