I was four years old when my mother organized a "play date" with one of her acquaintance's young daughters. When I arrived, my new friend smiled at me, asked me to play and promptly pushed me into a closet and inflicted bloody scratches all over my face. A month later, I proudly showed off the scars to another friend, who then pointed to his scraped knee and said, "This hurt more."
After reading Roger Lott's article last week ("Invisible Men," Sept. 23), I couldn't help but be reminded of the childishly competitive and unconstructive attitude I had encountered so many years ago. Lott's claim that modern day women fare better than men "in many ways" is imprudent, and dismisses the numerous problems that women face to this day. Essentially, he is saying, "My cut is bigger than yours. Heck, yours isn't even there."
In fact, contemporary women still face many injustices. There are countries where adult women are not allowed to step foot outside their home without a male chaperone present. Even in 2010, an Iranian woman could be convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning. And we should not allow these horror stories abroad to lull us into a sense of complacency in the United States, where women account for 95 percent of domestic violence victims and one out of four women experiences a sexual assault during her college career. In the business world, the glass ceiling still remains largely intact, with women occupying only 15 percent of board seats and 3 percent of CEO positions in Fortune 500 companies.
Lott attempts to explain the overrepresentation of men in lucrative career fields from an evolutionary standpoint. According to Lott, it is men's instinctual desire to "provide for or protect women" a well-intentioned, if patronizing goal that drives them to occupy well-paid employment positions. By claiming that men are wealthy because they want to "protect" women, Lott inadvertently implies that these same men have demonstrated an evolutionary instinct that ought to prevent them from hurting women. In other words, he insinuates that violence against women is a lower-class phenomenon that emerges among men who have not demonstrated an instinctual urge to provide for women. Yet, we all know that domestic abuse and sexual violence exist within all socioeconomic classes of society.
Furthermore, Lott ignores the fact that women have just recently been officially welcomed into certain career fields. Indeed, Title IX, which was enacted in 1972, recognized the prevalence of sex discrimination predominantly against women in the American education system. The groups that Lott lists, e.g. Women in Business, Society of Women's Engineers, Women in Science Program and Women in Leadership, were created in response to this sexual discrimination, with the goal of supporting women who pursue career interests that have been traditionally male-dominated. Such programs aim to encourage more women to aspire to these careers by creating a network of opportunities and support.
It is also important to note that the purpose of these groups is not to exclude men or to keep valuable resources away from them. If they offer help to women, that doesn't mean that the groups are taking opportunities away from men. This isn't "special treatment," it is recognizing that there are unfair odds against women in numerous fields of interest. Besides, if Lott thinks that it is "unfair" that he does not have similar opportunities for mentoring and support, he is welcome and even encouraged to create his own. Dartmouth has proven to be a very supportive environment for these endeavors, for men as well as for women.
I could go on and on about the inaccuracies and inconsistencies in Lott's article, but what I really want to say is that both men and women have suffered, in different ways, at different levels and in different contexts. My four-year old self's eagerness to show her battle scars did not mean that she was choosing to ignore the scabs on her friend's knees. It is our responsibility as future leaders to recognize injustices in our world in order to provide our peers with the support they need and the resources they deserve. I'd like to think that at Dartmouth, we aren't competing for the winning place in suffering, but that we are supporting each other in our quests for success in the face of adversity.
Lott, I know your scraped knee hurts, but so do our scars. If we acknowledge your pain, will you acknowledge ours?
