As I understand it, in the USA waiting staff get paid below minimum wage and are expected to live off tips.

I didn't claim you were talking about Finland. However, many of those issues are true in most Western nations. It's just that I'm not an expert in any other country.

My guess is that at least 98% of the world population lives in countries with less gender equality than Finland, and likewise at least 85% of the LW readership.

(EDIT: According to http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm 1.5% of world population lives in countries with gender division in the lower house equivalent at least as close to balanced as in Finland, as do at least 6% (but probably no more than 8%) of LW readers. )

Arguing against "Women suffer more unfairness" with the example of Finland makes about as much sense as arguing against "Cars cause more fatalities than rhinos" with the example of a specific subdivision of an African country with high rhino fatalities (and such a statement wouldn't imply that car safety should have a higher priority than protecting people and rhinos from each other even there) .

"a global equality resource budget"

This doesn't even exist..

It makes just as much sense to talk about a global equality resource budget as it makes to talk about "equality resources" in the first place. Or do you deny the existence of international organizations working for equality, and that individuals have some (limited) ability to choose for which cause in which country they fight? I mentioned non-transferable resources in my comment and never implied anything about which of those, if either, dominated.

Ah, OK. If you are proposing 50/50 as a political compromise rather than actually asserting that it's the correct target, then my questions are beside the point. Never mind, then.

I don't quite see the connection between the information you cite, and the 50/50 split policy recommendation.

From my perspective, if we can spend resources in such a way that we collectively get the most bang for the buck and reduce the spread of the curve, that's a win. (In real life those goals are often in conflict, but that's beside my point right now.)

If it so happens that the way to do that is to equally support men and women in a particular community, then a 50/50 split of resources makes sense in that community.

If that's not the case, then a different resource split makes more sense.

Whether that split is weighted towards men or women will depend on the facts of the situation. Maybe I conclude based on the information you cite that I should support Finnish men more than Finnish women, for example.

But I don't see how that data justifies a 50/50 split.

Finland

What gave you the idea that I was talking about Finland? Or that most of the world is similar to Finland? You are doing precisely the sort of analysis I argued to be useless, and from a world perspective Finland would be among the last places where you'd spend anything from a global equality resource budget. (I have no opinion how one would best spend local non-transferable resources in Finland, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if a neutral allocation by issue ended up helping Finish men more, of course I wouldn't be terribly surprised by the opposite either)

Can you clarify what you mean by "evenly distributed"?

For example, by "evenly" do you mean 50/50 between these two causes?

Do you mean distributed proportionally based on the number of men and the number of women in the community?

Do you mean distributed proportionally to reflect the gender distribution in the community (which is noticeably more complex than "number of men" and "number of women")?

Do you mean distributed proportionally based on the degree to which different genders experience differential harm under the current arrangement?

Do you mean something else?

I am reasonably sure you are right, but how useful is that sort of accounting? Society should be fair to each and every individual, not "fair" to both genders on aggregate (the two traditional genders don't even cover everyone). If one gender suffers from unfairness in certain ways that isn't made any better by the other gender suffering an equal amount of unfairness elsewhere, it's made twice as bad because that means twice as much total unfairness.

IMO equality resources should be distributed so as to fix the maximum amount of unfairness. Women suffer more unfairness so presumably most resources would be directed towards them anyway, but there could easily be a number of low hanging fruit on the male side.

"I'm a tall white American male, so sometimes it takes a bit of work for me to understand what it's like to be a member of a suppressed group."

Females are suppressed, and so are males. Gender roles suppress both genders. They also offer advantages to both genders.

List of male privileges: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/

List of female privileges: http://masculistadvice.blogspot.com/2008/06/female-privilege-list.html

It is true that popular discourse paints females as the suppressed group and males as the non-suppressed group.

"So I've always thought of myself as a feminist."

Feminism goes beyond technical gender equality of having the same rights and privileges. I'm a feminist too, because I think politics should solve problems facing women. And I'm also a masculist (or a men's rights activist), since men's problems should be solved too.

"Of course, some activists (the word has positive connotations to me, BTW) pushed too far, as is the case in all large movements."

The main problem with feminism today is that all the political gender equality resources are directed to feminism. It should be evenly distributed between masculism and feminism.

I stutter, and I've done it for as long as I can remember. Anyone know how to beat it? I feel this has pretty significant (negative) effects on my life, because I'm often afraid of speaking up in a group, as stuttering is extremely embarrassing.

nawitus, my post was too long as it is. If I had included multiple discussions of multiple definitions of consciousness and qualia, you would either still be reading it or would have stopped because it was too long.