The idea that pudendas should remind of pre-pubescent girls is new and odd but not shaving hardly is.

* I have no idea when female depilation really started but surely it wasn’t entirely commonplace before the advent of safety razors….which does predate 1950 agreed.

On Saturday rumours circulated that some supporters at Bramall Lane would pay tribute to Evans with handclaps in the ninth and 35th minutes of the game (corresponding to his shirt number and goals he has scored this season). Apparently this was a damp squib with few taking part, but the fact it was suggested at all was because of the widespread support for a convicted rapist among the football fraternity.

Absence of widespread support is evidence of widespread support.

Sigh.

When footballers go to brothels, have women delivered to hotel rooms, visit lap-dancing clubs, or “harvest” local girls to line them up for group sex parties, it is not seen as evidence of misogyny.

Women who hang around hotels looking to pick up footballers are viewed as “goal-diggers” and groupies. Players view them with contempt and they are painted as slags who have no other purpose in life than to marry a rich man.

Perhaps it isn’t evidence of misogyny. Perhaps it’s evidence that young women offer sex to the males they perceive, however strangely, to have status in their society.

Yet, people – usually women – still do it, and there, essentially, is the root of the triple-whammy called the gender pay gap. First, careers are hurt even by short periods of leave, let alone a few years “out”. Second, the more limited work opportunities that this affords channel people who aren’t “committed to their careers” into less lucrative work in caring. Third, care paid for to allow someone to work tends to put downward pressure on the salaries of the other working people doing the caring.

In truth, what looks like a gender pay gap is really the gap between two currencies – the currency of money and the currency of care. The former is always prioritised, always at the expense of the latter. That, really, is where feminism came in.

So, yes, this is the cause of the gender pay gap:

Yet, people – usually women – still do it, and there, essentially, is the root of the triple-whammy called the gender pay gap. First, careers are hurt even by short periods of leave, let alone a few years “out”. Second, the more limited work opportunities that this affords channel people who aren’t “committed to their careers” into less lucrative work in caring. Third, care paid for to allow someone to work tends to put downward pressure on the salaries of the other working people doing the caring.

But then this?

In truth, what looks like a gender pay gap is really the gap between two currencies – the currency of money and the currency of care. The former is always prioritised, always at the expense of the latter. That, really, is where feminism came in.

That caring was, pre-feminism, more highly valued than the cash money stuff. That’s why half the species (defining which half of the species was the discriminatory part) dedicated their lives to it and the other half worked for cash to support them while they did so.

Indeed, it is precisely feminism which has marketised, commodified, this caring. For what is a demand for “affordable child care” but the commodification of the raising of children? What are old folk’s homes if not the commodification of caring for one’s parents?

The statistics show the corporation has 82 men in the top management grade with an average salary of £165,000, compared with 42 women on £148,000.

The difference in salary is not apparent in the grade below, with both genders being paid an average just over £99,000. But there are still more than double the number of male employees: 223 men compared with 111 women.

Across all levels, women are paid an average £5,000 less than men, earning £37,100 a year compared with £41,800.

Err, yes?

Men tend not to take 2-10 years out to raise the kiddies. More women than men do. Men thus dominate the top end of professions and careers where time served leads to promotion.

And?

Why are all the blockbuster art shows by men?

We’re great at celebrating famous male artists, but what about Bridget Riley, Rachel Whiteread, Sarah Lucas …

Because they’re crap.

Next?

This trend has accelerated as US public education has been cut to the bone – losing $258m in federal grant money in 2011-12 –

$250 million isn’t even a rounding error in an $800 billion budget.

For the vast majority of education spending in the US comes from local taxes: most often property taxes in a particular county or city provide the revenues for the schools in that district. With some top ups from State and Federal coffers to be sure.

As to cutting to the bone, how about these numbers?

That’s inflation adjusted to 2005 dollars.

In the last 22 years the total education budget for the US has roughly doubled. Even taking Baumol into account it’s very difficult to see that as “cut to the bone”. Especially as that is only public spending, does not include any private spending at all.

But then I guess pretty feminists don’t have to worry about anything as patriarchal as facts or numbers, do they?

