Without shoe-horning myself too deep into this debate... I imagine that in a society of women (suppose you could remove the need for a man to reproduce) you'd end up with a considerably different social atmosphere which would slowly evolve away from raising young girls to be interested in the sort of things young girls are 'supposed' to be interested in. And from that, I imagine engineering would be born. The fact is that while women have as much of an opportunity in a given field as a man does, as a society we haven't grown out of the practice of raising children with the idea that they should take an interest in certain ideas over others, based on their gender.jackssmirkingrevenge wrote: Do you think that in a society of women the field of engineering would even exist?
And a couple of other points JSR made that I feel like mentioning...
With the whole idea of 'A girl punches you, do you punch back'? I'd argue that the right way to respond would be with the same level of force you'd use on a male of equal physical strength to the woman. Despite the fact I'm pretty skinny myself, if a male who was obviously physically weaker than myself hit me, I'd try to use some restraint. I would want to avoid using force on someone unable to properly defend themselves.
Also, in regards to hiring a woman of childbearing age...
Like it or not, women get pregnant and we don't. Is it fair? Nope. But this is one of those instances where some inequality will always exist. If a male in a relationship wants a child, he won't suffer any huge impact in regards to his job. A woman will, and some allowance has to be made for that, even if others are forced to pick up the slack.
Can't we just treat everyone as equal, and judge them on an individual basis? If a woman is using her sex to gain an unfair advantage, then do what can be done to prevent it. Until that point, maybe we should treat people as 'people' and not jump to assumptions.
It's almost a case of 'correlation does not imply causation'. Gender roles have been pretty concrete for most of human history, and now there's a bit of a push to end that. I'm sure plenty of women are trying to get the best of both worlds, and gain new rights while keeping old benefits... But I'd argue that this is more likely because of how society's taught us, than by nature of them being a woman.
Anyway, I now I've said that I probably won't continue this debate... Looks like Crowley and yourself have said all there is to be said. I'm really just finding ways to procrastinate and not study for my finals.