Men and women are not equal.
They aren’t paid equally, equally represented in upper management jobs or on corporate boards of directors, and they aren’t held to equal standards by society.
Those are facts.
Men and women should be equal.
That’s opinion, but one that seems to be widely held.
On Jan. 21, millions of people worldwide marched for equality from Washington, D.C., to London, England, to Antarctica and right here in the Queen City.
They marched for equal pay, but they also marched for every woman who’s been raped and blamed for her skirt length, for the little girl who dreams of being president one day and for women in middle management struggling to advance.
They marched for every secretary who’s been dismissed for a younger model, for the ladies who endure catcalls as they walk to work and for the teens poised to break the glass ceiling.
They marched for the American dream.
All, however, did not support their pursuit. Billed by some opponents and organizers as nothing more than a pro-choice march or an anti-Donald Trump protest, men and women nationwide spoke out against the demonstrations.
“Keep ur legs together and most of your problems will be solved!”
“So many empty kitchens right now.”
“It’s embarrassing how many misinformed fools believe in the wage gap.”
“Just a bunch of butt hurt women that didn’t get their way.”
“Time to get back to the kitchen. Many of them could use a few trips to the gym.”
“Zero real courage and a national embarrassment and disgrace.”
“Whiney women and the men who whine with them are nothing but ungrateful babies.”
“Here’s a cold hard fact: our Constitutional right to Freedom of Speech has been used as a way for the whiny, ungrateful, protest-riot-marching people who claim to love the USA, to get attention.”
“May God strike their wombs barren!”
I wish I could say these online comments were the minority of the posts, but that would be an alternative fact. These are the hate-filled voices of our friends and neighbors in the Ozarks.
Each comment above – along with hundreds more – can be seen on the Springfield News-Leader’s Facebook page in response to the article, “More than 2,000 attended Women’s March on Springfield.”
I dare you to read these comments and tell me there isn’t a gender equality problem in America.
This isn’t something that’s going away overnight; it’s a systemic issue ingrained in our collective psyche.
That became abundantly clear while listening to NPR on a recent drive home. A study found single women are much less likely to express career ambitions compared with married women or men. Researchers believe they don’t want to undermine their appeal in the dating market.
It seems even ambition is not equal.
According to the report, three economists ran a field experiment among MBA students at a top university. Students are required to fill out a questionnaire for placement in summer internships. The catch? Some students believed only a career counselor would see the information, and others were led to believe classmates could see their completed questionnaire.
“Compared to men and to married women, unmarried women systematically reported being less driven. And they said they wanted a substantially smaller salary when they thought their classmates could see how they were filling out their questionnaires,” NPR reporter Shankar Vedantam found.
Gender equality isn’t a light switch stuck halfway that just needs a flick. Gender equality will require tearing down the wall and building a new one. Through last month’s march, people worldwide said they are ready to pick up that hammer together and acknowledged the fear that the hammer may have left the Oval Office with Barack Obama.
The mindset starts at the top – be it the boss, the parent, chairman of the board or the president of the United States.
In 1868, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony printed the first edition of the women’s rights weekly journal, “The Revolution,” with the bold motto, “The true republic – men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.”
Snowflakes may be fragile, but together they’re a blizzard.
Anthony once said, “The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball, the further I am rolled the more I gain.”
Winter is coming.
Springfield Business Journal Features Editor Emily Letterman can be reached at eletterman@sbj.net.