“The revolution in gender roles is unfinished business,” said Nick Pearce, director of IPPR. “Women still shoulder the overwhelming burden of household tasks, particularly after they have had children. When they earn more, their bargaining power with their partners increases, so closing the gender pay gap would help. Universal childcare, rather than tax relief for nannies or cleaners, is also the best way forward for a family-friendly, more equal Britain.

Lordy be.

The gender pay gap is entirely the result of the different choices about childcare etc that men and women take after marriage/parturition.

You cannot therefore change those decisions by changing the pay gap, it all works entirely the other way around.

And what is this thing about universal child care? We already have that….all children are cared for. What is meant is that there should be some state provision of child care to all children. Which is an interesting sort of thing for a lefty to argue for.

We’ve got something that is normally done by parents for their own children and now we’re going to force it out of the household economy and into the wider one. In Marxist terms this is the commodification of childcare: commodification normally being thought a bad thing.

But there’s more to it than this as well. We have no magic box that says “free childcare”. All we have is the ability of young women to care for their own children or young women to care for other peoples’ children (it really won’t be young men: the paedophile scare will see to that). At which point we’ll end up with a class issue. For it will be the high flying career women in the middle and upper classes who get to palm their kids off onto the working class birds who will be staffing the child care centres.

The end result will actually be not dissimilar to the Upstairs Downstairs world of nannies. The working class woman will be looking after the kids of the upper. About the only real difference is that the sex life of that working class girl will not be monitored quite so obsessively (nor, to be fair, at quite so much risk from hubby or footman).

It’s entirely possible that this will be a better world even so. It’s just a very odd thing for a lefty to be arguing for.

Women earn less, own less, have less secure jobs, with three times more men than women earning in the top 10%.

Not quite true, the wealth distribution tips female: all those widows inheriting you see?

But more importantly, as every damn advertiser in the land knows, women control some 80% of the spending. Because, and I know this is an amazing insight, the standard human unit is the family. In a number of gloriously different forms, agreed, not rigidly bound by gender, permanence or role. But we do tend to, just quite naturally (it’s this being mammals thing, see?) meet up, settle down and share out the roles of production and deciding upon consumption.

The pay gap has narrowed annually for a generation, though women still earn 15.5% less than men.

And Polly is still using the wrong numbers. Here’s the actual numbers.

For full timers it’s under 10% now. For part timers women earn more than men.

Sexist remarks and wolf-whistles could become criminal offences

PM to announce today that UK will sign up to Council of Europe’s convention on violence against women, which could mean criminalising unwanted verbal conduct

It’s OK, yes, I do understand, randomly shouting about the perkiness or not of passing women in the street is impolite, certainly I understand that it can hurt the feelings of those shouted at.

Yet there’s a standard we need to reach before we criminalise something. A standard perhaps of actual harm being done. And we’ve plenty of laws which can be used to bang up someone who has done someone actual harm. So no, not in favour of this.

On the other hand, I think we all know that it’s not unusual for young women to comment upon the size and or girth of the male appendage: either from direct knowledge or simply as an insult without such direct knowledge. Such would, of course, be just as much a sexist remark as commenting upon the size and or shape of a woman’s breasts.

And of course we know that such a new law will be rigorously and equally applied, do we not?

In fact, I have a feeling that such a law rigorously applied would make certain Guardian columns illegal in themselves. You know, the ones where it’s all men and testosterone that cause all the problems?

Which leads to an amusing thought for a Thursday morning. We need a lawyer who understands this stuff and a rich person who would enjoy throwing a few rhetorical and legal hand grenades at the social left.

As and when the law comes in, monitor the usual suspects (BBC, G, Indy, Staggers) and when we comes across anti-male sexist remarks then we report them, bring private prosecutions, insist that the Met investigate, whatever the form is.

In short, we take the law seriously and impose it upon all.

Fun, eh?

Women in the west still don’t have equal pay – in Britain we’re getting 75p in the pound,

More women than men work part time. Thus, not unnaturally, the portion of wages paid to men is higher than that paid to women.

