Why Is There Still Sexism?

Earlier this week, there was a similar question: Why is there still racism? The sexism question, raised earlier in the presidential campaign and still raised sometimes because a woman is running for vice president, was most recently raised by a group of female playwrights in New York. The New York Times reports that they demanded a town hall meeting with representatives of New York’s leading Off Broadway and nonprofit theaters.

What’s the problem? Female playwrights in New York still have significant difficulty getting their work produced. They don’t think it’s conscious gender discrimination on the part of the theaters, but something just doesn’t add up when, year after year, their male counterparts widely out-produce them.

Just as the racism question is somewhat unanswerable, so is the sexism question. The percentage of female CEOs at major companies remains small. Women are almost invisible in some industries or businesses. Generally, women make only 70% of the wages or compensation earned by men. If the polls are right, an African-American will win the presidency before a woman does. The African-American happens to be a man, of course.

It’s more acceptable for women to say that gender discrimination is unconscious this day and time, rather than be accused of whining about their plight. But how much evidence has to exist before the obvious is admitted: women are still consciously, intentionally discriminated against in the workplace and other areas of life.

There’s attempted justification for this discrimination. Men are still the primary breadwinners. Women still have babies, which interrupts their careers. Women are still the primary caregivers of children and other family members, which makes them miss a lot of work. And yes, the wiring of females makes their emotional reaction to difficult situations unreliable.

It would be inaccurate to say that no progress has been made in thwarting gender discrimination. There’s been a lot of progress, but women still lag behind in so many areas of life, including the workplace (which is illegal, by the way). I don’t know if there will ever be a revival of feminism, but that’s what it may take before an answer to the title of this post is found. As John Stuart Mill wrote, “The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.” He wrote that in 1869.

1. 

   LKS says:

   October 29, 2008 at 1:23 pm

   I was recently discussing my salary range with a male HR worker in another state. His response was, “That’s not too bad, for a woman”.

   Is it 1958 or 2008? Sometimes I wonder
2. 

   John Phillips says:

   October 30, 2008 at 12:47 pm

   Holy cow! When I hear that someone in HR says something like that, I know there’s considerable job security for employment lawyers.