Gender (t)issues

Should we laugh or cry?

in 2010, A report from the United Nations tells us that women are still far, far behind men when it comes to power. That's where the dog lies burried (! as we say in Icelandic). And something needs to be done. According to the statistics apparently there are more men than women in the world (due to countries like India and China) and for the younger age groups. When it comes to people over 50 however, there is a surplus of women. Which would make sense, I know a woman who once said it was impossible to find "eligible" men over 50, they were all taken, alcholics or dead.

And still 40 years after the equality battle started the glass-ceiling is far from being broken. 

 "...Women hold an average of 17 per cent of the seats in parliament, and only seven of 150 elected heads of state and 11 of 192 heads of government are women...only 13 of the world's 500 largest corporations were led by female CEOs in 2009."  

We are back to women always having to prove they are somehow extraordinary because they have power positions, the norm is still for men to control the world. Back I say, in the discussion, because in reality we have never come away from it. This theme is very much in vogue at the moment and as I wanted to mention the new Danish tv show "Borgen" (aka Christiansborg, the name of the Danish parliament - a show about the insides of power struggles in the Danish parliament when the leader of a traditionally minority party becomes the first female Prime minister of the country), it just happens that last sunday the theme was how the government tried to pass an "equality law", installing quotas in Danish firms for 45% of board of directors to be women. It did not go down well with the male dominated Danish industry is all I can tell you.

Although this show is fiction, its concerns are very much based in reality. The characters are in some cases based on real persons. So much so that the head of big Danish corporation Maersk asked to see the script of this last episode before it was aired. In the episode, the head of the biggest Danish corporation "Crohne" asks to see the PM and threatens to take all his activities out of the country if he is forced to have women on his board of directors. Interesting. No Dane that watches the show is in doubt that Crohne is a reference to Maersk in real life. Fiction or reality, no woman has ever been Prime minister in Denmark. That is yet. Social-Democrate Helle Thorning-Schmidt seems a strong candidate for the elections of 2011 since "Venstre" has lost its charismatic leader Anders Fogh Rasmussen to NATO. 

Why are women still lagging behind? Is it biology, the difficulty of changing social values and beliefs, because men are not helping the cause or simply because women themselves keep working against each other? Impossible to have a straight answer, although my bedsite reading is giving me alot to think about. "Le Conflit, La femme et la mére" by Elisabeth Badinter is thought-provoking in an unexpected way. I started to read the book amidst the deepest fog and could really not concentrate on the reading while I was in the middle of the Fox's first 6 months. After the fog lifted, however I see the book in a whole new light. It gives an insight into the naturalism of motherhood and the imperfections working or stay at home mothers deal with and all the guilt. But while you are struggling with it yourself you don't want to hear about how breastfeeding isn't really all it is said to be. Therefore you cannot read this book impartially in those vulnerable moments. Now my brain is back, I will address this in more detail later here on this blog.

Impossible to separate women's movement and the issues of mother-(parent)hood. Oh how far away those days days seem now, when I was crying justice in my twenties: "women and men are just the same and we deserve the same". Perhaps my views have changed, I think its impossible to ignore biological differences between the sexes but the core issues remain the same. There is no reason women should not participate more in decision making, we just have to adapt to what nature has given us and find the right balance.