I don't personally think it's necessarily important for there to be "as many women in STEM as men." But I do think those women who want to be there shouldn't be de facto run out by sexist practices.
I was a full-time wife and mom for a lot of years. I don't self identify as a feminist. But, post divorce, I've found that sexism has been a real issue in establishing an adequate income to support myself and my sons.
So I think society still has work to do. It's very problematic to deny people a means to support themselves and then act like their poverty is due to laziness or the like. That kind of "fuck you" has been known to foment bloody revolution.
I have no idea. But I'm willing to guess he faces lower odds of being asked for a date by senior personnel in the better-paid department he would like to work in, thereby de facto closing doors in my face.
I am not trying to argue sexism/bias does not exist but from my experience any gaps in employment are a flag used to filter out candidates so in this particular scenario that might be the main problem to overcome.
That's super disgusting if that happened to you :( Maybe at some point we need to stop interacting in person completely and instead use gender-less avatars with their own voices so that we can bypass both sexual harassment as well as trying to land better positions by our own physical attractiveness.
I do--speaking as a single-dad who spent a few years working as a consultant and would never work more than 6 months out of the year (I always took time off during school breaks, summers, etc.). When I've applied for jobs over the years, I've never once been asked to explain those gaps. Of course, they were rarely longer than 6 months ... but there were quite a few of them. I've never even had the impression an employer has ever looked at those employment gaps before.
Hell, when I started my career--as a single father--I had no experience beyond what I'd done learning how to program on my own ... and I still had relatively few questions asked beyond me proving in an interview that I knew what I was talking about.
If you're comfortable, could you describe some of your experiences facing sexism? Did you experience this after you released information that you're a divorced parent?
I have a Certificate in GIS. I worked at a Fortune 500 company for over 5 years in a Pink Collar Ghetto department. I wanted a job in the IT department, where jobs generally paid better.
In all the years I worked there, I met only one person who knew what GIS was without me having to explain it. He was a senior programmer in the department I wanted a job in.
He asked me for a date, thereby making it vastly less likely that I would be able to work there (in his department).
I'm sure he stopped to think about whether or not it would tank his career to date me. No, it wouldn't.
I'm equally sure he didn't bother to wonder how the question would impact my future at the company.
(I'm sure he also never wondered what my educational background might do for the company. I imagine he would have wondered if I could do something for his department if he hadn't been thinking of me as a sex object.)
I also appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leader board of HN. Over the course of nine+ years, I've established exactly one useful contact through HN.
I've been endlessly mocked for thinking I could use HN to network and put up with endless crap that I don't really want to get into.
A piece of my writing hit the front page in January. It got more than 60k page views.
This did not result in a single tip or new Patreon supporter.
Instead, someone wrote me around the same time about a two month old comment where I talked about being suicidal over the sexism I face on HN. He offered to do a fundraiser for me out of sympathy.
I wrote back and said I would rather be taken seriously for my work and pointed him to the piece with 60k+ page views. He didn't reply to that.
I am routinely treated like a charity case, not like someone with something of value to offer that's worth money.
I'm on day six of a fast that is partly rooted in waiting for a deposit I expected Friday and still don't have and partly rooted in my inability to figure out how to turn my skills into money because I have the wrong bits between my legs to get taken seriously and paid for my work.
I too have been discriminated against due to my gender.
One of the first jobs I took (in IT) was for a large regional airline. After I had worked there for about a year, a position opened up that would have amounted to a promotion, both in pay and position. I had both the experience for the position, as well as a good reputation in the company. Further, my supervisor (with whom I had a good relationship) was in charge of the hiring effort, so I figured I had a pretty good in. Ultimately I was passed over for the position because my supervisor was a socially awkward man who used his position in the company to hire attractive women in hopes that they might one day sleep with him. He ended up hiring an (attractive) woman that worked nearby in accounting. She had no IT experience. I left because of this, and he hired two additional (unqualified) women this way before he got a little too touchy-feely and ended up fired.
I'm a man, in case you're wondering.
About ten years later I was working for a large healthcare provider. A position opened up for a senior software engineer and most of the software engineers in my department applied for it. Ultimately the head of IT ended up hiring an (attractive) data scientist from a different department, who had no experience in project management or software engineering. Everyone thought it was super weird until it came to light that he had hired her because she was his mistress and he was looking for a way to spend more time with her without arousing suspicion. He was also fired.
