I think it's also because there just aren't as many women joining engineering, math, and atheist groups. Through the centuries, women have internalized the sexism, so it's probably just as much them discriminating against themselves as it is men discriminating against them. They've bought into the meme that women should do nothing but stay at home and raise their kids. Of course, we've made a lot of progress in the last 100 years.

The same could be said for "racism." E.g. the average African American is of lower social status, and this is partly because they were at a disadvantage not very long ago. Some would argue that they still have a disadvantage today. But, I think part of the difference is also due to the African Americans themselves, as they unconsciously conform, to an extent, to the very model they despise.

 

This is true. Babies exhibit 'racism' in that they prefer people who are the same 'color' as they are (actually the same color as the people who raised the baby). 

Discrimination, you say? That's sure, but more than that. There are few women even in areas which are not sexist - like music. I listen to about a hundred musicians and just several of them are women. 
I think the main problem is the economy. Women need to think about having some children - and then have a man take care of them, working and therefore achieving social status. Or the woman chooses to not have children for now, and then she must go out and compete with men in the world of men. I think the only possibly true gender equality may be in a world with low-cost, low-waste, low-maintenance economy that allows singles or couples live a modest, but comfortable life style with only a part-time job. That will give women more time to participate on society and education, and men will have more time to participate on parenting and housekeeping. Odds will get even.

I got it wrong in the first moment, mainly because of a language. My language inherently decides male, female or middle gender for words, and there is of course male gender for all vocations I can think of. All Czech female surnames have a suffix "-ová" to signify female gender. Some women interpret it as sexism, some as a good sign of special attention to them. 

Which is natural. It is very convenient to identify a person by saying, I mean that black guy over there, or that yellow guy right there, or that woman in that direction. Even kids at nursery school will do that, not meaning anything bad.

This is a short paragraph, so I will add, I'd love to see more educated and active women in society... I'm turned on by hot female intellectuals... I am really afraid of boredom in friendship, dating or relationship. As far as I'm concerned, pretty faces with no personality behind them are just for looking. Blame my Mercury in Aquarius. Hey baby, wanna discuss the nature and solution of social problems with me, over a bottle of wine, candless and some pizza?

You see, THAT annoys me. How do you know, we will never achieve a social or cultural utopia? How do you know, that there is no blueprint? Society is a system. People design complex systems all the time that must work, otherwise they don't get paid. All you need is a good engineering based on correct premises. We all know the correct premises - it's brotherhood, freedom, responsibility and so on. Nations already agreed on the definition of basic human rights, so why do you still plead ignorance? 

Totalitarian systems are examples of good engineering, but used for bad or outdated goals - like achieving power, suppressing certain minorities or layers of society, and so on. The real problem is bringing down the old systems in a peaceful (or effective) way and setting up new systems also peacefully. Otherwise, don't know how about you, but the golden age society is pretty obvious to me. It's no mystery, it's just applied cooperative humanism. The previous attempts were either non-cooperative (aggressively competitive) or non-applied. (therefore just jaw-flapping)

(btw, I feel like these Jewish revolutionary conspirators in Life of Brian)

Bullshit. Our true problem is competition. In competitive society, everything you are, any personal feature or difference will be used against you, unless you use it against someone else. The reactionary's idea of solution to that is making everyone equally miserable. Again, bullshit. What we need is to make the society cooperative! We must teach people appreciate each others' differences. 

In competitive society it's like that, "look, a woman, of ethnic origin, of no religion, and educated, dammit, she could take my place and how I would pay my bills and care for family? I'll make her bump off a glass ceiling, next time she tries to get promotion. I'll justify it by her heathen, nigger and gender-based sinfulness."

In cooperative society it's different, "Look, a woman, with such a marvelous cultural differences, I have nothing to fear from her, so I can fully appreciate this new neighbour and co-worker."

Why do people practise tourism? Why do they learn about other cultures? Why do they listen to exotic music? Because it's fun! Differences are fun, as long as you feel safe. Make people feel safe from poverty, overpopulation and war, and they will start appreciating the differences. Free people from a purposeless work. Sacrifice the useless, unjust and harmful activities of mankind - like warfare, global market or financial speculation and put the humanistic interests on top. Then everything will be all right.

It's called unity in diversity. Unity is not sameness, it's being connected together and cooperating!  

Hmmm, I would think that working in an extremely socialist state would truly be the most "purposeless" work. You have nothing to gain except to "feel good" by contributing to the collective...or something like that.

