Does Gender Equality Exist? by Sharon Dolan

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, "It's a girl." ~Shirley Chisholm

Men and women are not equal and to my mind they never will be.

In June 1913 Emily Davison threw herself in front of the King of Great Britain and Ireland’s horse at the Epsom Derby. The moment was captured on film and for anyone who has seen it: it’s a gruesome visual nightmare. For she was, of course, killed by the horse.

Emily was a devoted, and some may say fanatical, member of the women’s suffrage movement in the UK. A movement that campaigned and protested for Universal Suffrage: basically it fought for the right of women to have the same voting privileges as men.

In 1928 Universal suffrage for all adults over 21 years of age was achieved.

The Pankhurst family, who have become an almost mythical family in the movement towards equal citizenship with men, led the movement.

You can imagine my excitement several years ago when I discovered that a friend’s great - grandmother had been in prison with one of the Pankhurst’s, during the suffragette’s infamous hunger strikes. She was not in prison for herself being a member of the suffragettes, but because being about to give birth, and being in an era before epidurals, she had drunk some alcohol to help numb the pain. Her payment for doing such a thing: Prison.

And perhaps therein lies the insurmountable obstacle to gender equality: childbirth. And that is one fact that can never be erased.

To be born female is to be born, in many respects, a commodity. From the smallest age we compliment little girls for being pretty, sweet, good around the house, and all things nice.

If a woman happens to be beautiful and also happens to be intelligent well then that is one of the most dangerous combinations alive. And it will not, in nearly all cases, ever make her happy. By contrast looks and brains in a man just make him more attractive and winsome to everybody.

For men are born with an advantage.

But what about when this ‘advantage’ is not just an advantage like any other: being beautiful; being intelligent; being talented, but one which is used to victimize those that were merely born the ‘the other sex’.

I sat down to write this blog entry and realized I don’t know what to say, do, or write. I don’t know what you can say about such an endemic human rights issue that crosses, culture, race and wealth.

Whether that is rape, acid – throwing, honor killings, female genital mutilation or domestic violence.

The image that it portrays of the culture we have created for ourselves shows itself very clearly. Some are clearly more equal than others: A whole 50% to be precise.

‘At least one out of every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or

otherwise abused in her lifetime’.

As a child many of us witness domestic violence.

We all know people whose childhood was blighted by this horrendous reality.

There is a culture of silence that surrounds domestic abuse, and I don’t think any statistic will ever truthfully tell us how big the actual problem is.

The very same boys who are outraged at the abuse inflicted on their Mother often go on to impose similar abuse in their own adult relationships. And the same is true of girls. Often times the daughters of domestic abuse victims grow up and become entrapped in abusive relationships.

Children, who have witnessed the sins of the fathers, can often too actively reject the family where such horrendous events occurred.

As adults we demand explanations for the past. We want to know why it happened, and why it was allowed to happen. We don’t understand why people stay and put up with it. We often place the blame on the original victims:

‘You stayed! You put up with it! I wouldn’t. I never would. Why did you do it? Don’t you know what it has done to me?’

"To the victor go the spoils" goes the war cry. In a world where over half the human beings, are made vulnerable by virtue of their very gender. There are no victors; only spoils. And we should be ashamed of ourselves.