More years later, I put in a very competitive bid for some programming work with a company whom I had previously done contract programming work and had a good relationship with. Ultimately they selected someone else for the contract. Since I knew the owners, I contacted them directly to ask if there were anything I could have done to improve my bid. They explained to me that because they were a minority owned business (women) and were both of under-represented orientations (they were both lesbians) that they needed to select a contractor that reflected that, so they paid nearly twice as much to a small startup whom they had heard was also owned by lesbians. The project failed and they ended up paying almost three times as my bid.
Nobody I mentioned ended up ruined. The first two moved on to other jobs. The company that paid three times as much? Still around. They all paid a penalty for their bad decisions, though. Some people never do. Some people are just awful and life rewards them for it. It's not fair, but all you can really do is move on, try again, and do your best not to get bitter about the cards you've been dealt. I hope things get better for you.
You weren't particularly discriminated against due to your gender but rather fell a victim of both incompetence and immaturity.
Whether actual gender discrimination is also incompetence and/or immaturity is up to discussion. But it seems to still be acceptable in some places in the US. I hope Western Europe is doing better, but I don't know.
I don't think asking job candidates out on dates is especially smart or professional, but the comments here seem backwards.
If a man asks a woman out on a date, that means he DOES want to spend more time with her ... like at work. Even if the woman were to say no, he might still want to give her the job, just because he likes her. This is discrimination to the woman's advantage should she choose to take it.
If a man refuses to hire another man because he'd rather hire a woman so he can try to date her, that means he does NOT want to spend time with that man. This is to the man's disadvantage.
There is clear discrimination in both these stories, against the men and in favour of the women. DoreenMichele may have felt she couldn't work with a man who asked her out on a date, but plenty of people do manage it. And of course men can ask women out on dates without perceiving them as "sex objects", that's itself a kind of bizarre assumption or even insult to men. Men and women date successfully all the time without objectification coming into it.
Doreen, what jobs do men with similar to your skills get? What skills do you work on to improve your chances? Do you believe you have expressed well enough to the requiter your willingness to contribute and help move the organization further?
On a side note, I come from a place where we had communism and as a consequence women in science are marginally a majority (the country is Bulgaria). The vast majority (80%) of the IT reqruiters here are female and despite of that they still target, interview and hire 90% of the times male candidates. I really wish I could tell if the cause is prejudice or merit, but I can't.
I think you are wrong to claim current business practice as "sexist". Ideally, it would be nice for single parenting be as easy as traditional family, but in reality, nobody is entitled to easy life.
Traditionally, people can also help each other through big family, church and other local communities. The new generation does not want to be involved in any of these. Now they want the government and their employers to bear more responsibility to support their personal life.
What evidence do you have that current business practice that parent comment is facing and calling "sexist" is not sexist? Parent comment does not elaborate on the sexism she faces. You should be comfortable saying this only if you know that every aspect of current business practice is not sexist.
> evidence showing single dads get better treatment than single moms?
This is not the question that needs to be shown; while parent comment is indeed a single mom, she cited sexism as the obstacle. This is not necessarily due to her particular circumstance as a single mom but may refer to discrimination that all women face.
Sexism is easier to show, due to the intense research on it. Not knowing a priori her experience, every year research comes out of some think tank about gendered discrimination in the workplace; a google search should return results.
Single dad here. Not just some guy who isn't married and had kids. I've had custody for the better part of the last 15 years.
During my time as a single dad, I began my career in in programming. I started working for others. I now work for myself. In that time ...
- Zero female superiors have asked me on a date.
- Zero female coworkers have asked me on a date.
- Zero female coworkers have commented on or complimented my appearance--I'm no Brad Pitt, mind you, but I also don't look like someone took a hatchet to a picket fence. The closest I've gotten to a female commenting on my appearance is someone saying she thought I looked a little like Mark Wahlberg.
- Zero comments have ever been made when I've shown up late due to something kid-related (like school being delayed and dropping them off at school 2 hours later than normal).
- Zero comments have ever been made when I leave earlier than everyone else for something kid-related (like picking them up from school).
- Zero comments have ever been made when I've missed entire days due to something kid-related (like a kid being sick, or a school holiday (which I've always taken as work-from-home days so I could be with them)).
- Zero comments have ever been made when I've taken a break mid-day to attend a school function. I do the function, come back asap, and get back to work without a hiccup.
