Gender Balance - A Radical Notion

Katie Couric was being her usual good-natured self as she smiled brilliantly and spoke personally to the dozens [hundreds] who were honoring her farewell from the Today show. She was gracious, appreciative, totally sincere, warm, maybe embarrassed by all the acclaim and review of past moments. She is a woman of immense talent. Serious and funny. Powerful yet humble. One staff member sharing her thoughts said they could be in a disagreement uproar over something, but when Katie walks into the room, her presence immediately changes dynamics for the better .. like balm on troubled waters. I can imagine that for many people being interviewed by Katie Couric is a high honor. She exudes empathy …and it is intelligent, not shallow, empathy. Katie is all woman, with style and grace…a model for many of the qualities I want to see women bring to the table everywhere…at home, in the business world, especially in national politics.

Women in the U.S. are struggling to claim their place at the table, place they have been denied a long time, some say since the Council of Nicaea in the 4th century, maybe since forever. It is said that the Roman church burned millions of women as heretics or witches with the goal of reducing their position and influence [New England Puritans did the same thing on a smaller scale], a murderous legacy that has put women and their unique character off the stage of history for centuries. Thomas Aquinas is reported to have stated in the 13th century that woman is “a necessary object who is needed to preserve the species and provide food and drink.” The ultimate denigration, and we are to consider him a saint? The ultra-conservative Catholic institution Opus Dei to this day maintains the same attitude. Women have a lot of work to do to overcome and reverse that misogynist thought process. Women should have equality, surely, but what I am seeking goes beyond equality. I seek gender balance, using the superb but long overlooked spiritual qualities of women as ballast in juxtaposition to the many fine qualities of men. Equality speaks to what is right and fair in a legal sense, and I’m all for that. But balance speaks to what is sorely needed in a human sense to correct an out-of-balance, off-center, centuries-old, screwed up world. I want to see women brought into the conference room. I want to see their opinions given much more consideration and respect in decision making.

This is a radical notion, so let’s take a closer, impersonal look at personality and character differences related to gender.

On a big screen, looking totally at generalities, what major qualities do men bring to our joint human struggle?

Five come quickly to mind:
• Intellect – men can think their way through problems and come to a logical conclusion. Men can create and fathom complex theories and then create the logical support systems to back them up. Think of Einstein and many of today’s science researchers.
• Aggression – men defend what they believe in and are not afraid to do so. They take on jobs and professions that may put them in the public eye in an unfavorable way. They stand up and speak out.
• Creativity – in my mental review of artists, composers, writers, inventors, the major players have been men. It’s possible this is more the result of gender imbalance than innate ability. This question is not likely to be resolved in my lifetime.
• Physics – all those laws of physics that apply to plumbing, carpentry, engines come easily to men. If something doesn’t work, men can fix it. Men are builders and menders in the physical world. They are also adventurers and will try crazy things, like flying a kite in a thunderstorm [Ben Franklin].
• Coolness under pressure – I wasn’t privy to the inside story, but from the outside my prime example of coolness under extreme pressure is Jack Kennedy handling the Cuban missile crisis. The ability to stay calm, impersonal and focused is something we expect from men.

These are all wonderful qualities and we would be in dire straits without them. I am not suggesting that women do not possess any of these qualities. Many do and in good measure. Impressive as the list is, though, we can’t forget that there is a major shadow side to all of this. Intellect that only serves the goal of power, aggression for the sake of building empire and extending power, creativity that designs cruel and inhumane punishments to reinforce power readily come to mind. We so desperately need balancing qualities.

What could women bring? Again, I see five stand-outs:
• Intuition – that unidentified, illusive, and fairly rare ‘knowing’ that comes occasionally to some of us. Many intuitions are ignored because they don’t make ‘sense’ but prove later to have been the correct path. Intuition needs a place at the table when anyone is struggling with a hard decision. It also needs time to develop, as well as recognition of its value.
• An understanding heart – this could also be thought of as sensitivity to aspects of a question that are not so immediately obvious to the logical thinkers.
• The ability to read people – to see through the façade of geniality, confidence, or whatever to what is really behind the façade and driving the action.
• Graciousness – the ability to make other people feel at ease, needed and helpful.
• Humility – a quality that doesn’t grab all the credit, that puts other people first.

Many of these feminine qualities we lump together in the general category of people skills and the ability to build friendships. Again, a disclaimer. These qualities are not limited to women. Many men excel in these areas, but in general they are what women do well.

