Who decides how we measure equality?

TheTinMenBlog · 2022-10-23T13:23:21+00:00

Whenever I ask for evidence of a Western patriarchy, the answers are always the same – ‘men are 72% of politicians!’ Or ‘men are 85% of Fortune 500 CEOS!’

I’m quickly pointed to how many male billionaires or heads of state there are…

And there it is, did you see it?It’s called the Motte and Bailey Fallacy, and it is characterised by someone making an outrageous and indefensible claim – i.e. that the West is a tyrannical structure of male oppression.

But when challenged, the person switches to a *similar* claim that is mundane, highly agreeable and easy to defend – i.e. ‘we have lots of male politicians’.

And we do have a lot of male politicians, but these are not the same argument, at all. That’s the point really. So many fall into these widely accepted ideas of societal ‘male advantage’, and when questioned, we are often presented with a list of facts about the high percentage male billionaires, male CEOs, and male politicians…

But guess what; I am not a billionaire, or a head of state, or CEO of my own Fortune 500 company – and I doubt you are either.So if like 99.99% of us, you are not a billionaire CEO politician, how are such facts (albeit accurate) relevant to our lives?

Why are our measurements of gender equality so narrow and well… irrelevant?

Aren’t health, education and life expectancy, for example, far better and more honest ways of understanding equality?

What do you think?

~

Sources

Number of Billionaires

Billionaires by sex

Homeless Population

Images by Ali Morshedlou, Adam Nir and Gabrielm Ihalcea from Unsplash

Illustration by! Teewara soontorn

jingle_ofadogscollar · 2022-10-23T17:09:07+00:00

Not to mention that tiny, tiny % of men at the very top CEOs, senators, etc. already govern primarily for women anyway in terms of policies, laws, pro-discrimination bias, etc. The fact that these men share the same gender as the average Joe on the street has no direct and tangible benefit to other men.

DouglasMilnes · 2022-10-23T17:42:32+00:00

In a democracy, the proportion of politicians is a separate matter to the proportion of CEOs.

Politicians are elected. Most of the electorate are women. Therefore, it is women who mostly decide on our political representatives. Several studies in different countries have shown that women will tend to vote for a man rather than a woman, while men don't show a significant bias.

So while a CEO is generally hired to set e the business based on perceived competence, a politician is generally appointed to serve the electorate by the populace, particularly women.

onefreeshot · 2022-10-23T15:11:54+00:00

I know it might come off as hating or whatever, but can we please care about CEOs or people in power etc being competent and not men or women?

DutchOnionKnight · 2022-10-23T13:32:35+00:00

Equality is equality of opportunity, not outcome. Just saying 85% of CEO's are men doesn't mean anything if you don't weigh in the choices people tend to make, how they are willing to strive for a higher position, higher salary, what do choose to sacrifce for all of that. It's very easy to say that men are in higher position "BeCauSE oF ThE PaTRIarChy". However that doesn't make any sense at all.

Most blue collared workers are men too. So if it's all about patriarchy, wouldn't it by definition mean that women automatically had the hard, lesser earn, labour jobs? And all men the white collar office jobs? If for example the pay gap is real, just because of gender, there wouldn't be any men working for the larger compagnies, because women would be cheaper for the sake they are women.

And perhaps, men tend to be a bit more aggressive when it's all about career than women. Maybe the average women chooses a job that is more dealing with people, nurse, teacher, daycare over the big coorperations. And maybe women chooses, on average, their family and having kids over their career. And parents choose for the father to work and mother to stay at home. While they are free to swap the roles, if they want to, but apparently, they don't.

biggerBrisket · 2022-10-23T14:06:54+00:00

Jordan Peterson makes these exact arguments. We can also add that men tend to not be sufficiently serviced in terms of mental healthcare. Men lead in successful suicides.

SamaelET · 2022-10-23T23:55:51+00:00

Just a suggestion : the definition of homeless is very broad. I suggest using rough sleepers data when possible when talking about the inequality in poor people.

Man_of_culture_112 · 2022-10-23T17:23:20+00:00

Thank you for this, this will help me with a video I am about to make. How do I reference you on YouTube?

DarkFlyingApparatus · 2022-10-24T07:04:37+00:00

It's so sad that talk about equality mostly pits people against each other, furthering the divide, while all of our problems are always related to each other in some kind of way.