- I've never been asked if or how kids (or being a single parent) might impact my work.
- I demand a higher salary explicitly because I have kids to support, want to provide them a good life, and I have never had that questioned.
- I have never once been asked to compromise when I say I cannot do something because it conflicts with my parenting, my kids' activities, or something I've planned to do with them. When I say I have something to do with my kids, that ends the conversation, because I do not have a partner who can do these things and they know this.
- I have never once had a client question if my kids will get in the way of 6-figure contracts.
- I have never once had a client complain or ask me to compromise when I decline to do something or cannot get to something because it interferes with my kids or parenting.
- I've never been denied a raise when I've asked for it, despite the fact that I openly do not compromise my time with my kids.
- I have never been denied a promotion when I've sought after them, despite the fact that I openly do not compromise my time with my kids.
> Traditionally, people can also help each other through big family, church and other local communities. The new generation does not want to be involved in any of these. Now they want the government and their employers to bear more responsibility to support their personal life.
This comment reeks of being an outsider who does not have the slightest clue what being a single parent is like.
Your notions of these "traditional" means of people helping each other are anchored in a past that does not strongly exist in many areas today.
- Big family => what if you don't have one of those? what if family is far away?
- Church => what if you're not religious? what if (gasp!) church isn't terribly fond of single parents--especially single mothers--and treat them in a way that denigrates their humanity because they happen to be unwed parents?
- Local communities => like what? single parent groups? homeless shelters? something else? Most of these kinds of communities offer emotional or social support in some degree--say, people you can talk to about the struggles of being a single parent--but they cannot help you put food on the table, provide clothing and shelter, or buy diapers. That's what having a job is for! Single parents don't want to wind up in a homeless shelter because they cannot afford to support their children.
I don't know what this new generation is in your eyes, but having been and known an awful lot of single parents over the last 15 years, I've never seen any of them want the government or their employers to bear responsibility to support their personal life. What they want is a fair shake at the job market, to be treated like everyone else, to have a bit of flexibility when their kids need it, and to never have their kids brought up as a liability in their employment lives. I've never seen a single parent believe they're entitled to an easy life. I've seen a lot of single parents struggle with navigating society and job markets that seem to want to ignore the reality of single parenthood.
Every single mother I've known has been hit on, asked on dates, had overt sexual advances made toward them physically and verbally--hey, she's a single mom, so you know she puts out, right?--had comments made toward them about their kids, experience a complete lack of flexibility when it comes to pay and schedule ... and a host of other things that directly contradict my own experience for 15 years as a single father. I think it's pretty fair to call out the inherent sexism in the general job market--and even in tech specifically. It's pretty ridiculous.
Equality of outcome is a fool's errand and a quick path to authoritarianism.
What we need is equality of opportunity.
We don't need to even strive for a 50/50 M/F split in STEM, parenting, dance, healthcare, martial arts, etc. for everything we do in society. The majority of men and women might have very different interests and we want people doing what they're interested in and what gives them joy, not pushing them to do something the majority of their gender isn't usually interested in.
But, when it's not close to a 50/50 split it's fair to ask why. Are men and women being given the same opportunity to join and be successful?
If it's because men and women on average are different then nothing is wrong. But if it's because men aren't hiring women because of a bias then something is wrong.
And historically we've been willing to give special treatment to those who are underrepresented to help correct past biases.
So, yes the pendulum might swing from a bias to a quota before it goes back to equality. We see this in college admissions and people are starting to want to swing it back to equality which is fine once the initial biases in the system become rare enough that striving for diversity becomes the biggest bias in the system.
Of course this is very difficult to measure and is largely influenced by culture and wether you've historically received preferential or biased treatment.
Equality of opportunity over equality of outcome is such a contrived argument. Equality of opportunity is arguably harder as it implies a just society. What are you willing to give for equality of opportunity? Higher taxes? More liberal zoning? Desegregated busing? Affirmative Action?
Equality of outcome means an external force like the government will step in to correct a situation such that person A gets the same results as person B. That can be income, job opportunities, taxes, etc. and it quickly disincentivizes hard work because the desired outcome has already been decided before you start.
For a less sensitive example, imagine how hard football teams would practice if the NFL wanted the equality of outcome with each team winning the Super Bowl every 32 years. The worse my team is the harder the league has to try to make my team win which is great for me but bad for competition. And if I just won, I have no reason to try because the league doesn't want me to keep winning and will do whatever it takes to stop me from hogging all the trophies.
