{"id":10506,"date":"2016-03-30T23:57:24","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T21:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feministeerium.ee\/?p=10506"},"modified":"2024-05-16T19:49:18","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T17:49:18","slug":"arguing-with-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/arguing-with-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Arguing with Women"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A lonely dispatch from Estonia\u2019s only feminist.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I never had a sister. I\u2019m told this is why I don\u2019t understand women.<\/p>\n<p>A business group I\u2019m a part of recently organized an event for their female membership: a fashion show. Had they asked me \u2013 they didn\u2019t \u2013 I would have told them the event would do nothing to help women be taken seriously. I mean, why not have a quilting bee or a pole dancing class?<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Given the fact that salaries for Estonian women are 30 percent lower on average than salaries for Estonian men, it seems to me that women ought to exert effort to be taken more seriously.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-40221\" src=\"https:\/\/feministeerium.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/vello-vikerkaar2-1-190x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"295\" height=\"465\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/vello-vikerkaar2-1-190x300.jpg 190w, https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/vello-vikerkaar2-1-45x71.jpg 45w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 295px) 100vw, 295px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I suggested an alternative event to the business group: Bring in a high-flying salary negotiator to teach Estonian women how to approach their bosses and demand more money. After all, the most-cited reason for women being paid less is the fact that they don\u2019t ask for it. But the idea didn\u2019t get much traction.<\/p>\n<p>Passing through Viru Keskus the other day, I came upon a photo (on the right) of Estonian state prosecutor Kati Reitsak. It was part of an exhibition of the best press photos of 2015. The caption noted that despite Reitsak\u2019s pleasant appearance, she was actually qualified for her job. In Canada, Justin Trudeau himself would lead the charge to tear down that poster. But in Estonia? Not so much.<\/p>\n<p>A friend puts it this way: \u201cI&#8217;ve given up on the argument for equal pay for women in the workplace in Estonia, as I find the people I end up arguing with are mostly women. I think their ideal workplace has women doing all the work except IT support, and a dumb, handsome male boss taking credit for their work, plus flirting with them. Perhaps it&#8217;s a part of Estonian femininity that they insist on having a guy to defer to even if he&#8217;s incompetent?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5444\" style=\"width: 959px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5444\" class=\"wp-image-5444 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/feministeerium.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/vello-vikerkaar.jpg\" alt=\"vello vikerkaar\" width=\"949\" height=\"297\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/vello-vikerkaar.jpg 949w, https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/vello-vikerkaar-600x188.jpg 600w, https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/vello-vikerkaar-300x94.jpg 300w, https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/vello-vikerkaar-768x240.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 949px) 100vw, 949px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5444\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Close-up of the text<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A lonely dispatch from Estonia\u2019s only feminist. I never had a sister. I\u2019m told this is why I don\u2019t understand women. A business group I\u2019m a part of recently organized an event for their female membership: a fashion show. Had they asked me \u2013 they didn\u2019t \u2013 I would have told them the event would do nothing to help women be taken seriously. I mean, why not have a quilting bee or a pole dancing class?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5460,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1673,393],"tags":[535],"class_list":["post-10506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","category-uncategorized","tag-gender-wage-gap"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10506"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40225,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10506\/revisions\/40225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}