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9th January 2020, 06:10 | #31 | |
BHPian Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Southern Calif.
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| Re: Formal email communication : "Dear Sir/Madam" or "Dear Colleagues"? Quote:
http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/u..._bbmp_meet.jpg Last edited by GutsyGibbon : 9th January 2020 at 06:18. | |
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9th January 2020, 07:11 | #32 | |
Distinguished - BHPian | Re: Formal email communication : "Dear Sir/Madam" or "Dear Colleagues"? Quote:
I have been working for almost forty years for a number of different companies across the globe. To date I have had only two female (executive) managers. I have been on the board of seven different companies in four different countries. On none of these boards were any of the members female. It is actually one of the reasons that my home country The Netherlands is scoring relatively low. Despite several covenants and good intentions very little females make it to executive and or board room level in the Netherlands. So now the discussion is about making a certain gender ratio obligatory by law. I am not in favor of those sort of measures, but everything else has failed. Jeroen | |
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9th January 2020, 09:08 | #33 |
BHPian | Re: Formal email communication : "Dear Sir/Madam" or "Dear Colleagues"? Some members just don't get the memo do they? Expecting everything to turn upside down in India within 2 decades. My own extended family. Only 10% of women in my parents' generation are educated with a minimum of bachelor's degree. The ones with college education were brought up in an urban environment. One of my aunt's has a master's and was employed with Citibank in late nineties. She left her job post marriage. But has done a phenomenal job in raising 2 kids, who are now well educated and financially independent. Now I'm not saying that all women need to follow that, because my own mom is still employed and will retire soon, and she too has been successful in her duties as a mother of two. What I mean to say is try taking the lower, middle and upper middle class into consideration and you'll find a whole lot of women like the above two examples. In my generation? Every cousin sister of mine holds a minimum of bachelor's degree and more than 40% of them have a master's. There had been and still is a mentality that women need to take a backseat post marriage, and hence you'd find such results in equality and economic rankings. Then you have men sitting in the boardrooms who have been brought up in households with such mentality. Hopefully the number of such men should go down in the next 2 decades. The landscape in these 3 sub classes is changing and with time women will definitely come to the forefront. And no amount of laws, quotas and research and rankings would bring about gender equality if the same isn't instilled by parents and education at a younger age. By now it should be clear that members are aware of gender inequality in our country and all members are for equality. Please refrain from making rubbing in one's nose kind of posts about the same. |
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9th January 2020, 17:22 | #34 | |
Distinguished - BHPian | Re: Formal email communication : "Dear Sir/Madam" or "Dear Colleagues"? Quote:
My daughter is pregnant of our very first grand child, it is a girl. My wife and I are thrilled. Both my daughter and son in law will be sharing the bringing up of their daughter. So both are going to adjust their working hours, work less, so both get a substantial role to play in looking after their child, whilst allowing the other also to pursue a professional career. My son in law is going to be a very hands on daddy. Absolutely true that parents and education plays a huge role. Since the 1900 it has been well established that general prosperity for all in a nation depends on three main factors: equality for all, easy access to good education and easy access to healthcare. The countries which tend to be ahead in the afore mentioned list tend to have been working on that for many decades. There is another annually produced report about the happiest nations in the world. Check it out and you will see the correlation between gender equality and happiness. I really would not dare to make a guess on where India would be in two decades. India has a hugely impressive track record in making massive changes and or adapting to new things. Look what happened with telecom in the space of two decades. From a small number of people having a fixed line to almost everybody a mobile phone and quite a few mobile internet to boot. The growth of Indian middle class in the last two decades is very impressive, economic growth etc etc. But gender equality is a very different matter altogether. It touches the basis foundation of what makes up individuals and society. It is almost like a religion, people do not change and or adjust their religious outlook very easily. In fact amidst a society that is increasingly changing rapidly people often tend to dig in their heels and stick to what they know, to what they are comfortable with. Its where people start referring to what is wrong about modern society and it is destroying (family) values etc. I am not convinced that all members on this thread are aware about gender equality. Nor do they understand the importance. Some do, some do not. Some think they do, but really they dont or partially at best. It is not unique to India. You can take any country on that list and the same applies to just about every nation to a more or lesser extend. The report actually has dedicated quite a bit of text to predicting the closure of the gender gap per region. The best region, western Europe will still take more than fifty years! The other are decades behind in closing the gap. So I will be posting on this particular topic for decades to come it appears. Jeroen Last edited by Jeroen : 9th January 2020 at 17:30. | |