Think about the contrasts and how they balance each other. Intuition and an understanding heart can balance a purely intellectual/head approach. People skills are a good balance to physical skills. Humility balances aggressive domination.

To understand the great need we have to make gender balance a priority, consider the state of affairs in the U.S. We are in a non-justifiable power war that bleeds us economically and spiritually and is both the cause and the excuse to downsize vital social programs. The war gives a huge boost to many corporations which are motivated solely by profit. It left many of us politically and morally stranded because we could not and cannot swim in the raging current of war mania. Those who got us in seem disinterested in getting us out. It is a prime time for qualities which women bring to the table. Just at this very moment, the opinion of Condoleeza Rice that our president needs to talk directly with Iran’s president has prevailed over that of much of the rest of the Bush cabinet’s desire to send in the bombs. Dick Cheney is said to be a prime holder of that position. A rare moment of praise is in order for Ms. Rice for taking a non-aggressive, non-violent stance.

And here is an important caveat. Women need to claim their place in our cultural, political, and economic life not by imitating men, not by being more intellectual, more aggressive, more cool, but by developing our own innate qualities. We need to manifest heart, compassion, warmth, kindness, sensitivity, generosity … all the relationship skills that can bring a tough talking ‘enemy’ to the table believing that we will listen to his point of view and treat him with respect. Men in general need to exhibit that same kindness and generosity in how they relate to women. Give Aquinas the boot. Gandhi is a better spokesman for our time [see end quote]. Rejecting all the derogatory terms of thought and expression so prevalent in the way men think about women is an absolute prerequisite for making room for women at the round table of decision making.

With the mention of ‘round table’, I see that I have introduced a counter-productive image. The legendary Round Table of King Arthur and his knights conjures up an all-male assemblage and a concept that only men do important things. Well, men do fight for what they believe in which certainly comes through in the Morte D’Arthur legend. In keeping his legendary women behind the scenes, Sir Thomas Malory may well have been under the same churchly influence in the 15th century as Aquinas was in his day. Most importantly, what about the historical Christ who preached feminine qualities of love and forgiveness and traveled with his circle of 12 male disciples? Did he only call male disciples, and was this because they most needed to hear the message, or have women been scrubbed from the Biblical text as some were from life? I leave the question for another day.

Like many women I have some pet moments of peeve, images that stick in my mind from every- day kind of experiences. I recall an example of balance vs imbalance in a non-profit board I served on for about 20 years. When I first joined, the male/female membership was about equal…4-5 men and 4-5 women. We got along well and accomplished some good things. Over the years, women began to drop out until I was the only one left. This created a totally different dynamic. Things got tense and adversarial at times. The men would figuratively knock their heads together. I well remember one interview the board had with someone wanting to do a project for the organization. It was embarrassingly hostile, but we lacked someone who could smooth the troubled waters.

At another meeting on another board, I remember a candidate telling the board with almost livid conviction: “You would be crazy not to hire me.” I almost went into cardiac arrest at the blatant hubris of this statement. I don’t think many women could even approach such bullying arrogance in aggrandizing themselves.

Once at a conference I got a rude shock. Walking into a Q&A plenum, I noticed that the stage was full of suits, about a dozen or so! All were men. I looked around at the crowd and saw any number of women present who had made great contributions to the subject matter at hand. Why weren’t some of them on stage? I rose from my seat and asked this question, but it was considered rhetorical, I guess. Nothing was done. The suits stayed.

Sometimes women lack the confidence to step forth, having picked up various societal messages through the years that they aren’t as good as their men-folk. Ladies, we’ve got to change that message. How can this be done? Here’s a suggestion: pick a female as your role model, someone that you admire, and try to grow into your image of that person. If Katie Couric can interview anyone on earth without being intimidated, if Condi Rice can challenge Dick Cheney and succeed, if Erin Brockovich can take on PG&E, if Rosa Parks can take on segregation, maybe there is something each of us can do in a new direction, like new growth from an old tree. It is critical that we do this because our country so greatly needs the qualities women can offer. We must answer the call at whatever level we can, wherever we are. Many are doing so, and more of us must join them or see our nation’s values, our national character, our culture, and our former good will in the world hit the sewer. And men must not be afraid to acknowledge that the world might be better served by gender balance. Every person is needed, everyone has a place in the world. This is about men and women working together to create balance… a radical concept whose time is long, long overdue. #

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman? M. Gandhi, 1930