From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Tue May 21 2002 - 01:07:31 MDT
Phil Osborn wrote:
>>Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com) wrote on Sun
>>
> May 19 2002 - 00:46:28 MDT
>
> Men are paid more on average because of the long years
> a woman's place was only seen as in the home, because
> of lingering prejudice and because of such notions
> that she "probably has a man to help take care of her"
> or "is liable to find one and disappear to make
> babies". >
>
> Or how about "when her husband has to move to stay
> with his career, she will probably quit and leave with
> him." Or, "if she gets pregnant, there is a good
> chance that she will take extended leave and, as
> mandated under law in many jurisdictions, the company
> cannot fire her and bring in a permanent employee to
> replace her."
These days a husband is often likely to move for the wife's
career and may well stay home with baby himself. And no, the
company should not be able to fire anyone for taking time off in
such circumstances.
>
> In the mid-'80's I spent $500 for a 20Meg Corvus drive
> for my Amiga 1000. This was a major purchase for me
> at the time, and necessary. The company that
> supported it and the custom hardware/software
> interface they had designed went out of business a few
> years later due to the infant-care leave law. They
> could not afford to hire someone part time to replace
> the highly skilled woman who decided to take six
> months off.
>
I doubt that happens too much and it is certainly utterly
irrelevant to how much a person should make when they are working.
> Where I work now, we have had several women leave to
> go with their husbands who had critical positions and
> were very hard to replace. A smaller, less
> financially sound company could have been put out of
> business more than once.
>
Mine has had several men leave to take some time off, go build
house, help friends or parents and so on. Businesses that don't
have back ups or at least adequate information pools are in
danger in any case. It is not unique to pregnant women.
> As to the other arguments, since I don't have time to
> answer them just now individually, let me point out
> that most women are infected with the set of memes
> that convinced or allowed their ancestral mothers in
> an unbroken chain of hundreds of generations to choose
> having children, even though many - probably most - of
> them knew that odds were that they would die of
> child-bed fever, or other complications of pregnancy
> or childbirth by the age of 30. A rational woman
> would have chosen to remain a spinster. Men who
> survived to adulthood in the same cultures typically
> had a life expectancy of about 50. However, the
> rational women did not pass on their memes - or not
> nearly so well.
>
Are you claiming that choosing to have a baby is genetically
wried in? You are partially right. The desire for procreation
is wired into both men and women. So you believe women should
be paid less because they actually bear the children that both
partners wanted? You believe they are worth less because they
are the ones who bear the children, if any?
> Any set of memes that is so overwhelmingly powerful
> that it convinces people to throw away their lives is
> not going to die quietly. I contend that "modern"
> women today are still dominated by that suicidal meme
> set, which includes of course, paramountly "the
> wonders and joys of sacrificing ones self for ones
> children," and implicitly a whole additional set of
> supporting memes.
>
There are many memes that tend people in dangerous and possibly
self-destructive directions. However, bearing children is not
an irrational meme. None of us would be here without such
action. It is not "suicidal". The end of bearing children
would be suicidal at our present level. Why should only women
bear the burden of this? Why should they be penalized extra and
be considered of less worth?
No one wants to sacrifice themselves for their children. But
they do want, quite rationally even if it is significantly
hard-wired, for their children to succeed and their line (or at
least humanity) to continue.
- samantha
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