And as the ONS repeatedly tries to point out, when you adjust for education, years in the workforce etc, there doesn’t actually seem to be much of a gender pay gap at all. And when you don’t adjust for all of that, when you look purely at age groups, younger women get more than younger men, part time women get more than part time men.

Then there’s this from Jenni Murray:

And now, as the cost of childcare rockets – rising above the rate of inflation – “having it all” gets even harder.

Yes, childcare will rise faster than inflation. Because, rare years aside, wages rise faster than inflation and the costs of childcare are largely wages.

And there’s not really a cure for this problem either. Unless you reduce the amount of labour being used to care for children of course.

Like most gender differences in outcomes, there only ever seems to be concern when women are under-represented in fields like politics, and never any concern when men are under-represented for outcomes like bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, doctor’s degrees, graduate school enrollment, biology degrees, veterinary degrees, optometry degrees, pharmacy degrees, etc. The only exceptions are when the outcomes are negative like prison populations, learning disabilities, occupational injuries and fatalities, motorcycle injuries and fatalities, suicides and drug addiction and then there is no concern about female under-representation.

The comments will further shine a spotlight on how few senior women there are in the Government. There are currently five women members of the Cabinet.

Mrs Mensch said the need to look after her children meant she would not devote herself entirely to a Cabinet job. She said: “I don’t have any ambitions to be a senior politician at all, to be in the Cabinet, whatsoever.

Sexism is the stock in trade of the tabloid press. Challenging it strikes at the very core of the business model, and that is what feminists and our allies must remain brave and clear-headed enough to do.

No, it isn’t. It just isn’t.

For a basic fact about the media world that Ms. Penny needs to understand.

Newspapers, TV shows, magazines, they do not tell us our prejudices, do not force those of the journalists or proprietor or business model upon us.

They chase those that are already extant.

That’s what the business model is. Yes, I’m sure it’s a shock to find out that there are millions who think the way the Mail does. Millions who take the Sun because they are interested in a bit of gung ho nationalism, bad puns, bare tits and three letter crossword answers. That the paid circulation of Tribune shows that there’s some four people in the entire country interested in the internal machinations of Left Labour.

But that is what the actual situation is. The problem is in us, if problem it be, not in our newspapers.

She added: “This ‘sexualisation’ process objectifies women and girls, and grooms boys and men into thinking it is acceptable to view and treat women and girls as sex objects. This portrayal of women is incompatible with a socially responsible press.”

We do not want a socially responsible press. We want a free press.

As free of my prejudices about what makes a socially responsible press as it is from your.

When it’s men puffing out their chests, doing the peacock strut, this is macho and bad. When it’s women thinking about their titties this is a terribly important matter of body image.

Why is it that exactly the same thing, standard gender behaviour, is good when done by one gender and bad when done by the other?

“Anyone who has ever seen a sonogram or has spent even an hour with a textbook on embryology knows” that pro-life women are on to something when they recoil at the idea of the “disposable fetus.” Hmmmm… that must be why most OB-GYNs are pro-choice…..

Ob/Gyn, in the modern world, involves performing abortions. It would be unlikely for someone to enter that profession without being in favour of their sometimes being performed.

Amongst the young it is in favour of women now. Overall it is in favour of men but that’s down to two things.

1) Overall is comparing women in their 50s etc, people who did not receive the same education or career opportunities as the men of their age group. This is a problem that will be solved simply by time.

2) Motherhood. The pay gap appears at the average age of primagravidae. We don’t actually have a gender pay gap any more. We have a motherhood pay gap. To change this you’re going to have to change biology and good luck with that in a mammalian species.

So, can we please decalre this problem over and get on with solving some of the others that plague us?

I’m afraid that I have to admit to be a dreadful sexist on this matter. It’s true, I do hurl the epithets around, quite delight in insulting, using Anglo-Saxon.

But the insults direct are almost always reserved for men. Where they are aimed at women they are much more gentle (no problem with calling Huhne a twat but Polly is going to be a trout).

So, there we have it, I’m a sexist I’m afraid. I insult women less and more gently just because they’re women.

Because childcare responsibilities still fall on women, women with children take low-paid, opportunity-free part-time work, and suffer economically and, presumably, spiritually.

It’s spiritual suffering to take care of your own children now, is it?