That's right, but a truly socialistic state is meant to reduce work to necessary minimum and replace it with automatic systems, electronic communication and sophisticated distribution of resources... Communistic party promised this stuff, (as is documented by some hilariously ironic news articles that were meant for real) but never delivered it. Instead they centralized all power and decisions in quite insane way, persecuted educated people, destroyed all corrective feedback mechanisms in society (like democracy) and then failed. There was nothing sophisticated about their idiocracy. Even Masaryk himself knew that Soviets are pigs, he was there after WW1 and saw what they do. They succeeded only because hundreds thousands of the most intelligent people didn't survive WW2 and so they couldn't defend public opinion from Soviet propaganda. 

As a strict non-singer I can't agree with "we all".  And flying in first class is a shameful waste of resources. Instead look at the article that was mentioned here some time ago (by Rich Woods I think) to get a better idea of what I mean, The abolition of work. 

Again, Marxism is bullshit. Working class is oppressed by capitalists, so Marx believed in revolution of working class and oppression of all other classes - like intelligence, private businessmen, clergy, and so on. You see how this is reactionary? Again, it's making everyone equally miserable, but someone has to make them, and this one will remain on the top, in control of everything. So much for equality. 

I know of a few promising attempts for "utopia." One was Osho's community in USA. (before CIA infiltrated the place and brought drugs in there) The second is the Damanhur society in Italy, and Findhorn foundation in Britain. Such groups can work only when like-minded people get together. (in these cases, spiritual kooks) This is why it is nonsense to force everyone into the life style of economic competition based on excessive producing, consuming and wasting resources. 

Greed is a natural protective reaction to fear from scarcity. Eliminate scarcity, provide everyone a minimum for life (with options to buy more, if wanted) and the greed will be gone. With elimination of fear, the positive human traits will resurface. That will of course require developing new life styles for leisure time. People always wasted most of their life at work, producing senseless products to defeat the competition. They did not have to think about who they are and what to do in life to gain self-respect and a sense of achievement. 

People maybe have both good and bad evolutionary traits, but the main one is adaptability. People are so adaptable, that they will react in real time even on advertisement campaigns. All we need is a right motivation, good marketing, political will and good idea what the life on Earth is about. I think I have very good idea about that and I'm not aware of leaving out any type or minority of people. You can be sure that I won't commit such a stupid blunder of leaving out any gender, race, religion, non-religion, scientific branch, social class and so on, as many reactionaries of the past routinely did. Choosing a group of people as a scapegoat is the telltale sign of any reactionary ideology. I propose for a scapegoat the old system of manipulating money, resources and military power.

 http://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/main.htm

 

According to this site women are a majority of the workforce in tax preparing, underwriting, financial management, accounting/auditing, budget analysts and financial specialists. All jobs which heavily rely on mathematical skills. They are also extremely dominant in portions of the medical field including nurses, medical management, psychologists and medical scientists.

 

So it follows that the reason why there are relatively few women engineers (if there are, does anyone have stats on that?) is not because of a lack of interest or education in math or science. 

 

I suspect that most of the cause of the dreaded "pay gap" is women voluntarily accepting lower wages to work closer to home, have flexibility to care for their children and are often the second income in the family. Males on the other hand are more likely to put up with longer commutes, less likely to leave work in the middle of the day to get the kids from school and negotiate more aggressively because they are the primary income earner in their family. The women that I know who dedicate themselves to a career are paid equally as well and sometimes more than their male counterparts.

 

When you are hiring a worker, there is a huge difference between what you are willing to pay someone who is making a career and will be there long term, and someone who says they are just looking for a job to supplement their spouses income. You would be surprised how many people will tell you flat out in an interview that they do not intend to work with the company long term. If anyone tells me that, male or female, I am not going to be willing to pay as high a wage as I would if they tell me they are looking for a long term career. A long term employee is worth more money up front because they will earn more revenue for the company over their lifetime. A short term employee runs the risk of actually being a loss, ie the company pays more for the employee than it makes in revenue from that employee. Many women will tell you in an interview that they plan on having kids and taking care of them, or that they just want to supplement their husbands wage until they pay off the house or some debt. If you know an employee is only sticking around until they get pregnant, you are offering a lower wage. Simple economics.

