What is Gender Blindness and Why is it a Problem for Women?
There are many hurdles that women face to be seen as equals in society. To most, this is a well-known fact. It is easy to cite a history of male dominance as the prime suspect for today’s lingering state of affairs for women in society. However, one of the biggest challenges to women in the modern world is often overlooked, if not completely unknown: gender blindness.
Gender blindness is a term used to describe treating all genders the same regardless of their biological or historical differences. Although this may on the surface seem to be a great step forward in the journey to equality, this blanket treatment of all people as the exact same ends up doing more harm than good.
In the ongoing fight for women’s rights, the word “equality” is thrown around a lot. From this constant usage of the word, gender-blind views became more common in response to the cry for women to have an equal chance in the world as men.
However, instead of fostering a more level playing field between men and women, this emerging culture of gender-blindness has created another way to allow women’s issues to be swept under the rug. Historically, women have struggled through a lot in order to even be allowed to compete with men and women have always had a disadvantage.
Women and men have different needs that must be met in order to make up for women’s long history of disadvantages compared to men and by being blind to the past, we are prevented from moving forward.
As further proof that pure equality is not always the solution is a scientific study on subconscious gender bias found in a Scientific American Article but Ilana Yurkiewicz (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/unofficial-prognosis/study-shows-gender-bias-in-science-is-real-heres-why-it-matters/) What they found in this study is that despite giving job reviewers identical applications, applications with female names were consistently scored lower than those with male names.
The word that women rallying for their rights should seek out instead is “equity.” Equity goes a step beyond equality to achieve the goal of making amends for disadvantages and truly leveling the playing field.
One example of how equity triumphs over equality is in the case of watching a baseball game over a fence. Two friends go to a baseball game together. One is tall, and the other is short. The tall friend can almost see over the fence, but the short one cannot. By following the rules of equality, both people get the same thing. Both friends get a box the same size to stand on, but still only the tall friend can see the game. In a situation of equity, the short friend gets a taller box to stand on so that both friends can see over the fence.
This example applies to the real world too in relation to how women are treated in the workplace, where simply giving women the same options as men will not always cut it. Because of their history of disadvantages, women must have more support in order for them to really be equal with men.