I stress it is not a Battle against the opposite gender, as some would like to believe. It is a war on Sexism and Racism and all existing prejudice in the world. An older white man I recently spoke with would have me believe there is no more work to be done, that only time is needed to see progress. I see this as laziness, an easy laziness to slip into for either side, the victim or the unknowing antagonist. I am not friends with anyone who is directly sexist. No one I am close to would ever hit a woman or keep a woman against her will from succeeding or trying to succeed in this world, but I am sorry to say that doesn't mean everything is hunky-dory and we're all gonna be holding hands and singing Kumbaya in Corporate Boardrooms and other male-dominated fields any time soon.
The problem is partly that many women exist peacefully within their roles, so making up 51% of the population means less when many of those women don't feel like they are at a disadvantage. No offense to anyone's life choices, but if I was choosing a traditional role and had gone to college to get my "Mrs." than it would be easy for me to say that we have progressed quite well into gender equality. Women have the vote now. We can drive too right? Wow, well, we must be well on our way in that case.
It makes me feel good that women are making up more voters, but not all have forward-thinking ideas in mind. Some would - in the words of an old mentor of mine - "put the women's movement back twenty years!!!" The other day I was reading an article in a 2010 issue of "Black Enterprise" about minorities in the military and my eye was caught by a line that said minorities and women "tend not to choose" branches like Infantry that lead to more career-Soldiers. I wanted to call the editor and the author and give them a stern, "Choose your words more carefully" lecture because the issue matters so much to me, not because I think they were trying to be misleading. Women "tend not to" because they are not allowed to be in Infantry or Armor which makes up the majority of the highest ranking Generals. And the fact that we haven't overcome this hurdle is reason enough to make me want to take a copy of the stupid law and nail it to the desk of the guy who told me that gender equality has been reached in his eyes. He even went on to tell me that the government "shoves equal rights" down the throats of businesses today. He went on to say the only way the poor man who owns a business can be successful with the government is to either register his company in his wife's name or go private. Honestly, in a world where men still earn more for every dollar to the woman, and make up 89% of CEO's in the Fortune500, how can you believe that gender equality has been reached? I strongly encourage men like this to seriously watch the youtube of Daniel Craig cross-dressing for women's interest across the world. It's seriously a great introduction to the man who believes he's being discriminated against by laws intended to bridge a gap that continues to exist in spite of all the time it's had to shrink more drastically. Here, I'll include the link, please, educate yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC8Ls-5nRxM
"So are we equals? Until the answer is yes, we must never stop asking."
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