Being a woman is an interesting thing. It’s an accident of birth, a slip in a chromosome, from XX to XY, that makes a man a man and an absence of this move that makes a woman a woman. There certainly are some differences between the two genders. One has external sex organs, the other internal. Indeed, that is the very definition of what it is to be female or male. And that is about the only meaningful thing we can say about ‘all men’ or ‘all women’. Why on earth then do we continue to bleat on and on about ‘men’ being one way and ‘women’ being another? Because we are using faulty logic.
Take the example of Ceri Thomas, editor of Radio 4′s Today programme and his nonsense about women not making good anchors because their skins are not thick enough to handle the job. It’s possible that it’s true, in his experience, that there have been some women who have been unable to take the pressure of interviewing live on the Today programme (not that I have an example but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt). He is entitled to draw a conclusion from that experience that ‘some women’ cannot take the pressure of the job or do not have a skin thick enough. I can even see that if he’s had experience of, say, 100 women failing under these circumstances that he might even infer that ‘most women’ are not suited to the job. What he, nor anyone else using simple logic, can do is deduce that ‘all women’ are not suited to the job of being an anchor on Raido 4′s Today programme. Or that there is something about being a woman that makes them less suited to the job, by the very fact that they are women, as opposed to just being a person that didn’t have enough experience, etc.
We need to stop this nonsense. It’s illogical, it’s stupid and it’s damaging to women. (Of course, not to ‘all women’ but you get my drift).
Why does this matter? The press in this country love to make sweeping generalisations about all kinds of things, including what it is to be a woman. We are told women are this, women are that and we buy it. We hold some sort of belief structure that ‘all women’ want to be mothers or are caring, or prefer relationships over task, or are more emotional than rational or prefer floral wallpaper to stripes. Whatever. Now it’s perfectly sensible to use common, shared knowledge to get by in the world. I don’t need to experience everything individually in order to believe it. Most of my scientific beliefs are based on the word of others. My senses tell me that the sun goes round the earth and yet I rely on the work of others to inform me that this not the case and the earth actually goes round the sun. It’s sensible and rational to rely on the word of scientists as we have a clear understanding of the validity of their testing and they can show us the workings if we enquire. This is not the case in terms of the rubbish we come out with about ‘all men’ or ‘all women’.
I’m guilty of this nonsense myself. I am moved to write about gender so much because I am sick of the accident of my birth determining what is possible for me in life. I’m sick of reading what my preferences are as a woman. I’m sick of being told that women don’t have as thick a skin as men, that we prefer shoes and handbags to sports. It is certainly true for some women but not for all. It’s true that some men have skins thick enough to do the Today programme job, but not all men do. The more we go on about the special qualities that men have or that women have, the more we fall further into the same mistake. We will never prove that women should be leaders/politicians/radio show anchors/writers/CEO’s by virtue of them being women. We can only show that they can do the job because they are people possessing certain skills. And, of course, seeing as the positions we are now looking to take on have been occupied by men for so long, we will need to show that we are capable of doing it in the way that they have been doing it, because that is currently what is valued in those roles. We need to do this before we can change the positions into something more women friendly.
Urgh, did I just write that? What does it even mean ‘women friendly’? Nothing at all! That’s more of the same faulty logic. It actually says more about the responsibilities that women hold in our culture, as carers, as mothers, as human beings raised to care over being logical. What we really need in order for women to step up into leadership positions is the nature of work to allow for people with caring responsibilities to still contribute their leadership skills. Am I saying that women are just like men? No, I’m saying that you can’t say anything meaningful about ‘all women’ at all other than that they have a certain type of reproductive structure. Arguing the case for ‘women’ having special skills merely pushes us further and further down this faulty path. We need to side step it altogether and move to a place where we see each other for what we actually are, not through a stereotype. This will free women and it will free men and it will allow our children to be able to contribute the best of themselves to society. Whether that fits the gender stereotype or not.
(Photo by Ginger Pig http://www.flickr.com/photos/27888428@N00/3113175683/ Under Creative Commons)
I spent last week reading up on ‘difference feminism’, which as far as I can make out is a bunch of women arguing either that women are naturally different or that patriarchal institutions made them so but that in any case we ought to make a space for this difference. Of course I’m reading this in the context of writing on Wollstonecraft so my immediate response is to join her in shouting ‘Bollocks to that!’ women, and men, are rational creatures, and as far as work, politics, and family hierarchy is concerned that’s all we need to know. And then I stop and think about it. And I still say the same.
I agree with your comments, and think that stereotyping of any form is not progressive and damages the fairness and equity in our society. Take for example this posting which I put on the Project Eye blog with respect to wmen as project managers:
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conBlogPost.1251
I am very much in support of efforts to promote equality of opportunity and diversity in the workplace, take for example this work in Essex that tries to go beyond gender stereotypes and raise the aspirations of both women and girls:
http://www.essexwomensadvisorygroup.com/
Thanks for your links Brendan. You are right that it’s also important to work with women to increase their self-esteem, get into IT, not because they are women per se but because they are people not fulfilling their potential. And we will have to do this ‘womens work’ for a while to come yet, to undo the damage done by the stereotyping of women. And of men. And of others “minorities” etc. On and on….
Maybe I’m a heretic, but in a 25 year management career I preferred working with women more than men. I’m talking about peers as well as those I managed as well.
I found them more constructive; focused; creative and, actually less testosterone (that would be a given, I guess)/ego based, in the main.
Just felt it needed saying…
Regards
Martin Haworth
Hey Martin, thanks for saying that.
I totally agree that women can make great peers, bosses, employees, etc. And they can make bad ones. All I’m saying is that there is nothing we say that applies to ‘all women’. I’m all for getting more women into business, into senior leadership and politics because I know there are capable women. There are also incapable women (in that domain). And those qualities have nothing to do with whether they are women or not.
I agree with what you say, though I’d nitpick that sex and gender isn’t as simple as XX and XY. XX tends to produce phenotypic females, XY tends to produce phenotypic males, but it’s not 100%. That’s before you get onto people who are neither XX nor XY genotypically. And there we’re talking about physical expression of sex, which is a different thing from the cultural expression of gender – again, there’s largely a correlation between male sex and masculine gender expression, but it’s not quite as clear-cut as that
It’s interesting that once I started to get experience of sex and gender as spectra rather than binary distinctions, it made it much harder for me to maintain stereotypes about “all men” or “all women”.
Dear Lee,
I appreciate the frustration! The habit, and it is a deep one, of seeing the world in this binary way, where men and women are opposite to each other, is not only the way the world has been structured for hundreds of years but it also deeply conditions how we think about and experience ourselves. Rooting this out at the roots of our being, female and male, is the next step in human liberation.
And thanks for commenting on the blog I’ve created with a group of women who want to create that level of change: http://www.evolvewomen.org
Best to you,
Elizabeth
I wrote a blog about a similar topic recently
A great read is Pink Brain Blue Brain by a Neuroscientist who essentially says that the actual differences between the genders are so few as to be non-existent from a genetic & biological point of view & her view is that the majority of the differences are conditioned or nurture rather than nature.