Focus on the Issues: The Cautionary Tale of Harvard and the Snow Penis
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| Also listed in: Campus Progress Summer Blogathon |
Last year at Harvard, a group of women launched a campaign that attracted national attention, including coverage by The Economist, Salon.com, The Philadelphia Daily News, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Sun-Times, and numerous web sites (1). Against the tenure ratio? No. Against the three-quarters salary earning, women to men? Nope. Diversity? Nein. Gender discrimination in class? No. Abortion? Uh uh. Gay rights? Not even close. Birth control access? Please.
They were crusading against an 9'6" snow penis that one of the men's sports teams created in a courtyard.
Yes, a snow penis.
How could progressives concerned about women's rights ignore a tenure ratio of 7:1 men to women on Harvard's faculty but protest about a snow sculpture?
Sure, I suppose the giant penis in the middle of Harvard Yard is anti-feminist but it's indicative of greater issues, of a male dominated framework--that is, if you should choose to interpret the snow sculpture as something other than a wintery manifestation of men's perennial delight with their genitals. There is, not 100 feet from where the object in question was erected, excuse the phrase, a stone monolith of the same theme but with hieroglyphs. Should you harbor a penchant for attacking sculptures around campus, focus on the stone and not the snow. The stone won't melt in a few days.
These students took up a cause that the general public can't relate to in politics. Talk about a woman's right to choose, the need for women to mobilize and vote, or talk about equal pay! After all, a snow penis seems a particularly trivial issue to the women nationwide who make 76 cents to a man's dollar (2). Issues like hiring practices and salary are more substantial and more politcally palatable than snow sculptures, no matter how distasteful.
We have to stick with the practical problems. By launching protests against issues the public cannot relate to, problems that do not affect the general populace, we're losing allies and alienating potential supporters.
I have no problem being radical, being provocative, upsetting people, or challenging tradition--but I have a problem doing these things because of a snow sculpture when I know that, according to WHO, meeting the demand for family planning could save over 100,000 women's lives worldwide next year (3).
Gender equality is important, integral to the progressive ideal. But the issues that matter and find a greater audience and support for our efforts, like reproductive rights and equality in the workplace, are being lost in the fray. Channel the same determination and energy that got Harvard's snow penis in The Economist into a campaign to repeal the Global Gag Rule or for fair salary initiatives and who knows what we could do?
1. McCormack, Noah. "Let it Stand." March 2003. Link />
2. Joyce, Amy. "D.C. Tops Nation In Women's Pay, Equity With Men." November 2004. Link />
3. SDNP. "World Population Day, 2004." July 2004. http://www.sdnpbd.org
They were crusading against an 9'6" snow penis that one of the men's sports teams created in a courtyard.
Yes, a snow penis.
How could progressives concerned about women's rights ignore a tenure ratio of 7:1 men to women on Harvard's faculty but protest about a snow sculpture?
Sure, I suppose the giant penis in the middle of Harvard Yard is anti-feminist but it's indicative of greater issues, of a male dominated framework--that is, if you should choose to interpret the snow sculpture as something other than a wintery manifestation of men's perennial delight with their genitals. There is, not 100 feet from where the object in question was erected, excuse the phrase, a stone monolith of the same theme but with hieroglyphs. Should you harbor a penchant for attacking sculptures around campus, focus on the stone and not the snow. The stone won't melt in a few days.
These students took up a cause that the general public can't relate to in politics. Talk about a woman's right to choose, the need for women to mobilize and vote, or talk about equal pay! After all, a snow penis seems a particularly trivial issue to the women nationwide who make 76 cents to a man's dollar (2). Issues like hiring practices and salary are more substantial and more politcally palatable than snow sculptures, no matter how distasteful.
We have to stick with the practical problems. By launching protests against issues the public cannot relate to, problems that do not affect the general populace, we're losing allies and alienating potential supporters.
I have no problem being radical, being provocative, upsetting people, or challenging tradition--but I have a problem doing these things because of a snow sculpture when I know that, according to WHO, meeting the demand for family planning could save over 100,000 women's lives worldwide next year (3).
Gender equality is important, integral to the progressive ideal. But the issues that matter and find a greater audience and support for our efforts, like reproductive rights and equality in the workplace, are being lost in the fray. Channel the same determination and energy that got Harvard's snow penis in The Economist into a campaign to repeal the Global Gag Rule or for fair salary initiatives and who knows what we could do?
1. McCormack, Noah. "Let it Stand." March 2003. Link />
2. Joyce, Amy. "D.C. Tops Nation In Women's Pay, Equity With Men." November 2004. Link />
3. SDNP. "World Population Day, 2004." July 2004. http://www.sdnpbd.org
!
