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>if you start giving men maternity leave in the same way as women

I agree.

>Normal banter between men about women kept on the "acceptable in a sitcom" when not directed at any specific women, in my view is not sexual harassment, but clearly some people disagree with that.

I definitely disagree with that at work. If you want to discuss your sexuality, comment on people's body parts, or articulate your unified theory on the differences in the natures of men and women, get some friends. People have to work in order to eat - allow women (and men) to get through it without having to constantly bite their tongues or else be seen as the problem. We've made a decision as a society that racial, sexual and religious discrimination are problems at work. Find another subject.

> allow women (and men) to get through it without having to constantly bite their tongues or else be seen as the problem

Right. Bite my tongue and put on the kid gloves. Wouldn't want to discuss last nights episode of Game of Thrones in the break room, less be seen as a sexist jerk. People do have friends at work, and normal human interactions do take place there.

People also have sex with people they know from work. Should they have it at work? If you can't find something to talk about at work other than how hot some naked woman on tv was last night, they're not giving you enough to do.

If your friends at work refuse to meet you away from work for your crucial sex talk, they may be uncomfortable with it too. If your self-righteousness is because you feel put upon by not being able to say what you want when you want, I entirely lack sympathy.

>If your friends at work refuse to meet you away from work for your crucial sex talk, they may be uncomfortable with it too.

If someone is uncomfortable with something they should speak up. If someone says they are uncomfortable with something that should be respected (within reason).

Its not that hard when everyone just behaves as adults instead of spoiled sheltered children who cannot communicate with each other

I can't imagine why people wouldn't want to speak up so other people can judge whether or not their discomfort qualifies as "reasonable" eyeroll

I only said that because you can't prevent all discomfort to everyone. Its not possible and there's a good chance fixing one persons discomfort will just make someone else uncomfortable, hence within reason.

And even so they should still speak up. Even if someone has some unreasonable discomfort (ie it makes me uncomfortable when you wear red) it may be so minor that it can easily be avoided. You couldn't expect people to not wear red, but if a co-worker said that to me i'd probably just try to not wear red.

Without communicating/talking about it, reasonable or not, there is absolutely no chance of the situation getting better.

If you can't discuss last night's episode of GoT without being seen as a sexist jerk, you might be a sexist jerk. The fact you keep suggesting you have to "put on kid gloves" suggests you might be a sexist jerk.

More of an insensitive libertine than a sexist. I cannot control what other people say, think or do. I can only control how I react to those situations. This makes it crucial to self sensor being offended more than being offensive. I agree with a lot of what this thread is about, but also am aware that overcompensation is also present. Being offended to a point as to intend to change someones behavior is a form of exerting moral authority. It is rare that this is not itself a form of discrimination. "I have zero tolerance for intolerant people."

I agree there is a place and time for everything. However, true friends are rarely made in polite company. I prefer to work with friends.

Well, if the comments are not different for men and women - as in, you're not actually trying to say something not in the words (winkwink) and it's appropriate for the level of relation, and if you respect if someone tells you some comment was not so great, you should be fine with most woman of the technical inclination, I'd say.

It's a subtle thing, really. One person can make remarks about women and shoes and it's funny because we know that's not his real opinion, another does it and it's offensive because he thinks it's true. It really is about what your real opinions and intentions are.

It really is about what your real opinions and intentions are.

Perhaps step one should be "find out their real opinion and intention". But too often people just go straight to "thermo-nuclear melt down".

>To their detriment.

In a world where sexism is still a huge problem, it seems that forcing students into a monosexual environment would only contribute to stunting their social development even more. Compare, for example, the relative incidence of sexism in a heavily male field like programming or philosophy with the amount of sexism in a gender-integrated field like biology.

This idea of separating students by gender to increase performance is really treating them like little test-taking machines: students, by and large, do not choose to take gender-segregated courses unless their parents require it of them. They're human beings. They have a fundamental right to develop in a natural social environment. And, like it or not, schools provide a large proportion of a child's social interaction, which isn't going to change anytime soon.

