[justaman]

Originally Posted by Adora

And yet, women who get into politics are subjected to discrimination and prejudice unheard of in regards to male politicians. This is a symptom of male-dominated political culture. Or are you telling me people really care what Beattie wears as much as they do with Vanstone?

Yes, well Beattie isn't grotesquely obese.

I don't think there is any excessive discimination placed upon female politicians. All politicians are the butt of the jokes based on their physical appearances and what not in every political carichature you are likely to come across. I really can't think of any examples of prejudice. The Democrats have had two female leaders and Julia Gillard stands a good chance of taking up leadership at some point in the future. This surely couldn't be if our political system was hampering the efforts of females.

And in leadership roles in general, I just don't see the trend you are implying. Some of our most respected journalists are women, and here in WA you have an example of two women quite effectively anchoring a prime-time news program, apparently with no regard to whatever boy+girl expectations the public might have. We have a female magistrate in the highest court in our country, we have female heros in our sporting arena, we have female CEOs in our businesses, we even have senior female leaders in our military, surely the toughest environment of them all. It seems to me that the framework is there for any woman in this country to do most anything she desires, and the statistics - far from representing a systemic shortfall - are showing the relative interest level of women to pursue such occupations.

If society bothered to equalise the private sphere, the pressure on women to try and balance an imbalanced career and homelife would be less, and you would have more women with the time and energy to go into politics.

How is this actually achieved? Again, I think you may be fighting the greens of the simple fact that women - biologically and sociologically - must drop what they are doing for a certain (though perhaps debatable) amount of time to tend to the upbringing of their children. If that is the case, surely it is going to be more intelligent for a given situation for the male to be working while the female is unable. It is a very short step to conclude it is therefore more likely that the male be the 'career' person and the female be the homemaker.

Once more, there is no reason why this 'should' ever be the case, I just think it is going to be more simple and therefore more logical 51 times out of 100.

I question this, since the economic model being pushed by the government is geared towards big-businesses, not smaller ones, who would take a significant profit cut if they had to implement a paid-maternity-leave plan for all their female employees.

Well it's the same logic, really, isn't it?

If I have two applicants and one tells me "Yeah mate, I'm a great worker, but I'm going to be checking you out for about 8 months next year when I shoot off to the bahamas", I'm probably going to choose the second. There's not much difference between this and a woman leaving for 8 months to care for her new-born, other than that the employer may in fact be obliged to pay her for her absense. Until this country becomes socialist, I see no reason why a company would or even should consider paid maternity leave to be in their best interests.

Having said that, it's not like organisations don't. I'm in the military and our maternity leave is generous and fully paid for. But then fiscal outcomes aren't actually what we grade ourselves by.

Allow them paid maternity leave? Allow them more group/unionised contract negotiations so they can cut themselves a better deal, and thus have less hours to work, be less stressed, and have mor reproductive coitus? Lessen the cost of raising a child in general?

These alternatives aren't exactly simple to implement, and I'd suggest the last in fact impossible. With a bonus, they've actually done something relatively simple, and the statistics are showing that it's worked.

Unfortunately, the Liberal government is putting business first, and expecting the people to just do as they say for peanuts.

Which is probably why, it must be acknowledged, our economy is in fact doing so well.