Equality of opportunity means an external force will step in to correct a situation to ensure that person A and person B are playing by the same rules.
Back to the OC, we should be obsessed with a level playing field in STEM but not obsessed with a 50/50 ratio.
Because I think it's the only way we have to measure that there are no cultural barriers for women entering STEM professions.
I've often theorized that much of the widely talked about pay gap has to do with either professions that women often wish to work in - or that society steers them to - but I dont know enough to know if its personal preference, or sociocultural bias driving personal preference.
In the end, pay equality and open doors are important things, and is something we as a society should work on.
Are you being facetious? Obviously labor intensive work does not reap the same benefits from diversity of perspectives as scientific or creative fields.
Are you being facetious? How does science benefit from a diversity of genitalia? I'm not saying women should or shouldn't do this or that.. but the irrational compulsion to force equity between the sexes is stupid. Providing equal opportunity is good. Forcing equal outcome is evil.
You haven't explained how diversity of sex/gender contributes to diversity of perspectives. Also, are you happy to hire white nationalists and racists in the name of "diversity of perspective"? If not, then you're not being honest in your argument...
The closer your field's demographics are to your society's, the lower the risk of (unconscious) bias is. Science as a whole should strive to be as unbiased as possible, as that's the closest we can get to objectivity.
The same logic applies to businesses, to reduce the risk of making mistakes that come with echo chambers.
Using Swedish statistics from a few years ago, 12.5% of the population has a professional job which has at minimum 40% men and 40% women. 88.5% do not. Split per gender this was 88.4% for men and 88.6% for women.
If we state that bias is a risk then we must conclude that around 90% of the population work in echo chambers (more if we find that 60/40 is still quite bad segregation) and could use the benefit of reduced risk of mistakes. It would be interesting to hear what suggestions people have to address this generally so that the 88.4% of men and 88.6% women can reduce the risk.
Not an disagreement, but rather a remark. What ever the effect of gender segregation is, it would then be practically universal here because thats how the data look like.
In India there is a more equal split between women and men in the STEM fields, yet women are much less liberated then in Western countries. The reason being is that women there are forced to enter whatever career gives them the biggest paycheck, which happens to be STEM.
I'm not saying it benefits the public necessarily, I'm saying it benefits those who opt for diversity. I don't expect STEM to have as big an impact on women's liberation as, say, business or politics. I don't think two cultures can be compared on this basis, my assumption is that, within one culture, diversified organizations will win out on average.
But diversity is only valuable to the extent that it helps create a better society. Like, ideally noone would even have to work! And there are plenty of examples of segregated (i.e. non-diverse) situations that we support becaues we deem them socially beneficial (e.g. sex-specific gyms and toilets, tall people competing in basketball, smart people are scientists, ...) (to be precise, personally I don't support these, but our society seems to, which would imply that the people on average do).
I think it depends in the task, and what the interest of the various groups are. If you have 10 engineers but only 2 of them are really passionate about it, and the other 8 would rather be doing something else, but due to incentives based on their minority status, they decided it was worth the extra money, you'd probably do a lot worse than a company which had 10 engineers that were all hired based on merit.
No, because this isn't a binary result. If group a and b both have bias 1, that bias won't be cancelled. But if they differ on bias 2, the combined group has less bias than a or b while not having 'cancelled all biases perfectly'. Perfection is a false goal while 'lower risk' is attainable and worthwhile.
Fair enough, let's forget the word "perfectly". Let's have a "practical" example. A society is made up of 99% "ethnic Germans" and 1% Jews. The year is 1933.
A faculty is made up of 90% "ethnic Germans" and 10% Jews. According to the hypothesis, getting that makeup closer to the societal demographics will result in a "lower risk of bias".
I hope it is now obvious to see that the hypothesis is a non-sequitur.
How is that a counter-example? They diverged from the overall population to an extreme level (one demographic over-represented by a 10x factor compared to the overall population) and also had an extreme level of bias (imprisoned and murdered a specific demographic).
The specific values are irrelevant, for the hypothesis to be true, it has to be true for all cases.
