Confucius and Feminism, Jennifer Lawrence and Pay-equality

I had a great talk with my friend about Athena Talks, an aspiring movement of men inclusion and gender equality for all with events in San Francisco, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City, and Feminism the other night. It was one of our many meaningful conversations, one that helped me learn so much more about myself, women, and men.

1. Confucius and a philosophy that says how women should treat each other

My friend observed that “even among the most educated vietnamese women in every school in the US, there always has to be at least a pair of women hating each other.” They hate each other because one might be more accomplished than the other, or one gets higher score in the class, or gets a better job/salary than the other. In addition, in the work place and college environment, women tend to have more tendencies (than men) to label each other as bossy, bitchy, nosy, or attention seeker.

My friend proposes that this happens because “perhaps there has never been a philosophy that says how women should treat each other. Confucius only mentions how men should treat men, and how women should treat men, but never how women should treat woman. Woman-woman relationship is pretty absent in Christianity or other cultures as well.” In today’s time, it’s great that there are a lot more feminist movements, but it’s also tough for them because women have already had to go through thousands of years of prejudice.

My thoughts: This is an extremely good point, something that people should not forget about. There is always a start and history to everything, how you define yourself as a feminist should also have a origin. Doctors can only treat the disease if s/he understands its source in the body.

2. Jennifer Lawrence and Her Few Thousand Dollars

My friend said: “I always find it hard to read Jennifer Lawrence (JLaw)’s quotes or the quotes of other female celebrities about equal pay. They have concrete point and may suffer from pay inequality, but no one should care too much about whether JLaw receives a few thousand dollars below her male co-stars. Because right now has an extremely wealthy life, perhaps we should think about how to help the part-time female workers/single moms into full-time jobs first, and then worry about JLaw later.”

We then agreed that the goal in equality pay is advanced at the expense of having more people moving into well-paid jobs. In other words, if I become wealthy like JLaw someday, I eventually will have less attention and privilege to demand for equal or higher pay for myself.

Unfortunately, the majority of women’s competitive advantage is that they compete partly by offering to work for less pay while men’s advantage is that many already have higher-education and dominated high-paid jobs. According to my friend, which I also agree, the problem is that, because we live in a less than the ideal world, if everyone is simply forced to be paid the same (only with the reasoning of that the two genders should have the same payment), men would actually dominate high-paid jobs forever.

So in the end, the goal of pay-equality should be less about the gender itself, but more about making sure that more women receive better education in well-paid or all majors. In other words, the change in pay needs to happen through skills and education, not through single-minded advocacy and enforcement.