Alleged Gender Gap
An organisation called the World Economic Forum has released a report on how much the world’s countries have closed the “gender gap”. New Zealand ranks fifth behind Iceland and the Nordic countries. Here is an excerpt from their web pages:
New Zealand (5) and Australia (21) continue to perform well in the rankings. Both countries have fully closed the gap on the educational attainment subindex and both perform well on economic participation indicators. Between 2007 and 2008, both countries show gains on economic participation, educational attainment and political empowerment. Sub-Saharan Africa
Lesotho (16) takes over the top spot in the region, holding once again the uppermost spots on health and education, while also showing improvements in economic participation and political empowerment. It is followed by Mozambique (18) as the only other African country in the top 20.
I note that the Radio NZ news item today suggested the report showed many countries were slowing their progress towards reducing the “gender gap”, but what I have seen of other descriptions and releases about the report did not give that impression at all. Our media seem to feed us the propaganda feminists love.
I have yet to obtain the full report and to evaluate the measures and criteria used in this report. However, I draw attention to it and offer the following preliminary comments and questions for those who might also wish to scrutinize this work.
– The quote above states that NZ has “fully closed the gap” on the educational subindex. I understand in fact that NZ females do considerably better educationally than do males, suggesting that the study’s method did not measure new gaps that now find males on the disadvantaged side.
– The quote above talks about health. I assume that the study has ignored the most important health statistic, that of life expectancy, because if it did it would find men disadvantaged in most countries. I assume also that it has not bothered to measure men’s disadvantage in suffering and dying in greater numbers and earlier from most of the leading causes of illness and death in the Western world.
– Feminists often support their claims of ongoing gender disadvantage by referring to the situation in some third world countries, while ignoring the real situation here and in western countries. For example, in NZ women have the same rights as men and in many ways more so, over decisions in their lives, whom to marry or have sex with and so forth. Yet they will maintain a view that they are disadvantaged in their choices relative to men and they will cite the plight of Muslim women under Sharia law. Watch out for such false argument, often used to justify ever more draconian laws abusive or exploitative of men in this country.
If we have fully closed the gap, then surely that means everyone is equal, and the four countries ahead of us must have done the same and therefore we should all be 1st equal! Makes sense doesn’t it? And no, why would they take into account men being disadvantaged, we all know that’s a myth! grrr. Not only do they cite stuff that’s happening in third world countries they also state things that have been corrected for decades!
Comment by Scott — Thu 20th November 2008 @ 9:39 am
FEMALE RUDDERS:
Boyish prows on the ship of state
“Biology is not destiny” Simone de Beauvoir
Despite appearances to the contrary our liberal democracies of today have considerable female leadership in the foreground and in the background, a majority influence. Sailing ships often had female names on the bow and stern and frequently sported a mermaid sprite or womanly clasping bust as effigies under the bowsprit, yet all profits on the voyage, control of the cargo and manning operations went to men. Today, do our ships of state exhibit a similar tendency in reverse; men are now carving out political careers beneath the overarching wand of women. Women voters have the overwhelming numerical influence within advanced democracies and this has distinct downside effects for the estate of men. Excess female influence can distort notions of democracy from being a fair system of government. Some alternatives by way of correction are sketched as future possibilities. This essay is shows how men must not and cannot support a current biased feminist liberal democracy for it is not a fair system of Government. Democracy today is unfair to men.
EQUITIES
One generation out from 1972 — (bra-burning and le´Pill) — discrimination against men is extremely marked. Men in New Zealand are significantly locked out of nursing and primary teaching for example. Men were once 46% of our primary teachers, today barely 6%. In child custody battles men do not receive a fair 50-50 outcome (more like 90/10). Men may be guilty of rape but there is no legal equivalent for women, such as nymphomania for instance. Women abusing boys are rarely jailed. Living shorter lives than women men do the dying in our society. Seven times the money is spent on women’s health, than on men’s greater health needs. If ‘biology is not destiny’ then all efforts should be to bring men’s health, longevity and numbers up to those of women. There are many other areas of excessive discrimination against men, too many to cover here.
DANGER MONEY
Equal pay for equal work is fair in a literal anecdotal sense, becoming unfair only when raised into an ideology, if it means artificially created government jobs. These jobs could number 100,000 or more. Jobs reserved for women, that are indoors, in cities and extremely highly paid. These job holders really ‘do work’, meaning 8 hours a day being busy, piles of paper, reports, and so on. However if opened to market pressures no one might be found to bankroll this out of their own money. Public service managers, many of whom are women, yet depending on the private sector paying taxes, began in New Zealand for instance to be paid much more than male managers outside. The tail was wagging the dog, just to -‘raise the bar’ for women in the public service.
The reason why men, as a group, may always be deserving of more money is that it is mostly men who do the really dangerous, loud, dirty, remote, high-up, stressful, low-down and inconvenient jobs, all of this despite thirty six years of progressive feminism. The person who risks life and limbs for others deserves more recompense than someone in cosier conditions doing the same thing. Paying the cosy, more than, or, ‘the same’, on ideological principle, than the life-risking outside worker is unfair discrimination. This shows bias against men in our society as a result of an inbuilt gender bias within democracy.
COLLAPSING FREEDOM
We cannot recommend democracy to other nations if it is in any way ‘a female form of government’–, if it has bias: it must be non-discriminatory and gender neutral in all its outcomes. All the social, cultural, political and legal fields under it must have gender neutral outcomes. It is particularly dangerous a system of governance if it is biased in any way. It is biased, as women live to vote up to nearly two elections more than men. In our advanced western-style democracies there are more women also. This combination of women’s larger numbers and greater longevity means around a 10% to 12 percent advantage of influence at election time. As Victoria University Professor John Roberts reminds us each close election on New Zealand television, our political parties are so fine tuned to each other that, in a contested election, just a 4% swing can often upset a government. Women’s vote strength is powerful indeed, having three times as much influence, where it counts, than men.
There are significant concerns therefore around women’s control over the political process. Particularly where a woman’s political control is total, in the area of creating people. Democracy is government by the people so who controls the creation of people controls the system. Just 51% of voters control 100% the creation of future voters. With thoughts like the above, democracy as a fair system is nigh unrecoverable. In the interim men cannot support it.
POLITICAL RUMP
Democracy however has the longest history providing better social, legal and political outcomes. In contains within it sufficient freedom and methods for accountability; chiefly the courts, elections and a free press. Feminism has brought many real benefits to women. In democracy one has the right to object, protest and to put forward alternative views like the above. Academic life and the freedom of the mind flourish where all outlooks and viewpoints are explored; even sometimes extreme and paradigm breaking opinions. In the germ of these things lies our best political hope. We can freely explore all options for the future when we are free in democracy to speak, write, read and see unpopular or unfashionable ideas.
PROXIES for DEAD BROTHERS
Alternatives to democracy range from monarchy to dictatorship. New options could include electronic voting where the entire electorate votes on all issues, just as surveys appears to do (binding surveys anyone?) Another option could be to have a parliament where there are no parties, every member stands independently. A true citizens parliament. The one this writer prefers however I call a taxocracy where the time honoured revolutionary phrase ‘no taxation without representation’ is inverted to read NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION. You can guess the rest.
Whatever method is chosen we must break out of the loop where women control the creation of people, people control the government and where women secretly and numerically control the electorate vote and thus all the governments. A democracy so constituted is unfair. No wonder historians say no democracy has lasted much more than two hundred years. Our time is up.
Comment by artpos — Fri 16th January 2009 @ 12:33 pm