Equality group nr 1:
Women on average are more likely to go to university than men. Therefore women are fine, let's care more about men's issues. Men receive less mental health care resulting in a higher suicide rate. That is the problem the world should focus on.

Meanwhile in equality group nr 2:
Men on average earn more money than women. Therefore men are fine, let's care more about women's issues. Women are more likely to get misdiagnosed by healthcare professionals resulting in many of them walking around with preventable/treatable diseases for longer. That is the problem the world should focus on.

It's like whataboutism on steroids. It's not just ''Sure, but what about us'', but its ''No, we should only care about us''.
It's sad and tyring to see these kinds of posts so often in both male and female focussed spaces. Equality shouldn't have and us vs them focus.

hshsgdve · 2022-10-23T14:47:42+00:00

You’re confusing the aim of modern measurements of gender equality. The aim is not accurate science, it’s public relations.

iainmf · 2022-10-24T03:52:49+00:00

I would say that it is impossible to measure 'gender equality' as one broad thing because there will be biases in the development of the measurement. I mean, how do you choose what to measure in a non-biased way?

I think gender equality can only be measured in specific areas with strict definitions.

Anyone claiming to have measured overall gender equality has an agenda.

UnHope20 · 2022-10-24T11:15:38+00:00

Another thought provoking post. It's amazing how well you can synthesize your ideas in a concise, engaging, well-written manner.

Keep up the good work.

yoshi_win · 2022-10-23T18:33:20+00:00

Great post, as usual. However, could you explain how (American) men die at a 1.4 times higher rate than women? Don't we all die at a 100% rate?

NudeWallaby · 2022-10-23T14:50:15+00:00

Lol... they must me at "As whilst"

hehimCA · 2022-10-23T16:47:34+00:00

Well done!

bob-object · 2022-10-24T00:31:35+00:00

Great work as always! Really inspiring.

SexEleven · 2022-10-24T13:19:52+00:00

Great stuff dude, keep up the good work!

nam24 · 2022-10-23T22:21:25+00:00

While i don't disagree you also do the same pick and choose you disagree on

-CEO and powerful men in politics or other places are a minority but are we going to pretend that they are an insignificant variable? Those people write the laws we live in, own the businesses we work for, and have heavy control over what we even consider culture. Their numeric inferiority matters little because of the disproportionate power they have in comparison

-Homelessness is an issue that primarily affects men but we don't exactly lack metrics looking at average people showing opposite economic disadvantage, most notably wage gap. For the latter you need to look both at it raw and also pondered through equal qualifications, as they are different information: the first gives you average in general irrespective of career paths, and should be used mainly for wealth analysis in general, the latter concerns gender differences by themselves (doesn't give causes by itself though)

-(Gonna assume those statistics are for America and while rest of the western world follows similar trends and there's nothing wrong with Americans talking about their country it also sometimes feels like people worldwide take Americans situations uncritically before applying to their own. Not really an issue with your graph in particular though, more of an issue with English speaking internet in general)

whhhhaaatdaf · 2022-10-26T14:40:01+00:00

“ Are men equal to other men? “ - best response to “feminism is just”

CoffeeBoom · 2022-10-28T10:39:36+00:00

What a feminist would answer is that it is about representation. CEOs, politicians and the like, being men, will make things easier for men.

This is the argument you are against. And it's fairly easy to dismantle given how men are obviously not doing that great despite their disproportionate representation on the higher echelons.

But then many feminists reconcile with that fact by telling you that defeating the patriarchy (those 75%+ men in upper echelons) is also about helping men, and that having more women in power and defeating the traditional ladder of power (what they call "the patriachy") will also help disadvantaged men and women alike.

Now I have yet to see that idea proven (or disproven) but it remains an interesting idea.

Top_Health_4447 · 2023-02-15T09:17:15+00:00

to be fair, i do believe there is a biological reason why women live longer than men, i remember hearing somewhere that women live longer because men are larger on average and thus our hearts start to fail earlier (or something like that) it's the same reason why people with gigantism will typically only live to be about 50, although on a much smaller scale. obviously better access to healthcare can decrease the gap, but if everything is equal, then men will still die about 1-2 years sooner than women. All the other points are fine though

Title	Who decides how we measure equality?
Author	TheTinMenBlog
Upvotes	315
Comments	57
Date	October 23, 2022 1:22 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/ybhm1s/who_decides_how_we_measure_equality/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/who-decides-how-we-measure-equality.1136786 https://theredarchive.com/post/1136786

Comments