But most importantly, any improvements are highly controversial and tend to disappear once researchers attempt to correct for confounding.

"The Pseudoscience of Single-sex Schooling", Halpern et al, Science 2011: http://womenstudies.wisc.edu/documents/ScienceSingle-sex09-2...

The most successful school systems in the world, in Northern Europe and East Asia, are all coeducational. There are also a whole lot of interventions that don't require such drastic measures. Cracked of all publications wrote a surprisingly well-researched article on the subject:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19254_5-surprisingly-easy-way...

Using a microphone and turning on the lights is a far less severe encroachment on students' freedom than, well, segregation. Seriously.

The reason I did not link to a specific article is that there are so many on both sides of the debate. However, my experience and the experience of my female friends that underwent similar education are all positive on both sides. Also, I am willing to bet that the top US schools are mostly private and mostly single-sex or segregated. They are in my area.

Well, the choice doesn't have to be between a good single-sex school or a crappy co-ed school.

> Being a women of breading age, she was specifically asked if she intended to have children in the next 5 years which was a non-starter. These were small firms that couldn't afford to have a junior partner off for maternity leave

That's sexism, plain and simple. Who are they to assume she's going to take extended maternity leave and be the primary care giver? They would never ask that of a man (most male law partners are married and have kids), because they would as assume that his wife would take care of the kids. That's sexism.

What is sexist, the fact that men and women handle the work/home balance in very different ways, or the company's recognition of that fact?

The company's assumption that the stereotype of how women handle work life balance applies to any specific woman. That's pretty much the definition of sexism. Also, the fact that a company would never ask if a man had any time consumer hobbies or other sorts of things that might prevent them giving 100% to their jobs, because when kids and women aren't involved, companies generally assume that their employees are grownups and can balance their various obligations like grownups.

If I had any other time-consuming hobby and started phoning it in at work, the company could tell me I may be dismissed if I don't shape up. Only parents get the nuclear option, and thankfully most of them don't abuse the possibility very heavily.

That's because parenthood ensures that companies have future customers, while hobbies don't. Facebook stock isn't worth much if all the 13-25 year olds that buy the crap advertisers peddle on it is a shrinking demographic!

Whether employees of a particular company have children or not is irrelevant to demographics on the national scale.

By that metric, car insurance companies are also sexist - they charge individual men more because stereotypically men are riskier. Of course, that stereotype is based on data, but so is the stereotype that women take more time off when they have children.

Why is it legal to discriminate based on data in some situations but not others? I think the only solution is to remove the logical justification for discrimination: force men and women to take equal parental leave.

I have always wondered if insurance companies had the data to show that people of Asian decent (for example) have more car accidents, could they jack up their insurance premiums?

No. That would be racist. There are all sorts of protected groups. Men is not one of them.

discrimination based on sex for insurance is now unlawful in the UK, as of last year.

as a result car insurance prices for women increased significantly, while mens remained the same.

additionally annuity rates for men dropped, while those for women remained the same (the provider is no longer allowed to factor in that men on average die several years earlier).

That annuity case is batshit-crazy, IMO. Sad that we've gone so far in the chase for fairness that we demand equality in the name of fairness in cases where it makes no sense.

I'm all for fairness. Equal is not fair in all cases, nor is fair equal in all cases...

As this Hungarian illustrates, getting the government involved to guarantee these sorts of "anti-discrimination" rules can lead to a very bad outcome: http://www.arcticstartup.com/2012/01/09/this-is-why-i-dont-g... (Too bad the guy's blog has died, he had some more good rants on it that made me very glad not to live in Hungary.)

I looked up Hungarian laws, and the problem is not the government involvement, but that there is a huge difference between maternity and paternity leave (3 years vs 5 days). This somehow doesn't fit "anti-discrimination", as it's quite the opposite.

Every study I've seen on outcomes either finds no effect or a negative effect for boys' performance in all-male schooling. It is beneficial to girls, but currently in America all students, boys and girls, perform better when there are more girls in the classroom.