My favourite argument for treating women and men equally was advanced by John Stuart Mill. His response to claims that women were not suited to hold certain jobs or to own property was effectively this: "Then we shouldn't need laws to maintain this." If, for example, the claim is that women really are happier in the domestic sphere, then allowing them full access to the working world should only confirm this.
It's an argument that calls the other side's bluff.
The problem is that I can't call someone else's bluff without risking calling my own at the same time. What do I say if decades after most of the barriers have been taken away, there are still far more men than women in the very elite areas of science, mathematics, corporate management and politics?
I can't say that women are not capable of achieving success in these fields for some women have achieved amazing success in this fields. It still would be monstrously unjust to restrict women's access to these fields. But what we see here is a statistical phenomenon about women as a group that is looking more and more like it will never change.
Why are men more successful in these fields? Sexism is almost certainly part of the explanation but it is getting harder and harder to maintain that it is all of the explanation. I think it is also very clear that innate ability is NOT the explanation. These areas don't seem to be like athletics where most men are simply better than most women. If anything, most female students display greater aptitude for science, mathematics, management and politics than most male students do. But it also seems that if you make a field competitive enough, the women start to drop out. They choose to drop out.
And so do most of the men.
In the end, however, you end up with more men than women at the top.
I used to see this back when I was a young athlete and later when I coached young athletes. In a group who had already clearly distinguished themselves as elite performers girls simply chose to drop out of competition more often than boys did. And this was true even though the girls were only competing against other girls. I could get ten boys who didn't particularly like one another to continue to train with one another simply by convincing them that the training was going to make them better athletes. Put ten girls in the same situation and seven or eight of them would lose interest and drop out. (One of the ways you can tell a girl is really determined to make it in a sport is that she will be paying close attention to the way elite boys train and compete for she will determine that she has more to learn from them than most of her female competitors.)
One approach to this has been to paint high-achieving men and. as a consequence, high-achieving women, as deeply flawed. I don't think even the people who do this think they are fooling anyone.
One way or another, we are going to have to accept that any truly meritocratic society is going to have more men than women at the top of science, mathematics, corporate management and politics.
It's an argument that calls the other side's bluff.
The problem is that I can't call someone else's bluff without risking calling my own at the same time. What do I say if decades after most of the barriers have been taken away, there are still far more men than women in the very elite areas of science, mathematics, corporate management and politics?
I can't say that women are not capable of achieving success in these fields for some women have achieved amazing success in this fields. It still would be monstrously unjust to restrict women's access to these fields. But what we see here is a statistical phenomenon about women as a group that is looking more and more like it will never change.
Why are men more successful in these fields? Sexism is almost certainly part of the explanation but it is getting harder and harder to maintain that it is all of the explanation. I think it is also very clear that innate ability is NOT the explanation. These areas don't seem to be like athletics where most men are simply better than most women. If anything, most female students display greater aptitude for science, mathematics, management and politics than most male students do. But it also seems that if you make a field competitive enough, the women start to drop out. They choose to drop out.
And so do most of the men.
In the end, however, you end up with more men than women at the top.
I used to see this back when I was a young athlete and later when I coached young athletes. In a group who had already clearly distinguished themselves as elite performers girls simply chose to drop out of competition more often than boys did. And this was true even though the girls were only competing against other girls. I could get ten boys who didn't particularly like one another to continue to train with one another simply by convincing them that the training was going to make them better athletes. Put ten girls in the same situation and seven or eight of them would lose interest and drop out. (One of the ways you can tell a girl is really determined to make it in a sport is that she will be paying close attention to the way elite boys train and compete for she will determine that she has more to learn from them than most of her female competitors.)
One approach to this has been to paint high-achieving men and. as a consequence, high-achieving women, as deeply flawed. I don't think even the people who do this think they are fooling anyone.
One way or another, we are going to have to accept that any truly meritocratic society is going to have more men than women at the top of science, mathematics, corporate management and politics.
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