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Monday, September 21, 2015

Gender Equality

The Marine Corp did a study where they determined that all-male combat squads were faster, stronger, and more lethal than mixed gender squads. Further, women suffered higher injury rates in training. Now, I suppose to some that's a surprise. That's because they believe in "gender equality".

My wife and I had this discussion some time ago. Oh, no, not "gender equality", but the meaning of equality. The conversation was about giving gifts to the kids at Christmas. Her idea was "We should spend the same amount on each of them. That's equality." And it cannot be argued that this isn't equality. It can be argued, however, that it isn't the only equality. I argued that we needed to supply them with the same amount of enjoyment. That is, if the teenage daughter and the 8-year-old son were going to get the same amount of enjoyment out of their gifts, it would not require the same amount of money. Equality again.

But here we are working hard toward "gender equality" by which we mean "same jobs" and "same pay" and, essentially, "no differences between genders." This is ludicrous on the face of it, but, then, I'm thinking about it, not feeling. I would suggest, again, that "same" doesn't have to be in terms of pay or job, but in other ways. What about fulfillment? What about satisfaction? What about equal utilization of skills? Given a man and a woman, each facing a closed door that they have to enter, does it them the same satisfaction to power through that door? Probably not. So why do it? "Gender equality." And what about skills? The Marine study said that untrained men hit targets with M4's 44% of the time, but trained women only hit 28%. Is that really the best utilization of skills? In the name of "gender equality"? Does equality mean "abuse them all the same even if women are injured at twice the rate as men"?

I'm not opposed to "gender equality". But, of course, as is apparently so often the case, I don't appear to be using the words in the same way that so many others are ... without any apparent thought.

3 comments:

David said...

It baffles me that a world that believes in evolution can also believe in gender homogeny. If we evolved certain gender traits for certain tasks, then the genders can never be the same. But because that "feels" wrong, it cannot be. The cognitive dissonance continues to astound me.

Stan said...

Yes ... but isn't "cognitive dissonance" a great phrase?

David said...

It is, too bad it can be so frequently used.