This is one of the greatest falsehoods that's consistently trotted out about the state of gender relations today. Virtually every disinterested study has found that in reality, there is pay equality when factors such as maternity are controlled for; in fact, between unmarried women and unmarried men, in many sectors such as financial fields women on average earn slightly more! Not to mention, that between unmarried women and unmarried men, Men are less likely to be promoted.
Feminism is all well and good, but it's not an excuse to push unreality. ;)
As for the Snow Penis... the true feminist answer, I suppose, is to counter with a Snow Vagina. There's no accounting for good taste in either idea, but hey, it's college. :p
Second, agreed about the snow vagina--that was one
of my original points to a friend in conversation.
Feminism is about equality. But third, I must say:
you've rather stymied with your challenge to my
numbers.
"[Pay inequality] is one of the greatest
falsehoods that's consistently trotted out about
the state of gender relations today."
Where's your source? I'd be interested to see
it.
It's dubious that many people would agree with
that statement. Especially when considering the
even more egregious pay disparities faced by
people, specifically women, of color.
"Virtually every disinterested study has found
that in reality, there is pay equality when
factors such as maternity are controlled for; in
fact, between unmarried women and unmarried men,
in many sectors such as financial fields women on
average earn slightly more! Not to mention, that
between unmarried women and unmarried men, Men are
less likely to be promoted."
Is this to say that maternity and marriage
disqualify women for equal pay?
"Feminism is all well and good, but it's not an
excuse to push unreality. ;)"
Commenting that feminism promotes "unreality" is
curious. Here, I feel pressed to make a rather
bold point: Feminism and statistics are unrelated.
It's not an issue of feminism unless, unbeknownst
to me, NOW and the FMF have secretly taken over
The Washington Post and CNN--and either planted or
replaced the statisticians coming up with these
wickedly off-base numbers the media reports. What
a conspiracy!
I'd like to think that all progressives are
feminists, that all progressives believe in
equality for all people.
Sources supporting the pay divide, including The
Washington Post and CNN.com:
"Nationally, compared with white men, white women
made 70 cents on the dollar, all women made less
than 68 cents on the dollar, black women made less
than 63 cents on the dollar, and Hispanic women
were paid just slightly more than half of white
men's median salary, the report said." -- from The
Washington Post
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55
775-2004Nov16.html)
equalpay/
"At the current rate of change, working women will
not achieve equal pay until after the year 2050.
That's almost 100 years after President Kennedy
signed the Equal Pay Act into law, prohibiting
discrimination based on sex resulting in unequal
pay for equal work." -- CNN
(http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Careers/10/22/equal.pa
y/)
http://www.aflcio.org/issues/jobseconomy/women/
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/equalpayact1.html
it.""
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17909-15 12591,00.html
Also, you may not like John Leo, but he speaks the truth on this one: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/johnleo/jl20050 314.shtml
"Single women who have never married, live alone and have full-time jobs earn more than their male equivalents by 28 cents per hour... Single women earn 101.6 percent of single men's hourly earnings across the full spectrum of occupations, education levels, and age." ~Employment Policy Foundation, April 2nd, 2002
"The most important reasons for the 'gender gap' have little to do with employer bias. Increasingly, the gap is the result of choices women make as they seek to maximize their own happiness and achieve a broad mix of life goals." ~Newsletter of the Women's Freedom Network, 1996
A fun question worth considering: If women truly made 3/4ths of what men did even when circumstances were equal, what business wouldn't be able to gain an edge on their competitors by hiring women instead of men? How do men still get hired?
But please, don't let that humorous hypothetical distract you from the data and sources above. The fact is, the 'gender gap' in wages is largely nonexistent.
""Is this to say that maternity and marriage
disqualify women for equal pay?""
In the real world, marriage will, on average, lower a woman's pay, since it means she'll be more likely to take some time off from working to be a homemaker. Will every woman, or even most women? Of course not, but some will, and that skews the averages.
But the real issue is maternity; the reason unmarried women perform better in these statistics is that they are much less likely to be mothers.
And why wouldn't being a mother lower your income? Mothers take months (sometimes years) away from their careers, which gives those who stick with it continuously a better shot at career advancement. Since, on average, women will work less once they have children (time spent with the kids, to whatever extent), that makes it harder for them to compete.
Look at it this way: Compare a woman who never marries and never has children with a woman who marries and has two children.
Ceteris paribus, wouldn't it make sense that at the end of the game, the unmarried woman has advanced farther in her career, and thus earned a higher paycheck?
""Commenting that feminism promotes "unreality" is
curious.""
Except that that wasn't my comment at all. My comment was that you were invoking the cause of feminism in general to push unreality, much in the same way one on the other side of the spectrum might invoke 9/11 to push a stifling of dissent.
And then, there's the snow penis. Was it not just amusing? A testament to all that is silly and inane in the late teen/early twenties male gonado-limbic-frontal feedback loop? A snow vagina? I promise you, it would unnerve the poor bastards completely.