{"id":21387,"date":"2021-09-02T09:00:20","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T16:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=21387"},"modified":"2021-09-02T14:49:11","modified_gmt":"2021-09-02T21:49:11","slug":"lets-talk-2-0-the-fight-for-equal-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2021\/09\/02\/lets-talk-2-0-the-fight-for-equal-pay\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Talk 2.0<\/em>: The fight for equal pay"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently watched a really good movie. It\u2019s called We Want Sex<\/em>. Yeah, that\u2019s right: We Want Sex<\/em>. When I first read the title, I wasn\u2019t tempted at all. I thought \u201cGosh, this is just another Bad Teacher<\/em> kind of movie where they reduce females to an object.\u201d But because I got annoyed, I actually got interested and read the movie’s description.<\/p>\n

The description didn’t have anything to do with females wanting sex; it detailed how the movie is about how females want equality. I get it, though: the title probably sells. But what\u2019s even more interesting is that this title gets only used in Europe. In other countries the movie is called Made in Dagenham<\/em>. Is it just so common to be sexist in Europe or is it just the word \u201csex\u201d that scares other cultures off? (Maybe that\u2019s a topic we can dive into some other time.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Let’s Talk 2.0<\/em> is a column exploring feminist issues (graphic by Celina Lessard\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But today I want to write about the super-cool figures in We Want Sex<\/em>, which is actually based on a true story. Just imagine this: it’s 1968 and even though we’re allowed to wear pants, we are certainly still not allowed to do a whole lot of other stuff. For example, if a female wants to work, they have to ask their husband for permission. Yep, like teenage life, but for real.<\/p>\n

But sometimes a small group of people can make a difference: for example, as this movie highlights, on June 7, 1968, 187 women working for Ford (out of over 55,000 employees) managed to stop production by striking for equal pay at the Dagenham Factory. As simple as that, the male managers got reminded that even if there aren’t many, female employees, and the knowledge they hold, are important to the company. The managers were outraged by the women calling for equal pay and recognition. And it was also an issue of social status, because once the women stopped working, their husbands got blamed for it. It’s not a stretch to imagine a neighbour or co-worker saying, \u201cDon\u2019t you have your wife under control, Mate?\u201d to a husband of a protesting female factory worker at the time.<\/p>\n

So imagine the pressure on those brave women who were risking their jobs and their social lives. But while these women won equal pay and we are grateful for the opportunity they gave us, equal pay still doesn’t exist in many countries. And even here, things are only now getting legislated: Canada’s new Pay Equity Act comes into force on August 31 of this year as part of the Canadian government’s efforts to eliminate the gender wage gap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently watched a really good movie. It\u2019s called We Want Sex. Yeah, that\u2019s right: We Want Sex. When I first read the title, I wasn\u2019t tempted at all. I thought \u201cGosh, this is just another Bad Teacher kind of movie where they reduce females to an object.\u201d But because I got annoyed, I actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20638,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21387"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21456,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21387\/revisions\/21456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}