Let's take another example:
A planet somewhere in the milky way galaxy is populated equally by Red, Blue and Green Octopodes. They are biased differently in three dimensions:
Red (3, 2, -2)
Blue (0, 3, 4)
Green (23, -56, 128)
The goal is to minimize bias. The hypothesis says bias in a group will be minimized by giving each color group an equal share in the group. However, at a first glance, we can immediately see that in order to minimize bias, we must reduce the number of Green Octopodes in the group. The hypothesis is wrong, because it doesn't generalize.
Note, I'm not making an argument against diversity. The average Green Octopode may hold extremist views, but they shouldn't be excluded from a group merely to reduce bias. Just like humans, Green Octopodes should be treated as the individuals that they are, not as a weight in a multivariate optimization problem.
I've seen no calls to increase the numbers of conservatives/Republicans in STEM, despite the fact that political ideology and affiliation is actually testing the way people think. For example, though the percentage of scientists who lean Rep. is 12% to the general public's 35%, the percentages are 81% and 52% for lean Dem.[1] And the gap in other political values is high as well.
Demographics are only slightly correlated with how people think, so this form of argument falls flat unless you think encouraging conservatives to get into science is far more important.
Maybe no one wants to spend money on this, but I think a greater diversity of viewpoints would lead to more trust from the public. It is a hard sell for either party though.
(Definitely not for me. Life today is much better than it was 50 years ago in communist Yugoslavia, despite higher inequality and bias, due to progress in science and business.)
Imagine how much more progress we could have had in science and business if we didn't de facto force out so many possible candidates who were interested in the field after they had their first kid.
There's quite the bibliography to pour through there, though, if you really want to shatter the science behind why diversity is a good thing. Good luck!
The study you linked has nothing to do with gender or diversity w.r.t. minorities. It's subject is economic geography.
We can be pretty confident that if 50% of the population are women then 50% of the best candidates for a given job, by natural aptitude, are women. The same logic applies to minorities as well, so we can be confident that any process calibrated to finding the best person for the job is going to turn up a diverse workforce.
However, once policies designed to enforce diversity come in to play, that correlation will be broken and you just have a sexist/racist/whatever hiring system.
> We can be pretty confident that if 50% of the population are women then 50% of the best candidates for a given job, by natural aptitude, are women
You shouldn't be as confident as you're probably wrong. Women have on average better verbal intelligence, and men have on average better spacial intelligence. So we can be confident there are jobs where either men or women are more likely to be best candidates.
No, I'm right. If you want to pick some super-specialist job that requires top 1% verbal skills then sure you want a woman doing it, but most jobs only require slightly above-average skills which will fall into a roughly 50-50 split.
And even then you can't reasonably claim that most jobs are better performed by spatial or verbal thinking. Both tend to have their moments.
No, we can't be 'pretty confident'. Sometimes the 'best' don't want to do the job. 90% of nurses are female (in Sweden where gender equality is a top priority).
What would be the motivation to induce or somehow encourage males to take up a career for which they clearly have no particular enthusiasm. I wonder how many males harbour a secret desire to be a nurse but are discouraged by societal norms? Need some amazing evidence for that one.
What motivate a person to work? There is plenty of study that has asked this question and tried to quantify how much it is for money, a feeling of being useful, the social environment, perks, having fun, social status gain, and so on.
Pretty sure more males harbour a secret desire to be a nurse than males that harbour a secret desire to be a garbage man, and yet we see nurses are 90% female and garbage men being 90% male. The question is why.
Because humans find reasons to look down on other 'groups' when they know that group is underrepresented, and therefore tergetable. Same as how people will talk shit about others and get reinforcement for it, until that person actually walks in. And because professional careers are a necessary path if we wish to have a 1st world where choice is possible. Without choice, others are deciding what you can do with your life. That's generally what patriarchy refers to, in that women are treated by, overwhelmingly men, who are in positions of power and use that power in a way to suppress that choice. It's not that they do this explicitly because they hate women, many do think that women are just inferior, but many are also making highly calculative reasons. It's a chicken and egg problem. But if we are to say we believe in morality, then it is many times necessary to overcome that problem by force of public acts.
you definitely sound it...
its not so much about having the same number as it is about providing the same opportunities. If new moms had the same support, be it from family members and their communities, they would be less likely to leave their positions.
Some things that would help in my opinion as a mother: affordable and accessible day care including back up care, at least 12 months maternity leave, flexible work arrangements (time and place), PTO (imagine both parents only have 2 weeks to spend with their kids outside of weekends), extended school and camp programs, affordability of all.
