Re: "We need to promote women disproportionately, pay them equally or better..."
@solarflare - that's an exact mirror image of how it feels to be a woman in most workplaces. So if you don't like the idea of being of men being treated unfairly at work due to their gender, why would you imagine women would like the idea and experience any better? It's easy to be snarky,but much harder to say ro do something constructive.
Achieving equality is both complex and hard - it isn't a simple case of passing laws, having meetings and corssing our fingers and hoping for the best. And unwontedly confrontational language doesn't help, either. Men in general are neither scum nor the enemy - they're part of the problem, and women are the other part of the problem, because it's men and women that make up society, and it's our society that has for so long treated women much less well than men, in general.
That's not to say that men don't get a raw deal in some respects too, but the whole point of feminism is to work toward a fairer and more equal society for all, so that everyone can have a chance to try for whatever profession they like and be treated fairly within it, according to their ability at it, and NOT be sidelined or paid less well because they are a particular gender.
My grandmother was born into a world in which, legally, she was a chattel. Watching Life on Mars was like watching my childhood, I well remember men behaving just like those portrayed in that programme, and it made the world a scary place to be in. Sure, things are somewhat better now, but as has been pointed out, a minority of men still think its acceptable to behave abhorently toward women and too many people (not just men) stand by and let them get away with it without comment. This needs to change. And if we'd achieved equality, then there would be no pay gap between men and women, but there still is.
We - ALL of us, irrespective of gender - need to work at changing society bit by bit, in our daily lives as much as by conventional politics - to make it clear that all human beings in our society should be treated equally in the workplace, and should not have to live in fear due to their gender, or feel themselves restricted as to what they can do with tehir lives simply because of their gender.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
