How do Polish men feel about gender equality?

Spit those words out, please. My first 29 years of life could be described as "missed opportunities".

You want equity? Go to China. China has enforced true equal rights for both sexes. Meaning:
1. If you are younger than I am, you are carrying my baggage after me
2. If your position is lower than mine, you open the door for me
3. If you were a Chinese woman and I were a Westerner, and our positions and age were equal, you should pay respect to me.
4. We are travelling in coed sleeping train car, so you need sleep in your T-shirt and shorts, and do not complain I'm watching you

In other words: Women and men in China have been made EQUAL. In every way. I doubt European women would like it very much.
---
The commies wanted both sex made equal for one reason: While men were expected going to war, somebody had to be able to operate a tractor in farming...

Completely agree. :-)

The origins of modern day feminism have their roots in communism. I highly recommend the book; "Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation." By Kate Weigand. It is academically well written with tons of footnotes. Many feminist leaders like Betty Friedan were admitted commies (my daughter told me that her gender studies class omitted this fact). So was/is the feminist philosophy.

What exactly did you miss?

What opportunities do you have now?

I am not provoking, just trying to understand you :)

I can't spit those words out , it would be hypocritical because I enjoyed fruitful periods of it. That system labeled liberal socialism in Yugoslavia gave to me and others many opportunities people today simply don't have. To live, not survive for instance.


That seems more like a cultural norm regulating inter generation behavior than gender equity.


Again, I don't see here the link to gender equality problem.
There are other ways to demonstrate power over subordinates in the West too. More subtle ones, but they are existing. (giving the word, greeting the guests in the meetings)


You are criticizing Chinese system, not the gender equality.
That is something that says a lot about both sides in the tale (Western confidence in their dominance and Chinese awareness of their reality).


As I can recall, as a teenager I traveled once to Italy with two Belgian boys in the same train car, I was watching them sleeping, one was without a T shirt, couldn't help it ;)

What is wrong with the being seen in a T shirt, we are all almost naked on the beach....


;)


Zimmy, It seems to me that giving women right to vote and property rights have their roots in common sense and minimum belief in justice.

I understand your discontent with the problems you perceive in a society you live in. I am not fighting the differences.
I cannot negate the connection between communism and feminist philosophy in some periods, I greet the consequences of the practice in ex socialist countries, but disagreeing mostly with feminist theorizing like those of Beauvoir, Kristeva, Irigaray for creating the problem, planting it deeper.

Modern feminism is something I know nothing about, not being interested in it, so having no idea what was the development of the phenomenon in the US, I can't comment.

( as you might have noticed, I prefer the way men think than women... unless they have male cognitive abilities, few women here luckily do )

Thank you for the reference :)

Zim you can say that about almost anything eg the origins of modern day carpooling have their roots in communism:)

An interesting side note:

many if not most women in post-communist countries are brought up as individuals, not "females", are not subjected to feminist propaganda at school, and their mothers usually do not bother to teach them how "special" they are and what "rights" they should have, yet they grow up to be empowered in the sense of being secure in their feelings of equality to men (sometimes even superiority LOL),

whereas
many if not most "Western" women, who read, write, and talk about women's rights and empowerment and victimhood all day long, demanding this, that, and the other (which BTW they already have, but let's not spoil their fun), seem very insecure in their femininity, paranoid about their roles in society, and emotional wrecks generally ;-)

I agree completely. Nobody insists nor insisted that much on genders here. From generation of my parents to mine. I was raised to be Ok person and more or less choose the rest. It was a common practice in upbringing.

I think the right one.


Exactly the same thought was on my mind few days ago after reading on that topic :) The West- East difference is the crucial one.
Those 2 feminism are actually two different phenomena.

why do you think that is. Good observation BTW.

In my opinion, it has to do with sharing/ competing for the job market. Anywhere where women are not happy with what they earn - the feminism is much stronger. Or, considering the roots of feminism (anglo- saxon/protestant) perhaps there is something in the culture, which requires women to contribute to society equally by working.

Work for pay is a measure of human value for both sexes in the Western societies in general, not the number of children the family can rise.

Anyways, I have not made myself clear and I am jumping all over the place, but I have to go now:)

Buy and read the book I recommended. You'll be very surprised.


Only if your car-pool partner also doctrinaires about communism. I recommend you do some research first.

One young womans view:
...

lol what are you on about? Jacked up on Jerry Springer re-runs..? Anyways what you are alluding to may be taking (an insignificant) place in somewhere.. somewhereshire in the U.S of A, but hell no in Western (Northern) Europe.