I went back to work when babe was 4 months. I have only 2 weeks PTO, there inst even a Christmas shut down, I have no family in the area, the daycare centers around me have 1 year waiting lists and are over $2500/month. I am underpaid. My work is flexible thankfully.
Sweden made a government report on the teaching profession a few years ago and just like male dominated professions they found that the minority gender, men in this case, left the profession in a significant higher rate in ever stage from when they are a student to being a stable employee for decades. While the study did not look at newly parents, I would make the guess a similar effect but likely smaller since day care is paid by the state in Sweden.
I like common theories in order to explain similar data, so what theory can we make in order to explain why being a minority gender, for example women in science and men in the teaching profession, both tend to leave their positions in greater rate than the majority gender? A lack of support from family members and communities? I find that possible but a bit grim given how universal gender segregation is with about 90% of all employed here in Sweden.
I think it's more that it would be the natural state if not for the ingrained social factors that disadvantage, dissuade and outright remove women from those careers.
And that's important because it means a portion of the best brains are dropping out the mix, largely against their will.
Because it's hard to tell who is going to make the next big leap. Losing 25% of the top brain power because we cannot be bothered to organise crèches seems shortsighted
Let's say we live in a world (or small town) where there are only 16 software developers, 8 men, 8 women. 4 of the women are amazing top notch engineers, and so are 4 of the men.
The other 4 men and 4 women are pretty good, but not nearly as good as the top developers.
If a company needs to hire 10 people, and they hire men, they will not be able to fill their entire hiring need.
Obviously a silly policy, and it leaves a lot of good talent on the table.
So instead, the company hires the best it can.
4 amazing women
4 amazing men
1 average woman
1 average man
That is an optimal team given the local talent!
But now let's have the company put in some sexist work place policies. Half the woman leave. Now the company is down to
2 amazing women
4 amazing men
1 average woman
1 average man
to make up for lost numbers, the company is going to have to hire talent that is not as good as the talent that left!
The tl;dr is that discriminatory policies artificially limit the labor pool, reducing the overall efficiency of a company (and the economy of a nation as a whole if looked at broadly enough).
> Given the assumptions the example is obviously correct. What if there are 8 amazing men and 2 amazing women but quotas dictate to hire 50/50?
Discussions about quotas are separate from discussions about how discriminatory practices limit hiring pools, and how discriminatory workplace environments decrease the overall level of talent at an organization.
(For what it is worth, the same reasoning being discussed here is why professional sports teams figured out long ago that racism was bad for business.)
Mathematically, if there is a labor shortage, then cutting out part of the hiring pool based on criteria that are not correlated with the qualifications of candidates, will always result in worse hiring decisions being made.
If there is a surplus of talented labor then whoever is doing the hiring can be pretty much as nasty as they want to be and still form a team of pretty good caliber.
It's not, there's no reason to expect there to be as many women in the workforce as there are men in general. There's an obvious asymmetry which won't go away until men start giving birth.
The rational debate is generally surrounding equal opportunity and compensation.
Of course there are always going to be quacks pushing the debate in irrational directions however, and it's a trendy topic at the moment.
If you agree to the basic principle that scientific ability and thought is equally prevalent amongst men and women, having fewer women scientists means we are not getting and developing the best scientific minds.
Having as many women as men also means a you girl doesnt think science is for boys only which again means we potentially miss out on good/great scientific minds purely because they self-select out.
So if you are in favor of STEM getting the best STEM minds, its important for STEM fields to reflect that STEM is for everyone. Having as many women as men is a step in that direction.
IQ tests show there are a greater number of men with very high IQs than women, and scientific ability highly correlates with IQ, so your “basic principle” doesn't hold muster.
Do you have a source for this? How can we be reasonably certain IQ assessments aren't inherently gender-biased? Is IQ directly-correlated to scientific contribution?
Richard Feynman's IQ was famously average though his scientific contributions to society were most certainly not.
I was a full-time wife and mom for a lot of years. I don't self identify as a feminist. But, post divorce, I've found that sexism has been a real issue in establishing an adequate income to support myself and my sons.
So I think society still has work to do. It's very problematic to deny people a means to support themselves and then act like their poverty is due to laziness or the like. That kind of "fuck you" has been known to foment bloody revolution.