Thursday, November 16, 2006

A Vindication of the Rights of Women

I dragged out my academic c.v. earlier today to see just exactly when it was that I had participated in an invited panel discussion on Capitol Hill sponsored by the Capitol Hill Women's Political Caucus. It was almost 14 years ago, January 6, 1993. Although the official topic was sexual harassment on Capitol Hill, the discussion was fairly wide ranging and when several people in the audience and some of the other panelists started talking about women as if they were substantially different from men, and expressed beliefs that they would not abuse their power, if they had it, in either that or any other way, I felt obliged, as the expert on the panel in the psychology of women and gender, to suggest that studies did not actually support substantial differences, that individual men and women were far different from each other than men as a group were different from women as a group; and that it seemed far more likely that politicians were more alike in some ways, across gender, than men politicans were different from women politicians. I suggested that there were plenty of examples of women abusing power to support that. It was an unpopular assertion, to say the least. NO one wanted to hear THAT, and the information was essentially ignored. Much as it is in the real world, where people pick out selected examples to support their own beliefs and assertions and ignore any information to the contrary.

However, one of the first things the first female speaker of the House did, it seems to me, was to prove the point herself. I was disappointed, but I'm sure not so disappointed as many, if not, most, people who still, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, hold the belief that all women are different from all men, more ethical and smarter. I have fought and will still fight for equal rights for women. But I've always known I was fighting for the right of some women to be equally as stupid, petty, and political as some men. I just hope that this particular woman is smart enough and big enough to learn quickly from her mistakes and get above her petty personal fights with other Congressional members to do the right things by the country. But that's what I've always hoped for all of them. And I still think it's amazing, on the one hand, to finally have a female in a major position of power in the U.S. Congress, only two people away from being President; and ridiculous, on the other, that it has taken this long.

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