Red flag ...

Question

HelloDenying women opportunities because of their capacity to reproduce or because some people "have a problem" with powerful women raises the red flag of sexism. The glass ceiling metaphor now falls short in multiple respects. --- Can anyone try to paraphrase the 1st sentence for me?

Adrenochrome · Accepted Answer

This appears to be in regard to employing women. The idea of 'capacity to reproduce' is regarding employers not wanting to emply women who may wish to take time off from work to give birth. This is called 'maternity leave' and it varies from country to country. In the UK, a woman is allowed 6 months off work and the government pays about 75% of her wage during this time. However, she is not at work, so the employer gets 0% productivity from this person, and will often have to employ someone to do her job whilst she is absent. Some employers do not like this idea, so would rather employ a man.

With regard to 'raises the red flag of sexism', this is a difficult term. 'Red flag' refers to left wing political views, especially Communism. It is taken from the fact that during the Cold War, the major Communist countries (Russia and China) had national flags that were largely red. Communism is a dirty word to Capitalist business, and talked of in derogatory terms. In the 1960s and 1970s, Feminism appeared very strongly in the USA, UK and Europe. These were women who wanted equality with men in all aspects of life. This is reasonablr, however, they upset people by wanting it immediately - that is, firing men in high powered places and their replacement with women, who may not have the qualifications or experience.

I'll try to paraphrase the whole piece for you, though it is about ideas and as such is rather difficult to do.

Once again, the old problem of equality between the sexes arises, when establishments continue to deny women opportunties because of maternity leave laws or through fear of subservience to dominant women.

Hope this is useful

Newguest · Answer

Hi Adrenochrome

Thanks for paraphrasing, but didn't you omit the "raises the red flag of sexim" part?

cheers

Adrenochrome · Answer

I re-phrased it. I can't see my original post, but I think I used something like 'The age old problem'.

Newguest · Answer

OK. Thank you!

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