Women as victims and men as violators?

The third week in a row I’ve been reading about gender issues in India and worldwide. At times, I come across with some emotionally overloaded articles, but mostly I see hard facts from which becomes evident that women are under-represented in major life arenas. Take literacy where women are disadvantaged, (two thirds of illiterate are women, world), take sexual harassment reported by 30-50% women and only 10% men (EU), take managerial positions (women managers take 2% of managerial positions in India and 15-20% in Norway), take domestic violence that every forth Russian and every fifth Indian women experience. And one should not think that his/her country lacks all those issues. One might check out the figures (before I make a comprehensive Global Gender Balanced Scorecard ;o). Yes, there are those countries there gender quality is better. Still, as one of my colleagues said, even though in Western countries women are achieving parity with men in some public arenas (like work) the traditional roles more or less prevail in the private lives (families).

All this made me think hard. As a women myself I take all those issues very close to my heart: essentially, they concern me, my female friends and any women. I am not a feminist and would never fight for the ideals of female chauvinism. In my opinion, this is stupid to suggest superiority of one gender over the other, whichever gender it should be. Nature as well as the whole socialization process make men and women different – different, but not unequal. I sincerely believe that whose arguing for superiority of either are narrow-minded people who are basically nothing, but very defensive.

When looking for the reasons of female under-represented in major life arenas I think of two kinds of explanations: they are prevented (by men) or they do not want to (due to their women-specific consideration). But it’s a whole big discussion here.

Still, I wonder why women are exposed to all these kinds of experiences including, eg. sexual harassment and domestic violence. No, women do not want to get battered nor to be perceived solely as sexual objects. Therefore, men are so violent, cruel and gross that they let themselves go so far- ha? Look at the figures – every one of two or three women face sexual harassment at work, every forth or fifth woman faces domestic violence – this is not something that occurs now and then, this is something people live with. So, men are bad? No, I cannot take it. The ones I met were really nice (sample is not reprehensive, really, but I think for any of us personal experience beats any statistics). Even with all this knowledge about poor women suffering I cannot think of male as violators, male as evil. It is simply hard to live with this though and be happy. And I want to be happy. How to reconcile it, then?… Just a clue for now: all those in the gender studies have been preoccupied with women too much. Women are poor things, women suffer, women struggle. Let’s protect them. What about men? Where the men are? Being tyrants? Or being scared creatures getting in a flock, trying not to appear afraid of women coming in the traditionally male domains? Why they do what they do and how they themselves assess their actions? This would be a research question to pursue.