Following on from the Oscars, The Guardian has an article by Sarah Churchwell pointing out that women only seem to win those little nudey man statues when the contest is for being a woman (or for doing things that women do, like making clothes or putting on make-up). I mention this because I’ve been doing my Hugo nominations and, as is often the case, a lot more than half of the people on my ballot are men. And when the list of nominees comes out there will doubtless once again be a chorus of disapproval from people complaining about how awful the SF industry is, and how this is all the fault of Evil sexist “Hugo judges”, Evil sexist SMOFs who fix the ballot, and Evil sexist publishers and editors, not to mention Evil gender traitors like myself who vote for men.
Well, actually, no. I know that is is much easier, and much more fun, to yell and scream at people you know than to deal with the real problem but, as Churchwell points out, it happens elsewhere too. The reason problems, I suspect, are more to do with the fact that many boys are still socialized from birth to believe that women are inferior and not worth their notice except as sex objects, and that many girls are still socialized from birth to believe that they are inferior and so they shouldn’t try to compete in a world that belongs to men (or indeed that the whole idea of competing in unfeminine).
To pick up on a theme from Churchwell, separatism does not equal equality, having quotas does not equal equality, only cultural change brings equality.
Hear hear! I’m all for the best person getting the job/nomination/award/whatever. I can see the reasoning between setting quotas as an intermediate measure, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the most effective method, not the right method, and can probably be harmful in the long run.
I’m always baffled when I hear, for example, the reasoning quite common in Finnish public discourse about equality, which goes approximately like this:
1. I’ts much more difficult for a woman to get to be a director of a big company (which I believe), and therefore the woman must be much more qualified than the men to get there (which would seem to follow).
2. The companies that have a woman in charge do better than those lead with men (a claim that has at least some support by the statistics).
3. Because of 2., we must put more women in charge because they are better leaders than men, and at the same time 1. will be fixed. (somehow completely failing to see how 2. follows from 1. and turning the whole argument on its head)
I have to admit I’ve got a personal interest in the equality matters myself at the moment. My wife is up for tenure (for a position she’s held in practice for years), and pretty much the only thing that could come in the way of her getting it would be if someone decided to give the position to a man because of equality issues (because the world will of course be screwed when there are more female teachers than male ones). Luckily she’s so good at her job that they’d be hard pressed to find anybody equal for the position, man or woman.
(Of course, I’m one of those evil males, so you shouldn’t listen to a word I say.)