Female apprentices earn less than male

Perhaps I should stop reading the BBC News website so often, but it just provides such good fodder for blogging!

In the latest, female apprentices earned £147 compared with the £186 per week that male apprentices could expect to receive. In yet another example of brilliant investigative reporting, the beeb suggests that this is because;

The difference is mainly due to the fact that female apprentices tend to work in lower paid sectors than males.

Hairdressing apprentices earned £109 a week while apprentices in electro technical posts earned £210 weekly.

Those in early years posts earned £142 a week compared with £189 for those in engineering and manufacturing, the research commissioned by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (Dius) said.

However, they don't take it upon themselves to investigate why it is that we seem to value - and therefore reward - traditionally male occupations so much more highly. Particularly telling of our screwed up values system is the low wage which is attached to early years care. Why is this not more highly paid? Either we do not as a society think that being able to access high-quality childcare is especially important, or we have found that we can get away with paying the (predominantly) young women who do significantly less than what they could hope to get if they chose to work in other sectors.

Actually, I think it a combination of those two factors. Firstly, patriarchy has a general impression that childcare should be free - after all, women did it for years without being paid for it. Why should the uppity bitches expect money for it now? Secondly, it does seem as though the people who actually do these jobs accept their low wage packets as part of the deal. Perhaps this is because, as with nursing (another female-dominated low wage profession), there is an element of altruism which means that the people entering the profession do so for more than financial gain. However, just because someone does something with the best of intentions does not mean that they should not be adequately compensated for their time and effort. Traditionally female jobs, such as those within the "caring" professions, should have their salaries brought in line with jobs from other sectors which have similar levels of skill required.

As a final note, I actually think that, as society could not function as it currently does without people filling these roles, and taking care of the more vulnerable members of society, their pay should reflect that. However, at the moment, I think that at least increasing it to the levels of other similar jobs will have to do!

Review: Sex...with Mum and Dad

I know, I know, the title is horrendous. But actually I think that this programme on BBC3 is worth giving a chance, particularly for teenagers and their parents (who the show is primarily aimed at). The basic premise is that the relationship between the teenager and their parent(s) has broken down. They go to visit Maria Schopman, who is a Dutch "sexologist" and family therapist helps families to talk about sex and their experiences of it, and attitudes towards it.

As a family, they have to involve themselves with various tasks which involve a great deal of nervous giggling and red faces. Some of the tasks have included making clay penises, putting dolls into a variety of sexual positions, and drawing stick people of the number of sexual partners that you have had. But, despite the initial embarrassment that these tasks of course cause, they seem to work. Teenagers and their parents use these exercises as a way of opening up a dialogue about sex which has been missing previously.

One of the most positive things about this programme is that fundamentally it accepts that teenagers are sexual beings, and that that is OK. Whilst teenagers in the last show (who were using casual sexual relationships as a way of trying to seek intimacy) are encouraged to moderate their behaviour, I actually don't have a problem with this. Once they had been able to be honest with themselves and their parents about sex, then they actually made the decision for themselves that they did not necessarily want to engage in that particular behaviour any more. They were not pressured into making this decision, and Maria Schopman appears to be entirely unshockable and unjudgmental.

I think that not talking to children and teenagers about sex, relationships, STDs, pregnancy, and a wealth of other issues relating to sex means that they can feel lost. They engage in risky behaviour because they are not aware of safe sex. As Maria Schopman points out, in the Netherlands, teenage pregnancy and the rate of STD infection is significantly lower, and she believes that this is because they discuss these issues with their children in depth, giving them the tools to go and and enjoy sexual relationships safely, and knowing that they have the support of their parents. We should be doing this in the UK too, as this programme aptly demonstrates.

Belated post: Idiot of the day: Norman Wells

Apparently, the reason that the teenage pregnancy rate is not dropping as quickly as the government hoped when it set its targets for 2010 is because schools are relying on sex education and contraception too much;

Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust, told the Sunday Telegraph that the government had allowed the "systematic removal of every restraint that used to act as a disincentive to under-age sex".

"The problems associated with teenage pregnancy will never be solved so long as the government persists with its reliance on yet more contraception and sex education," he said.

Yeah, because abstinence only education has such a great history of success in the states! And we really aren't making young people feel bad enough about their sexual choices. I think single mothers are getting a particularly easy ride. Norman Wells, thank you for enlightening us.

Sue Palmer on 'This Morning'

Ok, so I do sometimes watch 'This Morning', but, in my defense, it does cover quite a lot of topics which I feel are relevant to me as a young feminist. Today the author of Toxic Childhood, Sue Palmer was interviewed about the pressures which we as a society put our children under.

Now, I don't necessarily completely disagree with everything which she has to say, but there is one point which was made again and again on 'This Morning', that bastion of liberalism, which I felt compelled to pick up on. Contraception (including the morning-after pill) being prescribed to underage girls. Apparently this is inappropriate because it undermines the role of her parents. What? She would rather make sure that middle-England's parents sensibilities are not upset than ensure that young girls are given an opportunity to avoid an unwanted and potentially devastating pregnancy. What about the rights of the girl to control her own body? Perhaps we should trust her judgement and trust that she would have spoken to her parents about sex and relationships if she had felt able to. We are more concerned with the "rights" of her parents than the rights of teenage girls to make their own decisions about their own bodies.

This makes me sick. Refusing to provide young girls with contraception on demand does not prevent them from having sex, it just makes it more likely that they will become pregnant, or catch an STD. We should be providing children with comprehensive sex education from a young age, to ensure that they are properly equipped to deal with sexual relationships when the time comes. We should be making it easier for them to access contraception confidentially, and we should accept that teenagers have sex. They always have done and they always will do, and as long as they are aware of the risks, then it is not a problem, and in fact, it is none of our business.