Plus Ca Change?

[Sukerkin]

I've been watching a wonderful TV series called JAG again recently (yay for DVD releases as my old VHS tapes are not up to the job any more ) and, other making me berate myself all over again for never having had the courage of my convictions and joining the Royal Navy, it has been making me ponder how things have changed, or if they have changed, with regard to sexism, particularly in the armed forces.

The series is a bit preachy on the matter, there is no denying it, but altho' it was not all that long ago (series one aired in the mid-90's I think) I reckon things have come a long way in just ten or fifteen years. Things are still being worked out of course as both sides of the divide try to get a handle on "different but equal" but I hope that we have made some progress on this. I suppose our female members are those best placed to know but it'd be good to hear what everyone feels on whether we are making progress on equality or just paying lip-service to it.

Is it a case of plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose (loosely translated as history repeating itself, the more that things change the more they stay the same)?

For those who have not seen the series, I would heartily recommend it; for altho' the premise is of navy lawyers going about their work, it is a lot more fun than that would suggest. Think "Top Gun" twinned with "Law and Order" .

 

[Monroe]

Are you talking about the world in general or the military? I can't answer for the military. But otherwise, I find in the working world, it has improved. It's unusual to feel uncomfortable in the work place at this point.

Clubs and the dating world haven't improved. Go dance, have fun but get out of there before someone vomits on your purse. Girls becoming a wreck by the end of the night. Are they looking for someone to rescue them or screw them over? Guys getting into territorial fights. Like I wanted to pick broken glass out of my bra? I enjoy being out with friends dancing, but I'm a married woman and I don't want to be grabbed or dry humped on the dance floor. I don't get to go out with my friends on a friday night very often. I want to make the most of my time so I won't go with them unless we have VIP passes. I get a little elbow room that way.

It seems to me there's more equality in the working world. But the dating world is still sexist and both genders are the culprit from my perspective. I see a chunk of it with my single friends and I'm disappointed by their opinions just as much by men's actions in the clubs. Often, they're just as bad as each other. I realize I'm not 18 anymore but the same things that sucked about it when I was 18 still suck a decade later.

Does that help?

 

[Jenna]

I've been watching a wonderful TV series called JAG again recently (yay for DVD releases as my old VHS tapes are not up to the job any more ) and, other making me berate myself all over again for never having had the courage of my convictions and joining the Royal Navy, it has been making me ponder how things have changed, or if they have changed, with regard to sexism, particularly in the armed forces.

The series is a bit preachy on the matter, there is no denying it, but altho' it was not all that long ago (series one aired in the mid-90's I think) I reckon things have come a long way in just ten or fifteen years. Things are still being worked out of course as both sides of the divide try to get a handle on "different but equal" but I hope that we have made some progress on this. I suppose our female members are those best placed to know but it'd be good to hear what everyone feels on whether we are making progress on equality or just paying lip-service to it.

Is it a case of plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose (loosely translated as history repeating itself, the more that things change the more they stay the same)?

For those who have not seen the series, I would heartily recommend it; for altho' the premise is of navy lawyers going about their work, it is a lot more fun than that would suggest. Think "Top Gun" twinned with "Law and Order" .

Oh I remember the Justice Advocates before the SVUs and CSIs yes??

I cannot speak to armed forces and but I can speak to being the only female in a predominately male workplace. I find that we are far more enlightened to the idea of parity of the sexes than years ago. I find though that there are still individuals who are either ignorant of or choose to disregard what have become our prevailing mores surrounding sexual equality. However, I find exactly because that equality is a convention now that when an individual from a group of male colleagues ventures across the line of appropriateness, the group acts as a coherent body and is self-censoring.

Regarding workplace rights, personally I have never felt as though I have been a victim of discrimination. Neither do I feel I have been party to any kind of "affirmative" action as it were. I have never felt any sense of resentment from colleagues at promotion time. Though they are aware I am more highly qualified. I find that it has been in many ways necessary to ensure that I am ALWAYS more highly qualified to ensure that my back is covered. That I have always felt this duty of proof is upon me I guess this is a legacy of the old Victorian gender demarcations.