Frankly, no idea. I have a hunch this would have to be studied in a historical context though (at least the last 100 years). Social structure might be important as well - I'd guess it might have something to do with a middle class background. I'd risk saying that societies in which the aristocracy and the peasants were more numerous than the bourgeois, rules, including those pertaining to gender roles, would be overlooked more often (the aristocrat can afford to break any rules, and the peasant doesn't have the time to gender-categorise work or behaviour). Therefore, typically "bourgeois" societies (most of western Europe, I guess) created the most gender-related rules and roles, and women in these societies have been confused for a long time as a result (and still are). Why confused? Because on the one hand they are bred to obey the rules, on the other hand they see them as unfair, and to crown it all, they find some of those rules advantageous whilst simultaneously convincing themselves they want absolute equality. Just my two cents' worth.

Or equally if I wanted to make another redundant point.

Sorry Magda but that appears to be not correct, certainly there are a lot of people making a living from the equality bandwagon but there are not legions of screaming harridans.

The first paragraph is a nice generalisation that can be applied anywhere, anytime, anyplace with the post communist bit substituted with anything.

I have personally met quite a few, they usually seemed nice until I contradicted them for the first time or said something "wrong" from the feminist point of view. One actually (I am not making this up!) smacked my hand because she was angry at me. Wow. She had obviously never heard of intelligent discussion or realised not everyone read the same leaflets she did. I am speaking of an educated, 30+ years old American lady here (I was about 27 at the time).

That is not typical behaviour for Americans.
I know there are a lot of gendernauts using academia nad their intelligence to bully people and filling a lot of air time, the same is true of almost all thinkers. The focus is on this gender issue because it’s the perfect subject for almost any situation.

I would have thought this was not NORMAL behaviour for any human being.

Natasa, I do not know how old you are. It's enough to say you should go back to the year 2000 (I've been to Pancevo and Belgrade at that time) and think about "merry life, full of perspectives" of that time in Serbia. For me, it looked like pre-1989 Poland. I wouldn't like to live in a country like that. I do not know what has changed in your country since. The only fact that matters for me we cannot sell software licenses in your country because you people steal whatever you can. Sorry for my harsh words, but we have licenses in Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria and of course in Hungary. Not in Serbia, except two licenses granted to Universities.

Since 1989 I has been able to keep my whole family as the only person working, been to great part of the world, own everything I need, am FREE and HAPPY.


It has given to your country numerous wars in the first place and made your country really backwards. Again, I can't help being frank.

I do not criticize the Chinese system. I just describe it. Men and woman made equal. No woman I spoke about it in Poland appreciated the Chinese equality. Perhaps Polish ladies are "spoilt" to some extent by our chivalry. However, a Polish man who couldn't pay a date would lose his face.

Sorry to barge in on you like this, but you should have the decency to acknowledge that what you saw in 2000 was not a result of communism. In the eighties, I remember listening to Yugo rock, reading their books, and watching movies with the feeling that this was "the West of the East" so to speak, with a lot of freedom and interesting ideas. I am no communist lover myself, BTW.


I think Natasa addressed your points quite nicely.

Britain in the late 1970s - right after the "Sex Discrimination Act"

That's unfortunately standard behavior. Once you deviate from their "politically correct" positions than you are considered the enemy.
I've met and known the so-called academic feminists who over populate universities and colleges. I meet them at parties and on occasion and by request I've lectured in specific classrooms (Univ. of Chicago, Loyola, DePaul, Univ. of Illinois). These gender crusaders are polite at first......until you prove them wrong on some point or issue. Internally, they seem to be an angry and sad bunch.


That can't be true; don't you know that feminists are always non violent? Actually, if a man did that to her she would charge him with assault and possibly some sort of hate crime or sexism.


As to "intelligent discussion", you see how some of the women post here. Not one could refute the 3 fundamental reasons why women in general earn less than men so they instead pivot away from the premise and emotionally attack the messenger. They are like children who are told "no".

It's also interesting that the woman who wants to see Poland attacked is given a pass by the other female posters. I can only imagine the vitriol that would have ensued if I had said that. My daughters, thankfully, have seen and even experienced the hypocrisy and the meanness of spirit exhibited by these half-women who seem to base their opinions on emotion. They look to be offended and of course always find some transgression, real or imagined. What man wants to have anything to do with such women?

Not?! You mean, 10 years of wars not the result of communism? Does the name of Slobodan Milosevic reminds you of something?

Yugoslavia was more than just Serbia. Croat people have good trading skills. Do you bear in mind the large Yugoslav diaspora, bringing a lot of money home? Yugoslavia was not in the Warsaw pact; this is why the living there was somewhat easier.

