It's not progress. Every organization has "load bearing" employees that do the brunt of the real work, and everyone else just creates a cloud of confusion about what they actually do and why it's important. Most people are doing fake work. But unfortunately "fake work" jobs are the only way to fight back about the ever-optimizing, ever-extracting process of the free market. My job is needed because fuck you, I'm not going to be homeless. It's all a big game.
And with women, employers still haven't figured out how to afford women time for traditional responsibilities, like caring for their children, while still providing them with "equitable" workplace opportunities, while not being unfair to everyone else. Likely because it's just not possible. If I don't have kids and grind harder than women who take time to raise kids, why should we have equal opportunities? Makes you wonder if traditional gender roles were onto something. Yes we can do the same things, but no it is not wise to do so on a societal level.
It's all well and good to pretend that this is the case, but it isn't. Most jobs involve some obvious measure of progress. Especially under the umbrella of "service." Women disproportionately choose these jobs: nurses, servers, etc. Women are more educated, hell the last time I went to the doctor there was a resident, a nurse, and a doctor, all three where women.
There could be some jobs where it's hard to measure progress, like quality assurance, but these jobs have been looked at with ire by management for so long it's an old wives tale at this point.
What is likely more true, is that productivity varies between employees somewhat, and perhaps there are 2x employees. But, measuring relative productivity is much, much harder.
As someone who has done fake work knowingly, what do you say to me? That I was actually providing real progress, just that it was difficult to measure, and I am fooling myself? No, it was fake work, and I've seen many peers do the same over the years.
I would say your experience is your own but I am unable to judge the "usefulness" of it without specifics, and that is a subjective thing. What you might have decided is useless I might decide otherwise. What can be said for sure is the person paying you either thought it was useful or didn't care
You’ve slipped from “equitable opportunities” to “equal opportunities” - they aren’t the same thing, and we run the risk of setting up a strawman if we’re doing so.
No one who’s advocating for employees with children with benefits like subsidized childcare, flexible schedules for driving children to and from things, etc., is suggesting that everyone should somehow get “equal opportunities”, or is proposing an actual concrete definition of how that would work. (Would you require that all promotions be internally posted and limit the amount of opportunities people can apply to? No one would call that equitable - that would disadvantage people with, say, racist bosses wanting to switch orgs.)
> If I don't have kids and grind harder than women who take time to raise kids, why should we have equal opportunities?
they're not comparing vs people who are grinding. I think they just want some guarantee that they won't be discriminated against because of maternity leave. And that they'll have some kind of on-ramp for getting back into the workforce
Which is entirely doable and reasonable, just a question of whether corporations are held accountable here or not
And with women, employers still haven't figured out how to afford women time for traditional responsibilities, like caring for their children, while still providing them with "equitable" workplace opportunities, while not being unfair to everyone else. Likely because it's just not possible. If I don't have kids and grind harder than women who take time to raise kids, why should we have equal opportunities? Makes you wonder if traditional gender roles were onto something. Yes we can do the same things, but no it is not wise to do so on a societal level.