Personally I am glad for the safety net of legal recourse, experience of which I have aplenty. And while education and reshaping of social conventions continues often the lessons come too slow and soft for some. On dit que l'hommes créent la loi et l'hommes enfreignent la loi - la lapalissade, je crois

 

[Sukerkin]

:chuckles: My schoolboy French is not all that 'fresh' my dear friend :lol:. Is your last there something along the lines of "men make the law and men break the law - this is self-evident I believe"? {I confess I had to look "lapalissade" up in one of my dictionaries }.

 

[Jenna]

:chuckles: My schoolboy French is not all that 'fresh' my dear friend :lol:. Is your last there something along the lines of "men make the law and men break the law - this is self-evident I believe"? {I confess I had to look "lapalissade" up in one of my dictionaries }.

And so is your own workplace environment merit-based or have you encountered gender discrimination?

On a side issue, women bosses under whose employ I have been have all had an intolerable affectation of machismo. While this I think is another legacy form of overcompensation coming from when things were more overtly discriminatory, I still am hearing about macho female bosses even now. I do not know why? It was a kind of role reversal where these senior female employees would be harsh and pass over other female employees. Maybe that is just my experience/

And but yes I had forgotten all about JAG. One of my favourites from way back! Oh and to translate clearly from my flawed grammar is admirably done Sir! And anyway, franglais is eternally sufficient I think for our jolly to those hypermarkets in Calais... Mais oui, mais oui as Delboy might have said .

 

[Sukerkin]

For most of my 'middle years' in employment I actually worked in an almost all female environment. So the only gender discrimination I encountered, as I said in a post a few days ago, was that at Xmas staff dances (being one of the very few men present) I had an awful lot of waltzing work to do between bites of festive fare . My present employment actually also has a refreshingly large representation of women these days, as young ladies have started to come into the engineering and IT fields in much greater numbers. Our team is not quite a fifty/fifty split but we'd only need another woman to join the team to make things nearly so.

My earliest employment tho' was VERY male dominated and testosterone fuelled as I trained to be a trader in the City. This was three decades back and the sexism was thick enough to cut with a knife, altho' things were just starting to get going in changing that corrosive atmosphere.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I don't see any differences. Nothing has really changed.

And as to the French, I love to massacre it. Relating to the above, Par ce qu'il toujuors la meme, quand vous cherchez la femme, eh?

 

[Carol]

As I like to say....Je parlez francais comme un vache espagnole ... and then even the Quebecois switch to English.

Loved the show JAG. My ex-husband's initials were JAG so we watched the show a lot.

As far as the differences with men and women, I'm not sure. I don't know if I'm just older, more crumudgeonly, and/or less naive.......but my last employer seemed to be a bit more down on women than other places I have worked, and I am(was?) in a field that is 90-95 percent male. I can't say it was horrible, I worked there for 5 years before going to something different...but it definitely seemed a bit less open-minded.

Discrimination can be an extremely complex matter. I think it has definitely helped me to be in an engineering field (or scientific/technical) because my skillset is more black and white than perhaps other lines of work. In my office we have two principal engineers that sit next to one another. One female, one male. One is white, the other is a person of color. One has a PhD, the other didn't go to college. And none of this matters because they are both excellent people that know their stuff and do their job well -- which is how it should be!

 

[Monroe]

For most of my 'middle years' in employment I actually worked in an almost all female environment.

I've always worked in male dominated environments. I'm okay as long as I know how to do my job, be polite and don't socialize (seems to lead to problems). The majority have common sense, but then there's always one idiot. I know everyone puts their foot in their mouth sometimes. So do I. But the world class idiots do things like cornering for conversations about how lonely they are on a daily basis. Kiss the top of my head to wish me happy b-day. The list of idiocy is long. It was worse for me when I first joined the workforce but it has gotten better. Had some problems recently, but it stood out more because it's been awhile since co-workers made me feel uncomfortable.