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9th January 2020, 23:20 | #35 | ||
BHPian | Re: Formal email communication : "Dear Sir/Madam" or "Dear Colleagues"? Quote:
Agree with the rest. Quote:
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13th January 2020, 12:17 | #36 |
BHPian Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Bangalore
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| Re: Formal email communication : "Dear Sir/Madam" or "Dear Colleagues"? Earlier it was the right that were notorious for imposing their world view on the rest of us who were non-conforming to the standards they thought were "essential" to the "well-being" of the society. Now thing have changed and the progressives are taking it up on them to tell the rest of us what to do, what to speak and how to think. Well, there is nothing wrong if somebody wants to be politically incorrect, but you should not expect everybody around you to act like how you do. And if you get offended when you hear something politically incorrect, then it is you who needs help. The job of the social justice warriors is to find social issues even where none exists. Then they manufacture data to support their claims. They claim that there is a gender pay gap when none exists. Employers would be happy to recruit only women if they can pay them less than equal work. Truth is, people are paid for the work they do and you should look at it from an individual perspective than putting people in gender buckets and claim that some buckets are being discriminated. Should I mow 50% of the lawn and save the rest for my spouse to achieve equality? Equality is a myth. No two people can perform a task with equal outcomes/outputs. What we need to do is remove laws, customs, stigmas that prevent groups from taking part. Equality of outcome is never achievable. Even the communists with an iron hand could not achieve it. Last edited by civic-sense : 13th January 2020 at 12:20. |
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13th January 2020, 12:32 | #37 | ||||
Senior - BHPian | Re: Formal email communication : "Dear Sir/Madam" or "Dear Colleagues"? Salutations are indeed a hot topic in the US - People have been fired over issues which we would not even consider issues. Take the case of a stack exchange moderator who.. Quote:
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Ultimately this lead to a huge outcry, and things were settled. The person who fired agreed to drop the suit, and they were allowed to reapply for the job https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/1...e_controversy/ I hope this gives some context to why First world nations are taking an extremely kid glove approach to this issue. This is sort of the "contents of this cup are hot" which are very prevalent in the US, but are considered silly in india. | ||||
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13th January 2020, 16:32 | #38 | |
Distinguished - BHPian | Formal email communication : "Dear Sir/Madam" or "Dear Colleagues"? Quote:
In many countries, by law, companies themselves have to report on pay gap. Here an article showing where the UK is, based on company self reporting of pay gap. The short story: pay gap exists in 3 out of 4 companies. Nobody thought that up, that is how the companies report it themselves. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47672106 The BBC itself by the way has been in the news on the very same topic. Big gender pay gap. Only a few weeks ago a UK court convicted the BBC in a particular case on gender pay gap. Gender pay gap is like climate change. It exits, it is real, we can measure it. I see some examples in this thread on how some of these sort of topics apparently go to far. I am hundred percent sure they exist. On gender pay gap, on gender equality, on LGBT etc. I can give you examples too, where in my mind people have taken it way to far. These are big changes and people/society needs to adjust and that does not happen overnight. Nor is it painless and mistakes will happen. Some silly, some disastrous. It is good to reflect and have laugh about it as people struggle with it. If you want to have a very good laugh about it read Ben Elton’s latest Identity Crisis. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/sh...dentity-crisis But examples should not distract from the real issue at hand, they should never be used to stop driving change. Individual examples can not hide the fact that on all of these equality issues the world at large, including India, has a long way to go. None of these inequality issues are particular western, they are found globally in every country on this planet. Some countries are ahead of addressing these issues compared to others. Again, those countries that have been working consistently on reducing inequality across society over the last decades typically do better as a nation in terms of overall prosperity, happiness, general well being etc. there are exceptions to that rule some might want to quote. But the underlying trend is very clear. Jeroen Last edited by Jeroen : 13th January 2020 at 16:48. | |
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13th January 2020, 17:14 | #39 | ||
BHPian Join Date: Nov 2019 Location: Toronto
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| Re: Formal email communication : "Dear Sir/Madam" or "Dear Colleagues"? Quote:
India is not at all LGBT friendly, I have friends from the community and this view is unanimous. You make sane points but the unconscious bias is strong here. People base their opinions on feminism Gays and the trans community based on memes, twitter screenshots and outlier behavior. Apparently demanding social justice and equality is a bad thing now. Quote:
Literally the most bigoted post I've read here. There is a gender pay gap but it's more of a motherhood penalty. If you have Netflix, check out this show Explained and find the episode. This is exactly how propaganda works, you saw some silly screenshot of a tweet and now all SJW's are bad. "Now thing have changed and the progressives are taking it up on them to tell the rest of us what to do" - Pray tell what has anyone asked you to do. Like literally this is becoming a MGTOW forum. Last edited by AZT : 13th January 2020 at 17:16. | ||
