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When I wrote this essay I thought I should write it using the word "we" instead of women!
Women are a mistake!
A lot of people shared this opinion less than 100 years ago. Middle class women had only to cook, keep house, sew and perhaps sing. There were only few "respectable" jobs that we could do, for example teaching and looking after other's people children. In the first and the second World War there was a great change for women. We were needed in offices and factories to fill the places of men at war. But after the war we went back home to do childcare and housekeeping like former.
Now women work mainly in service industries like catering education and health and also in clothing and textile industries. Women are still drawn into paid jobs when male workers are in short supply and pushed back into the home when conditions change. A lot of companies advertise with women in top positions, but they don't really want to take us on because we could become pregnant and go on maternity leave. Women should be given preference to men for higher positions, if both are equally qualified. But don't forget that positive discrimination is not always the best way for us!! Only 25% of management positions are given to us!
Ms Karen Taylor has been studying women in management and she says that female executives generally run departments that do not build the top of the company. She also maintains that it is nonsense to believe that women generally talk more in mixed meetings, but that our opinions are mostly ignored by men.
Feminism has come along a wide path, but women still are less paid than men. Eurostat, the European Union's statistical body; found that in Sweden, France, Spain and Great Britain women get less paid than men even if we work the same hours, doing the same job. There are differences in the hourly earnings between man and woman of about 13 to 25 per cent. Overall in the UK the situation is worst. We just receive 64 per cent of what men earn. In Sweden 73 per cent of the equivalent salary is taken home by men is given to us. Women and men in lower-paid non-manual jobs come closest to equal wages than those who had progressed higher up the ladder. Women managers saw the biggest inequality in pay. Eurostat argues that women are likely to be in jobs that are typically poorly-paid. But that fails to explain why we doing the same jobs as our male neighbours get less paid.
In the 1960s women's Lib grew. We struggled for equality for women and men. Words like feminism and sexism cropped up. Women wanted to have the same rights as men. The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 removed as many barriers as possible in the path of equal educational rights. Women fought against the typical sex roles. A lot has been achieved. We reached a law in Britain claiming equal rights for men and women.
Why does the picture of the happy family always show the woman in the kitchen with a child in her arms and the father repairing the car or going out to work? Why can't the roles change? Women's "discrimination" starts at school where boys dominate the science subjects and girls are more interested in arts and sewing. Colleges offer "female courses" like shorthand typing and office skills.
Nowadays women are theoretically liberated. We are allowed to vote and find work but we still have social, political or economical power. We are equal on the paper-not in reality. There are equality indicators but nobody acts according them. The legislation helps to promote, but who cares? There is still a great deal to be done! We receive less pay for the same work and education but men and women are going to become more and more equal. Women in 2010 will be more independent and older. We will be more likely to be in management and to live alone. We will be more numerous. Some really stupid people think that women in the 21st century will be happy to stay at home just like their mothers did in the past! What a nonsense!!
Here I want to mention an interview with Mrs. Crawley, a member of the women's right committee in the EU-parliament. She states that women have still little influence on what happens in our society. According to roman law we didn't even have the right to earn property till the 19th century.
Finally I want to adapt John Gray's message: "Men and women are different by nature: in their acting, needs, desires, emotions and their way of thinking. They come from different planets."
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