Gender Equity is Moving Backwards
by Miki SaxonFollowing up on yesterday’s post about women and inequality, Adam Grant linked to a previous post about his own unwitting blindness.
In that post were some stats that should make everyone, including those who think things are improving, wake up to reality and understand just how far we are from anything actually changing.
Today, U.S. corporate boards have more men named John, Robert, William, or James than women in total. Recent coverage by Claire Cain Miller has brought more chilling data to light: in math, when graded anonymously, girls outperform boys, but when teachers know their names, boys do better. [emphasis mine] And when students rate their favorite professors, they describe men as “geniuses” and women as “nice.” This is sad and unacceptable. We may be in the 21st century, but we’re still a very long way from gender parity.
In study after study, on everything from candidate resumes to professor’s evaluations to student preference, where the only difference in identical credentials is the sex, as disclosed by the name, young and old, male and female, rated the women inferior to the men.
Look at the above statement (in bold), what chance is there that anything will change when kids are already subject to the same attitudes?
Women are overtly and covertly denigrated and sisterhood is a farce.
It’s been said change would come as older generations aged out and bosses were replaced by younger ones who grew up in a more diverse, tolerant and inclusive world.
I started hearing that 50 years ago and am still waiting.
In fact, we are moving backwards; the world was far more woman-friendly in the 80s and 90s, than it is now.
So don’t hold your breath; there is a quantum difference between political correctness and authenticity.
Flickr image credit: Anthony Easton