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13th January 2020, 17:31 | #40 |
Distinguished - BHPian | Formal email communication : "Dear Sir/Madam" or "Dear Colleagues"? Motherhood certainly has a role to play in gender pay gap. I earlier referred to this exact issue in my home country the Netherlands. Unfortunately, it is not the only reason. The reasons driving gender pay gap are quite well understood. As you say, a lot of it is down to bias, some conscious, some unconscious. Also, the mechanism to reduce the gap are well tested and proven. Look at Belgium, Iceland. But this motherhood is something that is keeping them from pursuing a career and is one of the reasons we see relatively few women in top managerial positions and company boards across the world. Last edited by Jeroen : 13th January 2020 at 17:33. |
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13th January 2020, 17:47 | #41 | |
BHPian Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Bangalore
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| Re: Formal email communication : "Dear Sir/Madam" or "Dear Colleagues"? Quote:
The operative phrase here is "equal pay for equal work". While it is not true for all professions, it is true that equality does not exist anywhere. Not just on pay but on work too. I used to work in an IT company whose evening bus drops start at 5pm all the way up to 8pm. On the odd day I took the 5pm bus, I would be sitting in a bus full of women. In the 8pm bus there is hardly any women. Now analyse that data. You can interpret that data in any way you want. But as an agenda driven activist, I say that it indicates that men are either lazy or incompetent that they cannot finish their work at 5pm and leave for home. Gender pay gap surveys are skewed. They report the amount of money they were paid, not what resulted in that pay. So you average the pay by men and women and cry discrimination. Coming back, do this thought experiment. Imagine you are running a startup and want to hire a programmer. You have two resumes in front of you, one man and one woman, everything else "equal". Whom would you hire? Its a no brainier - hire the woman so that you can get away with paying her less, right? Wait, now aren't you discriminating against men? Or maybe choosing the option that is better for your business does not constitute discrimination, doesn't it? Or just hire the man cos law says that you cannot discriminate? Back to the same question - is there one good reason why somebody would pay a woman less for equal amount of work? Last edited by civic-sense : 13th January 2020 at 17:50. | |
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13th January 2020, 19:19 | #42 | |
Distinguished - BHPian | Formal email communication : "Dear Sir/Madam" or "Dear Colleagues"? Quote:
Actually, most people would argue and know women need to ghome because they have so much responsibilities and duties outside their work then men. Lots of research around the world shows women take care of at least, but not necessarily limited to the following chores Weekly clean 2 Daily clean 3 Vacuuming 4 Cleaning kitchen/bathroom 5 Heavy duty kitchen cleaning (oven/fridge) 6 Tidying up 7 Washing clothes 8 Washing bedding 9 Changing sheets 10 Ironing 11 Managing the family budget 12 Organising car insurance 13 Organising home insurance 14 Organising payment of utility bills 15 Liaising with school/nursery over everyday issues 16 Liaising with school/nursery over trips 17 Being the first person called if there's a problem at school/nursery 18 Packing schoolbags 19 Doing/supervising homework 20 Arranging childcare 21 Arranging applications for primary/secondary school 22 Arranging play dates 23 Taking children to clubs 24 Organising birthday parties 25 Buying clothes 26 Organising Diwali, Holi, Christmas etc 27 Buying family presents/cards 28 Managing doctor/dentist/optician appointments 29 Looking after children at evenings and weekends 30 Preparing activities for your patner to look after the children at evenings and weekends 31 Reading bedtime stories 32 Looking after poorly children 33 Taking time off work to look after poorly children 34 Settling children that wake in the night 35 Organising birthday presents for family members 36 Booking holidays 37 look after parents 38 look after parents in law It depends a bit on how you count and there is some regional/cultural aspects to it. But all these sort of typical women chores amount up to at least 15-25 hours per week on average. Men generally do stuff like putting the garbage out, bit of home DIY. No wonder women need to leave at 5pm. To be frank I am surprised you even brought it up. Shows I am still learning too. Never assume the obvious. Most gender gap surveyS are normalized, typically for normal working week number of hours. So it is not the amount of hours that is a factor. But being the one that has so much to do after work is definitely a factor why fewer women make it into senior positions. Typically that requires long hours at odd hours and a very high degree of constant availability to the organization. Easy if you have a partner who does your meals, your laundry, makes your bed, cleans your house, raises your kids and looks after her and your parents. Not so easy if you have to combine it all. And it shows in just about every country in the world. And yes, endless research in any country, has shown that men, consciously or unconsciously are biassed and will pay women less for the same job. The good news, this is one aspect of gender equality that can be improved upon fairly quickly. Look up Belgium gender pay and you will see. It also addresses the earlier bias I mentioned. Enjoy Jeroen Last edited by Jeroen : 13th January 2020 at 19:25. | |
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