A Case Against My Gender’s Justifications — Talking About Trust and Opportunity
By: Aman Dedhia
Tags: Equality, Equal Pay, Bias, Equal Opportunity, Feminism

Disclaimer: I am a cis man writing on this matter based on listening to other people and their experiences, some self-reflection, and a good amount of uninterrupted thought. With that being said, there’s no denying the fact that everything I write here is based on my interpretation and understanding and is subjected to biases and I take full ownership for the same. This should not be held against any general ideas on this matter and the caveats in this writing should not be used against the movement it tries to supports. I hope this article provides something of value after your skeptical viewing.

It’s the year 2020. You wake up in the morning, freshen up, sit on your favorite chair, and get to your daily work. Every once in a while you look outside the window and wonder when it will be safe again. It’s been a long time and you’re exhausted from the pandemic. Every passing day makes you more desensitized to this fear. The roads are busy again but there’s an ever-lurking fear still, taking over every time a person or a crowd gets too close to you.

The fear is justified as the threat is still ever-present, ever-lurking. You are trying your best to be safe, but you keep encountering people with their masks out; and every time you flinch when a person gets too close, you see the look of being offended on their face. Knowing perfectly it’s hard to be too cautious in these trying times.

It doesn’t take much effort to realize that women have been living through this fear for ages. Deep down we all know that. This analogy probably dies out in the details. Like comparing an assaulter with the virus is downplaying the heinousness of the assaulter by the millions.

We know that when we worry about the safety of our female relative more often than not. Yet the phrase “not all men” is not uncommon. There is a surge in posts highlighting the discrimination, deceit, or assault faced by men every time there’s a wave of activism for women’s rights and safety.

Now I’m not by any means implying that the case of a man being assaulted (mentally or physically) is unimportant. But while there do exist such cases, it should not be used to downplay the feminist movement. The women’s safety issue is much more threaded with society and ever-present. It is much more of a social issue than an individual one.

A string of robberies in a town calls for an investigative intervention while a town with a high crime rate calls for a social intervention along with the investigative one.

“…oh but Not All Men!”

Now I’ll be using the word that has probably been overused and might incite a negative emotion (of aah not again). That’s right. Privilege. What I want to talk about is the inherent quota that we get just by the virtue of our gender.

The quota of not having to worry about our safety while being out and alone late at night, not being eve-teased, followed, heckled, molested, or things worse. For each time we have mentioned or presented our gender, we are in debt to the benefits it has provided us. The least we can do is bear the mistrust towards us by the opposite gender due to a shamefully large history of (and on-going) atrocities. Our reaction to this mistrust should not be to argue that “not all men” but to respect their reasons for caution and work towards cultivating an environment of trust. Cooperate with them in building the safety checks they think are necessary.

Let’s just not be entitled to a certain level of trust we think we deserve, because the gender we belong to (and undeniably benefit from) does not give us the right to do so, and reasonably so. You don’t go near a snake carelessly just because most snakes aren’t venomous.

There are enough venomous snakes to realize you need to be cautious around them. Saying that “but I have always been respectful and have good intentions then why should I be looked at with mistrust” is ego overpowering social thinking. Kudos for being a good boy but your entitlements are not warranted against what’s good for society at large. And this is what brings me to my next point.

“But equal job opportunities should not consider gender!”

Although we have come a long way with women’s representation in the workplace, we are nowhere near the end. The difference in the ratio of women to men in the workplace is still quite far from being equal. 53% of top Indian companies have a male to female employee ratio of 10:1 or worse.

To mitigate this, many companies carry out hiring activities just for women to try and shorten this gap. I have encountered people who react to that with a negative sentiment.

These people believe that job opportunities should only be based on the candidates' capability, not gender. Ironically they don’t see the contradiction in this. A more deserving candidate is not just someone who is more skilled but who is a much bigger asset to the progress at large. And time and time again studies prove that a more functioning, productive, and at the large benefiting industry is the one which is more inclusive and more representative of the general population.

While it’s good to imagine that we should be living in a world where gender, race, cast, and other differences should not limit anyone’s ability to pursue a career, it is just not the present reality. We can’t just stand up and say that from now on everyone will have equal opportunity and everything will be alright.

There need to be reparations. Equality is not just a change in law, it’s a cultural shift. There is no denying the fact that the ability to be skilled and/or knowledgeable is not biased to any gender, race, caste, and other forms of generalizations whatsoever. And the fact that industries at large lag behind in maintaining this ratio shows that the population’s capacity to deliver excellence is being underutilized.

Part of it is undoubtedly due to just less percentage of women being given a chance to participate in the workforce. So the representation of more women in the industry will normalize, empower, and make it easier for more women to participate. Part of this is also due to conscious or subconscious biases. There’s a familiarity bias that we all possess. We tend to show a preference towards what we are more familiar with.

There are studies that point this out much better than I ever could. Start with reading: Explicit and Implicit Gender Bias in Workplace Appraisals: How Automatic Prejudice Affects Decision Making). A widely accepted solution to this problem is to make the workforce more representative of the general population. The more diverse people there are to make decisions, the lesser the bias. This will help companies in the long run to make use of the full potential of the people.

It’s about what Tina Fey (SNL’s former head writer) said in her interview with David Letterman while talking about what changed at SNL just by having more women in the room, “it (gender bias) is not purposeful, it’s not institutional, but if there’s not a person in the room who gets it,…which just perpetuates itself…what started to improve was that as the chemistry of the room slowly became more diverse, other things played better”.

And there goes the argument of “equal opportunity for all”.

There’s irony in expecting your hard work to be rewarded and not expect the industry to solve generations worth of gender bias. That’s putting the individual above the community. And isn’t that how society falls?

Final Thoughts…

We see success as hard work, talent, and luck. Replace the word luck with opportunity and it’s easier to see the bias involved. That this aspect of success is not something mystical like luck but a collection of many small actions and biases that tweak your probability of success. It’s easier to see it as a black box but it’s ignorance to think that it’s just that.

Photo by roya ann miller on Unsplash

Change is not a one-click solution. It usually spans generations. We need to constantly work towards it and hope that in the next generational shift, these issues no longer exist.

PS: While I have failed to talk about genders other than male and female, I do believe that the same concepts of inequality should be tackled for all genders. I humbly apologize to have not been able to talk about it at large and have in a way narrowed the scope of this essay. Despite my failure to explicitly do so, I hope this essay transcends the tiny set of gender I spoke about and brings something of value in the fight for equality and equal representation of all genders.