Hi guys, I'm relatively new to MR, but I gotta say, there's lots of good stuff in here, keep it up! Now to my "issue" of sorts. I've recently started university. One of my courses is sociology. In one of the first classes, my prof mentioned what she considered certain issues that, while they affect individuals, are societal problems. One of which she mentioned was the perceived wage gap between women and men. I didn't think anything of it. But now in the textbook it's discussing it more and more. On one page reads the line "Women, as a category, are understood as 'peaceful, nurturing, and cooperative....innocent victims of sexist oppression and patriarchy' (Adams, 2008)". Earlier in that same chapter, there was a "privilege" table, where we were asked to go through and categorize ourselves in order to get a "privilege score". So far it seems as though the textbook is conveying the idea that white, heterosexual, middle-class, males do not experience socially based discrimination/disprivilege and that all other demographics do not experience privilege of any kind (especially women). Now, I've already done some poking around (here and elsewhere), and I know that this "gap" is misleading in that it doesn't compare males and females working the same job, the same number of hours, with the same education background. But it's the idea that women are oppressed in our western society that I don't entirely agree with. I afraid that if I try to argue that it mainly comes down to personal choice that she'll argue that women make choices based on "structure" instead of "agency", that they are not made to make choices entirely of their own "will" (so to speak). Can any of you think of how to counter this argument? I'm already getting tired of listening to this propaganda in class and want to say something about it.....but I need more ammunition.

Sorry if my wording seems convoluted, I've got other things on my mind. I'll try to clarify if anything needs clarifying. Thanks in advance.