Christmas 2011. A four year old little girl Riley has made a staggering observation about toys. Riley is fed up with toy stores trying to market pink stuff to girls and "different color" stuff to boys. Listen to this tiny genius: “Some girls like superheroes, some girls like princesses. Some boys like superheroes, some boys like princesses. So why do all the girls have to buy pink stuff and all the boys have to buy different color stuff?”
The sexist male panel on FOX has gone viral in the past few days and sparked some well needed conversation on right wing gender ideology in the US. While initially I was rather offended and shocked, but willing to shrug it off as the typical kind of absurdity only the GOP extremists would articulate I decided to look deeper into the issue gender equality.
First, watch this all-male FOX panel have what I can only describe
as the new Greatest Freakout Ever over the "deeply disturbing"
statistics by PEW research centre on female breadwinners. The medieval universe
these misogynists live is one where the male hunts and female nurtures, aka one
which has not existed for some 60 000 years but that is, of course, irrelevant.
The deeply disconcerting fact is that there are educated American female voters
out there who agree with this bitchfest of a panel.
Nevertheless, for a moment let's take these Foxy men seriously,
if only for the sake of argument. Let's say the income of women increases to
the same level as that of men, or very close. I wonder what that would lead
to? Lucky for Fox, America doesn't have
to face this terrifying future without any previous empirical data. It just so
happens other states have already tested out the scenario and I will illustrate
the results as an extended case study to uncover the chaos resulting from women
leaving the kitchenette and joining the national workforce.
Ever been to Northern Europe? After spending 19 years there
and some in the United States and Great Britain I cannot quite sufficiently
emphasize the immense effect incorporating women into the labour force has on a
country's economy and standard of living. It is no coincidence that
Scandinavian and other Northern European countries such as Finland dominate the
charts on smallest income gap, least corrupted, highest student performance in
sciences, universally free education from kindergarten to PhD, highest rankings
on the Human Development Index and rated most democratic. Growing up I often
heard teachers and parents remarking how lucky I had been. How being born in
Finland was like winning the lottery. As children we would all laugh and
presume teachers across the world would have a similar narrative about their
state. Only after spending a considerable amount of time in the States and
later in Great Britain I came to see just how accurate my teachers had been in
their analysis. I never felt being a woman disadvantaged me growing up and
attending school in Finland, quite the opposite. My success in education was
celebrated, it was so extraordinarily obvious that men and women both would
join the workforce, pursue their dream profession and provide for a family
together, should they choose to have one. I felt my gender made no difference
whatsoever. Gender is quite literally, a non-issue in this particular part of
the world. However until I left the country I was naively unaware that outside
Northern Europe, I was in fact a second class citizen and ambition in a woman
was something to be looked down upon. This was an entirely new experience for
me and at times I still find it shocking that states so similar to my home,
developed and democratic countries would actively pursue the oppression of
women. It seems almost preposterous and certainly illogical. As articulated by
Bill Clinton; No country will ever achieve its greatest potential by disregarding
50% of its human capital. However, the issue of working mothers can't be fully
understood through partisan politics as most often or not, the vast majority of
Americans are guilty of supporting traditional gender dynamics to a much
greater extent than they care to admit.
Psychologists in the United States have revealed it over and
over again; success and likability are positively correlated for men and
negatively correlated for women. The mentality on successful women ought to be
dissected and reconstructed. Obviously the arguments of this FOX panel are outlandish
and ill-informed, however, these men are not the only ones to share this view.
Many subconsciously agree with certain aspects of the dominant male-ideology.
Even females. What most people will only reluctantly admit, powerful women make
us deeply uncomfortable. No, not me, you're thinking, "I'm evolved past
that". Chances are, you're not. Consider what Sheryl Sandberg sums up from
studies on the subject: when men are successful they are more liked by both
sexes but when women are successful they are less liked by not only men, but
women as well. Women are in many ways holding themselves back. I won’t deny
that these results couldn’t be replicated with the same results in Northern
Europe, in fact should I ever have the chance to test them out I’d be curious
to find out. The reaction to dominant females is perhaps not as visceral as in
the United States, but most likely still somewhat present. But fear not! By
recognizing this pattern of thinking we will eventually redefine what it means
to be a successful female and surround the definition with positive
connotations. Women have to redefine their mind set as well.
I'd also like to point to a debate which followed the
male-panel freakout, led by none other than Megyn Kelly from FOX news.
I'm not in general one to agree with Kelly on various disputes
but I have to hand it to her on this one. I'll admit it, I'm becoming a fan.
She's no Rachel Maddow, but she has some serious balls. She's really made an
effort to pave way to educated and intelligent Republican women recently and
aided in bit by bit steering the GOP into a direction where smart women aren't
forced into such cognitive dissonance over their right wing alignment. Overall,
the GOP and the US as a whole desperately needs more women like Kelly to rise
to the barricades and call out this lunacy, particularly considering how unwavering these WASPS remain in the face of scientific studies and facts. Watch
Kelly take on the sexism of the FOX panel and prepare to clap at her professionalism in the face of unscientific absurdity:
In the last half century more girls were discriminated to death than all the people killed in all the battle fields in the 20th century.
The issue that rarely makes the front page is gender inequality. The single most essential and linear way to lift up entire communities out of poverty is by educating women, a fact that is over and over again ignored. This TEDtalk held by Sheryl WuDunn, the author of "Half the Sky" raises some painful statistics about women's oppression across the globe and demonstrates the magnificent difference educating women particularly in developing countries makes. Only when women are educated and brought into the formal labor system, will we be using all of our human resources to defeat the intimate social and physical violence that marks female bodies, and to overcome global challenges regarding poverty and politics of oppression.
A brilliant and insightful TED talk about why women't don't sit at the table or raise their hand and what are the consequences of these seemingly small differences.
"Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders" by Sheryl Sandberg
