The Gender Issue

            “No ‘him’ or ‘her’; preschool fights gender bias” is an article from the Associated Press written by Jenny Soffel.  It talks about Egalia, a pre-school in Sweden that is attempting to eliminate gender from children’s minds.  Oh wait, I’m sorry, gender stereotypes.  The two get so confusing sometimes.

            The article, author, and school they talk about all have the incorrect notion that modern current day society gives the upper hand to boys and men.  Unfortunately, for me, this isn’t true.  What is true is that women run the discourse around this subject so naturally they are viewed as victims and men are the bad guys.  The true fact of the matter is that modern day society in many ways favors women over men.  We have learned about this throughout the semester with articles like “Do male students need affirmative action?” published in Newsweek which describes how in higher education women are out numbering men in concerning amounts.  “The end of men” by Hanna Rosin published in The Atlantic talks about how now women in the US outnumber men in the workplace and the fact that the modern day workplace is more suited toward female stereotypes.  However this paragraph alone shows how easily we can get away from a working solution.

            Despite what some would want you to believe men and women are different and that is a wonderful thing.  The above paragraph plays into the discourse that it is them or us (the them’s and us’es depending upon your gender), which is so easy to fall into.  This discourse however is a stifling one and horrible for our society.  One of the main problems is that there are only two answers and only one winner to the question.  It doesn’t leave room for collaboration or cooperation.  The other problem is that no one can escape it.  We are all either male or female and therefore involved in the discourse or fight, as some would put it.  Right, there is that.  Now back to the article.

            Tanja Bergkvist, a blogger, brings up an important point.  She says, "Different gender roles aren't problematic as long as they are equally valued."  This is what I believe is the real solution to the “gender issue.”  Unlike some feminist circles believe, I think it is okay to be different and that equality isn’t the solution.  Equality in the sense of if you give a man an apple then you have to give a woman an apple.  If women like or are better at eating pears rather than an apple than why does that have to be a bad thing cause it’s not what men like?  We should be celebrating the fact that women love pears and men love apples, that there is enough food for everyone and that we don’t have to fight over it.  Isn’t that a nice picture?

            Getting back to the preschool.  In any case no matter how you look at the issue Egalia’s solution is not a working one.  At best the children there will leave the school unprepared to face the world where gender stereotypes abound.  The word stereotype often comes with a negative connotation.  This leads, as language often does, us to believe that stereotypes themselves are negative.  But this is not always true.  Stereotypes help us navigate our world.  They help us to have the ability and opportunity to think about other things in our conscious minds.  We can hold stereotypes and yet recognize that those stereotypes won’t be the case all the time and that it is okay for that to happen.  Once again many feminist circles have this wrong, as their goal is to eliminate stereotypes.  This would result in a society that was unproductive and ineffective.