Kick-starting the United Nations Women’s “HeForShe” campaign, actress Emma Watson made two points clear: She wants gender equality, and she wants men involved in bringing that equality about. But what type of equality does Emma want?
Few in the Western world could take issue with Watson’s proposed mild goals when they are taken at face value. Of course there should be equality. Of course men should help bring it about. So why the big media fuss over Emma Watson’s speech and the HeForShe campaign?
This is why: There are a lot of different possible definitions for the HeForShe message of “equality.” And people don’t agree on which version of gender equality is the right version. Consequently, the big media fuss.
American author Kurt Vonnegut wrote a famous short story called “Harrison Bergeron” about the nightmarish implications of pursuing absolute equality. In the world of “Harrison Bergeron,” everyone is equal in that his or her natural talent and inclination is offset by a handicap. The fast people are slowed by ankle weights. The smart people are distracted by periodic beeps in their ear. Everyone is “equal” in the fullest sense of the word.
Obviously, no one wishes for the equality of “Harrison Bergeron.” But what type of equality should we want?
A recent Verizon Wireless advertising campaign lamented that only a fraction (18 percent) of engineering majors are women. (By the same reasoning, the campaign might have lamented that only a fraction of communication and journalism majors are men.) This, the advertisement claimed, was the inequality we needed to fight. We ought to have an equal number of men and women majoring in science.
Consider, however, the possibility that (comparing apples to apples) women are simply less interested in science just as men are simply less interested in communication and journalism. If this is the case, men and women have exercised their equal freedom to choose the major towards which they are naturally inclined. If society forced as many women to be science majors as men, it would undo the freedom men and women have in choosing the majors they want.
Would a world in which each gender was forced to have a 50 percent share of each major look a little too much like the world of “Harrison Bergeron” for our liking?
This campaign reveals the dangers of not being clear about what we mean by “equality.” If we don’t clarify the sort of equality we want, we could wind up offsetting real social progress.
The HeForShe website and Emma Watson are fairly non-committal about promoting a particular brand of equality. If we are to believe that their main goal is simply to start dialogue about equality, then let us oblige. Let us talk about what type of gender equality we want to see in the world.
Let’s avoid simply saying we want “equality” without clarifying what that means.
Elliot Polsky can be reached at pols4319@stthomas.edu.
The media fuss isn’t over defining what the meaning of equality it… The media fuss is over the fact that Emma Watson is a celeb. But good discussion opener anyway.
Elliot, in your piece you stated many times that, “The HeForShe website and Emma Watson are fairly non-committal about promoting a particular brand of equality.” Well, I’m sorry but you’re wrong. I quote Emma Watson, “For the record, feminism, by definition, is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.” Okay Emma Watson, so what does equal rights entail for men and women? “It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.” There is no ambiguity in her speech about what equality is or what she is advocating for. If you don’t know what any of that looks like, perhaps read a feminist textbook. It will give you a better idea.
I also have an issue with your statement, “Consider, however, the possibility that women are simply less interested in science just as men are simply less interested in communication and journalism… If society forced as many women to be science majors as men, it would undo the freedom men and women have in choosing the majors they want.” Honestly Elliot, I feel as though you are missing the big picture here and taking this about 1 paragraph too far while some horribly unscientific assumptions. The idea of equality isn’t to force people into roles they aren’t truly interested in for the sake of equal numbers, but to create a society where women are encouraged to step outside of their traditional gender norms and explore the world without the constraints of paternalistic oppression.
Equality refers to equal opportunity, which is far from a reality.
As for your argument about men and women choosing freely their majors, you are missing the intense conditioning that we are subject to from family, media, peers to conform to gender stereotypes. If I am raised to think my main goal in life is to be a mother or caretaker, and my skills in those fields are praised and encouraged, I am more likely to choose a career in care giving (nursing, teaching…do these sound gender coded? That’s because they kind of are). Also many women avoid fields like engineering or IT because the lack of people like them makes the environment likely to be hostile. Meaning even if I were interested and good at IT, I might choose a different major field to avoid putting up with people around me questioning my ability constantly. This is one minute facet of the inequality that we need to be working toward.
Also Vonnegut doesn’t does not seem to be describing complete equality, he seems to be describing repression.
While I think important points have been raised, I would like to respond to a few comments. Polsky, when you write about HeForShe being “non-committal” I think we must understand that in a kick-off campaign for the UN, there is simply not enough time to enumerate all of details of what the campaign might want, so- for the time being- we might perhaps give the benefit of the doubt That being said, to say that equal rights means, “the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes” still tells us nothing. What political avenues? What details of the economic system? What social aspects? Like the term, “common good,” there can be too much equivocating on these three terms. Besides, no one, not even two white middle-class males, are equal in all these aspects.
Finally, I do not think that gender stereotypes or conditioning are what they once were. I’m not saying that there isn’t still an implicit association with women to certain activities and men to others, but Western feminism (in its hundreds of expressions) has so transformed the way society views gender that we now have more women than men in higher education with all the open doors and scholarships in the world for women to pursue any field of study. I am in a major (philosophy) which has only about a handful of women in the entire program, and I do not at all feel uncomfortable or disheartened by often being the only woman in class and in a major with the fewest tenure-tracked women across the country.
Ms. Smith, attacking Elliot’s point about interest in different fields is not fairly dealing with his argument. It seems to me that Elliot is discussing something totally separate from any discussion of such cultural conditioning; I believe he was merely suggesting that 50/50 representation in any given field is an arbitrary and fruitless method of discerning justice between the genders. I’m sure that he would be more than happy to concede that nefarious conditioning is a sign of an unjust system; however, the article doesn’t address this issue. I would say that while unequal representation in major fields of work might be a symptom of injustice, (I am using justice instead of inequality because it is a more precise term) but it is still an arbitrary standard that if taken too seriously leads to a situation analogous to the Vonnegut story.