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DM: There's a filthy beggar pleading for alms beside the entrance to the brothel.
SIR LORIC, LAWFUL GOOD PALADIN: Keeping my eyes averted from the harlots and brazen strumpets in the brothel, I walk over to give the beggar thirteen pieces of his majesty's finest electrum.
DERSINS, CHAOTIC NEUTRAL MAGIC USER: I cast Bigby's Interposing Hand between the Paladin and the beggar.
DM: *rolls some dice* Sorry, Sir Loric, but you can't get to the beggar.
SIR LORIC: Dude, what the fuck?
DERSINS: I'm fucking with you. *shrugs* Dude, I'm Chaotic Neutral-- I can't help it.
To be fair, it's hard to tell where the rug ends and the Reynolds begins, so the true level of nakedness is up for debate.
In 2005, the Geneva-based World Economic Forum published a study entitled Women’s Empowerment: Measuring the Gender Gap. Using five critical areas, this study quantified the achievements that women in fifty-eight different countries have attained compared to their male counterparts. The five criteria defined by the study were economic participation representing the principle 'equal remuneration for equal work'; economic opportunity through access to the general labour market rather than low-paid, unskilled jobs; political empowerment reflecting the extent to which women are represented in decision-making structures; educational attainment including access to education at all levels; and over-all health and well-being including access to reproductive healthcare. The report also states, “The survey also provides rare information on issues such as childcare availability and cost, the impact of maternity laws on the hiring of women, the prevalence of private sector employment of women and wage inequality.I'm not sure where you're from, but here's the summary of the North American section of the 2007 report. To understand this you'll have to know that a ranking of 1 equals gender equality and 0 equals gender inequality and most rankings are in the middle somewhere. The US does not rank in the top ten countries for gender equality.
The United States’ performance was mixed over the last year and resulted in a small overall drop in its rank, from 23 in 2006 to 31 in 2007 (29 among the original 115 countries). The percentage of female legislators, senior officials and managers fell from 46% to 42% and the scores received on wage equality for similar work fell from 0.68 to 0.64. These two decreases were only partially offset by the increase in the ratio of women and men’s labour force participation rates (this grew from 0.82 to 0.86), resulting in an overall drop in the United States’ score on the economic participation and opportunity subindex, which in turn pulled down the United States’ overall score and rank on the Index. While the United States’ performance on political empowerment is suboptimal (it ranks 69 out of the 128 countries in the Index), there has been an increase in the percentage of women in parliamentary positions in the latest available data. Canada continues to show a similar performance as that of last year, ranking well on economic participation and opportunity (13) and educational attainment (26), and performing above average on political empowerment (36) and health and survival (51).This doesn't mean that if you and I were trying to get a job and you got it and I didn't that you got it because of some sort of "male privilege advantage" but just like a coin toss over and over and over, where the odds should be 50/50 if there's really no such thing as gender advantage, the stats keep showing that there are specific economic and political and health advantages to being male. You may not feel them personally or may have other mitigating circumstances where you yourself are not a person of privilege, but the data indicates that the coin toss situation we should be seeing isn't what we are seeing.
posted by burnmp3s at 11:48 AM on December 11, 2008 [9 favorites]