 

 

I do not see a problem if women are voluntarily choosing whatever professions and whatever wages. If an employer is intentionally paying women less because they are women that is wrong. But there is no economic incentive for that and there are plenty of employers that will hire women at an identical pay rate as men. I really don't see that happening on any kind of massive scale. Women can make just as much as men when they choose to approach their jobs in a similar manner. When they choose to make family a priority over their work they shouldn't be surprised when they are paid less than the person who dedicates the majority of their life to a particular career. I think that also explains why women tend to be underrepresented in fields that require a massive time commitment such as doctors, CEO's etc. There are some jobs where there is a lot of pressure to put your job in front of your family and men seem to be more willing to do that. 

An interesting article about women doctors and how they work less hours than their male counterparts. 

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_17/b4081104183847.htm

 

I also theorize that distance commuting might be a factor. I predict that women are less willing to commute long distances to get a higher paying job. I have been unable to find a study that factors commuting distance in with the pay gap. But based on my personal experience males tend to be more likely to commute long distances to a larger city to get a higher paying job and fields that require a lot of travel (and therefore pay better) seem to attract more men. 

 

So, they actually don't have the democratic system they claim to have, they're just another cult? I have no idea if it's true. But if it is, then it's another example of bad organization. I'd be really worried if a good idea, good organization would produce bad results. Or if bad idea would produce good results. Cults are a different topic altogether. Cults are like animals, they eat people, chew them, digest them and shit them out. People get in dumb and rich, and they get out poorer, less or more alive and certainly know better than to enter a cult again. I'd be glad to see some cult leaders in my vicinity locked up in madhouse, but there is no way to explain the people what they're up to. 

As for Jim Jones, a group led by psychopath and mass murderer is not an example of good organization either. My ideal society is sophisticated, well-organized and initially based on already existing society. Making something completely anew would be extremely wasteful.

So basically, your point is what? That anyone who tries to create another form of society is insane and dangerous? That we should be grateful for our Bushes, Obamas, Blairs, Klauses, Rockefellers and Rotschilds? Do you make any point at all?

Sorry for the heap of text, but I believe that you disagree because I wasn't clear enough.
A perfect society must be engineered upon knowledge, that we do not yet have. What we currently need is a sane society. Our society is completely insane. Better said, it is blindly expansive, exploitative hegemony, that sort of seemed to work when Earth was not yet all charted and owned and we could exploit the nature. Since WW2 it's getting obvious that it does not work. There is little of free nature left to exploit and so nations exploit each other, which is quite a nasty business and makes people want to blow up ourselves or throw a dirty nuke bomb on some city. These are very subtle signs that something is not exactly OK, right?

What you describe are concepts of a competitive society. Winners. Losers. Best jobs, better salaries, less and more, free lunch, paid lunch, bums and hobos. In cooperative society these concepts would either have no meaning or very different meaning. No wonder people feel, that they are treated unfairly. Because it is unfair. Just look at statistics of distribution of global and national wealth, on disparity between average and most frequent salaries, and so on. 

Winners win and losers lose. Why it is a problem? Because this game uses necessities of life and non-renewable resources instead of cards and jettons. If someone loses in sports, would you take his money, food, house, car and family? No, because it's just a game. But there are games where this exactly happens and people are forced to participate in them, without the option to drop out. This is an equivalent of global Russian roulette, except it's rigged, because the poor get poorer and the same rich ones get always richer. Have you ever seen USA or Japan to lose against Angola or Nigeria? 
Competition is by definiton destructive, unfair and involuntary. The only place where competition is moral, are sports and games. 

People don't need still more. They think they do, but that's just an illusion, created by suggestive marketing techniques. The same marketing can be used to show them the beauty of simplicity and modesty. I don't feel like wanting more. There are countries like mine, where modesty is still a virtue. (and necessity) Less wealth means simplier life. When people try to live simply, they will find out, that they don't really need much. They need several meals a day, clothes, housing, education, sometimes doctor, and that's all. When they have it provided, they will find out, that they don't need nearly as much money as before. In such a situation, more wealth would be just more nuisance. We want still more money, because commercialization forces us to compete for them. Without commercialization, we don't have to compete, to let a boss blackmail us at work, or to hang ourselves when someone takes over our market and we go bankrupt. 
A good example was the first Czechoslovak president T. G. Masaryk. He did not need any money, he carried none with him and didn't even know how his money look like. Yes, money are a good thing (almost a form of energy) but today they're used quite incorrectly, as I said, in a blindly expansive (inflatable) way. 
There is no immediate need to create a rose garden of the society, we just need to get rid quickly of the reactionary insanity that I described.