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Okay...
People who aren't strong enough to do heavy lifting shouldn't be expected to do so, whether they are men or women. As for dirty work, did they say "women shouldn't have to do that" or "I don't want to do that"? Huge difference. Few people, men or women, would say "Hell yeah, scrubbing floors sounds awesome!" They just do it if it's their job. And in this case, it wasn't.
We had women bigger then me (I'm a nice healthy 170) who said they refused to lift a box because that was man's work, and any woman who wanted to lift boxes (cause we had I think two on my floor. I know we had at least one, cause I worked with her for a bout a week cause the plant wanted to say that it wasnt just sticking the two males and two females together and be sexist or something, which if you looked at the scenario at all it didnt, it was just work schedules) were setting women back 50 years.
As to the cleaning, they said women shouldnt. I'll give you a specific example I can remember. As an usher in a theatre, one of our jobs was we had to do hourly bathroom checks and take out garbage. The bathroom check meant you had to clean up the bathroom, so if there was puke or shit or piss or something on the floor, you cleaned it up. Because the girl ushers decided they didnt want to do it, they would ask the female staff leaders if the boys could check the girls bathroom (which meant we had to wait for it to be empty, which in a theatre it usually never is) and clean up the mess. There was literally a mess of shit in one stall one day, and the girl who was supposed to check bathrooms said she didnt want to, told me to do it, and when I said no, she went to the female staff leader who then told me:
Its not a woman's place to clean up that mess, and you as the man should have no problem with it, because men are meant to get dirty, while women are supposed to look clean. We dont want our customers to get the wrong image
Plus, our managers always told us that we (the men) werent supposed to have the girls help us throw out garbage because:
1) The bags where too heavy (which was subject to debate, cause we had some big girls and some would want to)
2) The girls complained to leave because they might get dirty from the bags breaking or touching them.
So instead, they would either have only men work the closing shift, or if there was a woman, she was welcome to walk out with the man and watch him throw away trash.
Besides all that, its not about saying whether you want to or not. You are told what you would do in the job, and if you agree and are hired, you should do it. Not just pick and choose. If you work, go tell your boss the next time you see them that you dont want to do something you were hired for, tell me what they say.
As for pregnancy, this is one case where equality just can't come into the picture. If women work while pregnant it's potentially harmful to both the woman and the fetus. They are much weaker during pregnancy and so can't do what they ordinarily could.
There's nothing stopping a woman from doing a desk job, even at 8 months. And I'm not saying they shouldnt get it, but it should count against their sick/vacation days. You should see the abuse Americans use for this. Its staggering.
As for maternity leave after pregnancy, however, men should have just as much right to paternity leave. Equality there.
