For the purposes of this debate I am going to focus primarily on First World countries. There are many countries in the world where there is in fact no need to debate this point at all, for they are blatant in their prejudice against women. The perception by many is that there is a similar level of prejudice in advanced countries, only more hidden, subtle. I strongly disagree.

I was shocked to see that twice as many people on this site thought men were favored in society. I think in many ways you could argue the opposite. But the truth probably lies between the two vantage points. In my opinion the overall result is a skewed sort of equality.

It just depends on what you are looking at. Remember that this was posed as a general question and not specific to finance. Despite that I have noticed that almost all of the articles on the other side of this debate focus on one thing: money. They cite the fact that many of the heads of the largest corporations are men, that there are many more male billionaires than female, among other observations along these lines. This is true. In the high business sector men do appear to do better at a proportion which would indicate some level of bias.

I have two responses to this point, however. The first is that very few individuals acheive on anywhere near this level of corporate success. The lower you look down the corporate food chain the higher percentage of women you will find. Most people do not even work in a corporate environment, though many do. I do not think sexism by the richest of the rich has much bearing on the day to day life of most women or men.

Another point is that there are now many realms of business where one can operate under a cloak of anonymity, such as all forms of electronic commerce (ebay reselling, online selling and the like), selling art or written ideas, and entering the many lucrative contests in a number of fields. The stock market is indifferent to the sex of shareholders, for instance. If a woman fears being discriminated against she can enter the world of entreprenuership in one form or another and circumvent prejudice entirely.

Now that I have hopefully mitigated, though certainly not eliminated, their main argument, let me offer a counterpoint to show the areas where society favors them. Since the focus in these debates is mainly financial the first thing I will point out is that women have many occupations that pay them much more than men.

If you compare the amount of money a female model makes to a male model you might well be astounded. Due to the higher demand for female models they are paid up to ten times more even at the entry level. How many famous male models have you even heard of? Exactly. This is a field women own to a degree you will never see men dominate the corporate sphere. The financial prejudice here is absolute and yet there is no complaining about it because we see it simply as supply and demand.

What about pharmaceutical representatives? These are almost always attractive young women. They make simple presentations and yet get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. That is a field where men are almost completely shut out of… At least male models can get some kind of work.

Many men would love nothing more than to be porn stars or prostitutes serving the sexual whims of women. However those fields are virtually closed to us. A woman who is willing to have sex for money in front of the camera or with none there at all stands to make a tremendous amount. And do not think they have to be attractive either. They can cater to a fetish related to whatever strong physical attribute they have for porn videos and they really do not have to have any strengths at all to be a well paid prostitute. Go look at the Craigslist ads for Eroritc Services sometime. Many of those women are what most would call unattractive (this of course being subjective) and yet they are charging around two hundred dollars an hour!

Most men would have to be lawyers to make income comparable to that. How is that equal? And please remember that prostitution is in fact legal in many countries and sectors within those countries, so it is not like these options are not available. Porn is legal virtually everywhere.

You say you do not want to do those jobs? Well many of us men do not want to work for corporations! You cannot judge the bias in one money making sphere while ignoring others entirely simply because they are not to your liking.

What about the domestic sphere? Women have complete control over the life of an unborn child. While men are expected to pay a good amount of money toward the child’s well being should she choose to have it, we are given no say on whether the child that we will soon bear great responsibility for gets to live in the first place. A former girlfriend of mine got pregnant and decided to get an abortion against my wishes, making this point very clear to me.

On top of men being required to contribute financially to the child’s well being we are given few rights in the event of divorce. My father earned twice what my mother did, was just as kind and yet the best he could get after the divorce was weekend visitation rights. He of course had to pay a substantial monthly fee to my mother as well. I have learned since that this is par the course.

All of this leads me to my final point: sex. Even though those on the other side of this debate have ignored this issue entirely, sex is a vital part of being human. Money is a system of trade humankind created but sex is in our DNA. We all crave it to varying degrees and at its peak it provides possibly the greatest immediate pleasure in all of life. And women get access to its bliss on tap.

Do I really even need to embellish this point? I remember a girl who told me I was foolish to think that girls can “get laid” easier than men. I laughed at her naive point of view on an age old issue and proposed a test: we would both go into chat rooms and simply type that we are looking for sex and see who gets the most replies. She agreed.

I was astounded when I got the first reply! I told her this was an anomaly and to wait a few minutes. Little to my suprise, I did not get one more reply where she got so many she eventually had to log out of the room for fear of her computer crashing!

Women, go put an ad up on Craigslist in the Casual Encounters section. I would tell the men to do the same but no matter how attractive they are the chances of a reply are slim. Why would women look through individual men when they can put out their own ad and get the pick of the litter from parties whose interest is already verified?

Women who put up such ads on this or similar sites will be flooded with hundreds of replies in a matter of hours. Even unattractive women. The ages will range from eighteen to over sixty. The body types will range from skinny to bodybuilders. I had a average female friend who purposefully put no picture of herself up to test this theory out. She showed me some of the pictures of her favorite replies and it was shocking even to me. There was one guy who looked like he worked out all the time to acheive an Adonis level physique. My friend on the other hand was very out of shape. And yet it was he who lusted heavily after her, he who did the begging.

Women often gets discounts just to attract them to establishments. Ladies Night Out is a staple of almost every bar in the world because they are valued as beacons to draw in more men. Men of course get no such discounts and the few who would complain about such blatantly sexist policies are usually laughed at and belittled.

How could you deny that in the realm of sex, one of the most important and compelling areas of human life, society completely favors women? Men are raised with this expectation that we will chase them and it seems that women were raised to stay enigmatic and hide or channel sexual desire. There are certainly exceptions to this rule but from my observations they appear as frequently as women in the board room.

These influences all lead to women growing amazed at men’s desire and in many cases even looking down on it. For the men this just adds up to further desperation. We push harder even as it hurts our image all the more. In the end, defeated, many resort to paying to quell the need in one fashion or another. The lower and middle class male who dares to openly desire sex is nine times out of ten crushed by society. The lower and middle class female who dares to openly desire sex is showered with adoration and in some cases riches without even having to put forth the slightest bit of effort.

I do not disparage women the position in society that their sexual self mastery has given them. I admire it in the same vein as I admire yogic ascetics, priests and monks. By regulating the flow of sex they in essence have total control over the greatest natural resource of all time. I respect this ability. However when women conversely want to complain about a lower ceiling at the high end of business as indicitave of them being less valued in society, even women who have no aspirations to own a corporation, part of me just shakes my head.

In First World countries only the most extremely ambitious business women have any chance of being hampered. The other ninety five percent are given opportunities men can only dream of. And let’s be honest… Which do you really see happening first, women becoming board members with greater frequency or women pursuing sex with even half the enthusiasm displayed by men?

Answer that and you have answered this debate. Life is about a lot more than just money and even then there are many areas where women have the edge. The propogation of male desire everywhere through music videos, film and Internet media has only served to further empower the female’s status in society, as they are the object of desire and control completely whether such desires are fulfilled. All this while they are protected financially from tangible discrimination, given numerous fiscal opportunities exclusive to their sex and poised to break down the few unseen barriers to their success left (the fact that twice as many writers have thus far spoken out for that very desire is a testament to its momentum). The truth is that the balance has long since shifted. Things are more than equal for the majority of women. The seeming reality that most people overlook their advantages while stating the opposite in fact gives them a decisive edge!