If you however deny the role of communism, ask yourself the question what is wrong with Southern Slavs then.

please, don't let the topic got off the right track and your posts went straight to the bin. thanks

I think Natasa will agree that this is something the Southern Slavs themselves are trying to find out. Czechoslovakia fell apart just like Yugoslavia did, but without the war. Both were Iron Curtain countries. So what makes them different? If war was the legacy of communism, there should be war in Czechoslovakia, as well as civil war in Lithuania, Latvia, Belorussia, and all the other former Soviet states. But this is a completely different topic. Let's go back to feminism, shall we?


I can only say WOW. I do symphatise. :-( You should have come to Poland to study :-)

I had a neighbor who was a manager for Sears. One of his assignments was to train two women to take over his job. That's when affirmative action was kicking into high gear. I asked him how he felt about that and he said something to the effect, " I will be working for them in a couple of years". I then asked him how his wife felt about that. He replied that "she doesn't understand this".

Now that there are more women in colleges than men; now that young unmarried urban women outearn men (despite men still doing the dangerous jobs); one would think that we should stop affirmative action for women. Nah, when I've suggested this I've been called names and as usual my opponents never addressed the specific issue at hand. One cannot respect such madness in women.

A couple of months ago during polite conversation, one woman emphatically stated, "we don't need men". (We hear this refrain now and then). I asked her if she was willing to give up her computer or her auto or the building she lives in. I reminded her that these things and virtually everything around her were invented, created and built by men especially the dwelling which put a roof over her head. As usual when I do this I receive a stunned look. These women never think beyond their entrapped agenda or beyond themselves. They don't even know how foolish their comments make them look.

A couple things here:

- The country you saw in 2000 was the way it was because of the progressive minds of the West who decided Serbs should be punished for the sins of KLA because Serbs refused to be US ruled pawns.

- when you talk about 1989 Poland you're talking about exactly what? I thought the subject was equality of men and women. I left that country before 1989 and I don't recall any inequality in employment. Mom mom made the same money as her male peers, and a little more than some of them. Most of my teachers were females and they were good teachers. I can't recall any of them leading us all into under appreciating women. That was never a policy in the commie Poland.

Sure, the wages were shhitty, but they were equally shhitty for both men and women and that's the topic of this thread. Not the economic situation in various countries.

Individual cases of abuse happened and some women had it indeed tougher than others but I wouldn't say it was a systemic phenomenon. Those women experienced the same problems that were experienced by males considered to be chubby or sissy types. This is called bullying and it is gender neutral. In my 23 years in the Polish education system (I went to kindergarten at the age of 2) I cannot recall one single instance of women's oppression by males because of gender. I did know of such cases outside that system, and that indeed didn't look good - marriage issues typical of some couples in any country.


What does that have to do with feminism we are discussing here?
If we are to be fair then I'd say Serbs, Croats etc should steal as much as they can, to get back at least a tiny fraction of what has been stolen from them by the West. I look at is as poetic justice.


So are you another one of those male chauvinists who won't let their wives work? Prepare for a backlash from our resident feminists.


But you could try to be frank - admit you have no fukcing idea what you are talking about. Under communism Yugoslavia was in one piece and there were no conflicts or wars. In fact Yugoslavia was a tourist paradise - open to the West, nice climate, spectacular scenery and above all - political stability. Killings started when Tito died, communism fell and when terrorist organizations, inspired and then aided by the US, UK and Germany started testing Serbs' patience. It worked. Serbs got pizsed off as hoped by the West and what followed was nicely twisted in the official media.


As mentioned before, Chinese system has nothing to do with communism or socialism. Nada. In fact, these days the US is more socialist than China.

On general note, the militant feminism failed women and men and it failed the society as a whole. I am not referring to pay equity but to reasonable division of work. We are different physically and mentally and genders do matter in certain positions and for good biological reasons. The result is that the most important social structure in society, a family, is in shambles. This is sipping through into other social structures. And Poland too, has had the misfortune to taste the latest and greatest in the perversions of feminism, along with other "blessings" of the more enlightened countries of the great West.

In my youth in Poland, if a woman wanted to have a job and earn a living for herself or to contribute to the family's income, she could and there were no problems with that. I didn't know one single employable woman without a job. Not one. Again, the money wasn't exactly great but you could live on it as any other person, including men. Now, I hear, we have young girls turning to prostitution in numbers greater than even the boldest western statistics showed during commie times.

Feminists also betrayed women they were able to turn their backs on. Where are these mass protests by feminist organizations when it comes horrific gender inequality in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan etc? Where is the mass outrage about female rape victims being punished for their misfortunes?

Perhaps, instead of beating around the bush with their, now worn out ideologies that go way beyond equality in countries where they have really few reasons to complain, the modern feminists should act where it really counts and where they are really needed, or risk further ridicule.

This is a crock, firstly most young unmarried urban women earn the same as cleaners and waitresses this aint Friends. Young unmarried urban women professionals earn the same as the equivalent group of males, Overall women earn less.

Dangerous jobs? Whats more dangerous than street walking......Big link to Long Island.

To be back on the right track:

Natasa has put a proposition that the liberal socialism of former Yugoslavia gave Yugoslav women equal position with Yugoslav men, (saving them from the fatal miasma of feminism). I have countered that proposition explaining the real motives of communists behind the equal treatment of both sexes. First Natasa praised the communism, then went on the safer track of "liberal socialism".

My further comment I'm making now is the liberal socialism really exists but not in Yugoslavia but in Sweden. Strange but it works. Paternity leave, very high percentage of qualified women employed. It's hard to assign any communist thinking to Sweden, while it is very easy to do it talking about former Yugoslavia.


I have to make a comment here, regardless of the cost. In the first place, Serbia attacked Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Kosovo. The Serbs collected the crop in 1999.


Can you think of a family with heavily disabled child, where the man is qualified to earn money, and the wife has no profession? That's my case. You better be careful of drawing conclusions so easily.

No more comments. It is pointless to participate in a discussion with Mods taking active part in the discussion with their Move/Delete buttons. This is simply unfair.

You lost me here.
I can think of a few families like that, and I can also tell a difference between what happened in Poland and, let's say, in the US under similar circumstances. Commie had a much better support system, which is not to say life was paradise.


That I happen to agree with.

You lost me here. What don't you understand? A disabled daughter that wants and will like staying at home. Our choice was to take care about our kid. She used to attend kindergarten and schools. But we are leaving outside big cities and our daugther could not stand living in a dormitory. So our choice was: I earn money, my wife takes care of our daughter and of home. Do you find a loving family strange? I'm shocked.

"Gender equality policy development in post-communist Central- and Eastern Europe. Good or bad for women?"

"End of communism hasn't helped Polish women - but there is no nostalgia"

guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/08/polish-women-communism-bet ter-equality

and, from my own neck of the woods:
"Women, Minorities Largely Absent from Fortune 500 Corporate Boards"

shrm.org/hrdisciplines/Diversity/Articles/Pages/WomenMinori tiesLargelyAbsent.aspx

(I hope you can access it, some of the content on this site is for members only)

Both show that with the coming of the blessings from the West the gender equality actually deteriorated. Actually, to the point that some Polish women, or women participating in a Polish Forum are bombarded with suggestions that Polish males should be sent to Siberia. That sort of puts the whole idea of pushing for absolute gender equality under a serious doubt.


So why not join corporations created by women for women?

the Siberian exile was supposed to be selective...

anyway, I thought that gender inequality was fake? if it's fake, how can it deteriorate?
have you read that part at all?
"Some scholars claim that the communist experiment was nothing more than an instance of “forced emancipation” and that women’s incorporation into public life was “insincere” because it was motivated by economical interests, rather than by gender equality concerns (Ashwin 2006). In spite of the heavily propagandised gender equality in the sphere of paid employment, the reality of the labour market was far from gender-neutral. For example, the state socialist system did not manage to challenge gendered job segregation and wage gaps. Although different laws contained an explicit provision prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender, at the same time there were legislative provisions that aimed to protect motherhood (e.g. shorter working hours, longer maternity leaves, restriction on work at nights and performing jobs involving hard manual labour). While such legislation was intended as a privilege and reward for bearing children, it ensured women’s rights only through the virtue of motherhood and ended up being discriminatory. In addition, under communism, the gender-neutral stipulations in different laws (e.g. family laws) were completely absent. Fathers, for example, were not encouraged to share responsibilities for raising children and there was no official notion of the paternity leave (Paci 2002). The lack of gender-neutral legislation contributed to the strong legacy of traditionalism in attitudes towards the family and gender roles. Furthermore, some gender equality and women’s rights questions, such as sexual harassment and domestic violence, were not regulated by law and were absent from public discussions (Spehar 2007). Thus, in communist countries, women were empowered and disempowered at the same time by gender policies and cultural praxis."


oh, you mean separate but equal? yeah, we tried that before...

anyway, I'm done with this thread, it's like trying to explain the difference between green and red to someone who's colorblind