Gender Equality with Wheelchair Access

To promote women, we must demote men.

When I first went to Columbia University, the Department of Chemistry had one female professor. A year later, the department hired a young woman as an assistant professor, doubling the size of its female faculty. The department had a total of twenty faculty members at that time.

In University of California, San Francisco, on the floor that I currently work, there are twenty one faculty members. Three are women.

When I interviewed in the Department of Chemistry in University of Washington, Seattle, I met 16 professors, out of whom only one was a woman. She was newly tenured in the department, along with four male junior professors.

Why are there so few female professors?

According to some people, including Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard University, women lag in science partially because they are biologically different from men. Perhaps testosterone stimulates mathematical genius; estrogen suppresses it. Perhaps women are innately more susceptible to beauty in a flower bouquet than beauty in a mathematical formula, more adept at counting inventories than counting neutrons, more disposed to mixing cooking recipes than doing chemical synthesis.

Wait a minute. As I remember, from primary school all the way to college, the top-scoring student in my class had always been a girl. In the College Entrance Exam administered by the Chinese Bureau of Education, girls do just as well as boys.

Anticipating such retorts, Dr. Summers contends that although average math aptitude may be analogous between the sexes, more men tend to occupy the tails of the distribution. In other words, the dumbest and the most ingenious are male. Women can surely do calculus, but only men can prove Fermat’s Last Theorem.

But that argument does not hold water either. Once appointed, female professors are as successful in contending for research grants and career fellowships as male professors. The McArthur fellowship, widely dubbed as the genius award, has been awarded to many outstanding women in the past decade. I have personally met many women who are absolutely the top-tier scientists in their field.

Well, if estrogen does not poison the brain, what hinders women’s advance in science?

In a different way, women are shackled professionally by their own biology. The optimal child bearing age of a woman coincides with that of the critical stage of her career. A twenty-two year old woman, just out of college, faces the tough choice between rearing children and pursuing a career. If she wants to go into academia, she will have to postpone having children indefinitely. Five years of graduate school, three years of postdoctoral study, six years of untenured junior professorship, that is fourteen intense years almost impossible for her to have a baby. Even fourteen is the most conservative estimate. Finally, at thirty-six, way past the optimal child bearing age, she is ready to have a baby, if she is fortunate to have a man who is willing to be patient for so long.

In a recent op-ed in New York Times, David Brooks advocated a rounded alternative: the sequential life style. In a nutshell, the sequential life style suggests that a woman out of college spend five years at home, rearing a child. She will then reenter the work force and pursue her career uninterruptedly like her male colleagues.

Superficially, Mr. Brooks laid out a perfect plan. But at closer scrutiny, this sequential life style does not hold up. Not only does it outright bereave women five years of their professional lives, it takes away five of their best career years, the years when they are mint with skills, knowledge and connections acquired in college, the years when a person’s drive to succeed is the strongest. Not to mention that these women will be competing at a disadvantage with men five years younger.

Some women chose to sacrifice their procreative rights for a fair game in their careers. But a great sacrifice it is. In science, quite a few successful female professors over forty are single and childless. Sadly, the highly successful but childless professional women will be out of the gene pool in just one generation.

Up to this day, the effort to promote gender equality is focused on creating more opportunities for women in the professional world. This emphasis is epitomized by the affirmative action – should a woman and a man equally qualify for a professional opportunity, be it a job or a promotion, the opportunity will be preferentially awarded to the woman.

Unfortunately, affirmative action, or many other similar measures, does not address a more fundamental problem rising out of the inherent biological difference between women and men. Only women can carry children, and breast-feed them. Most women still view maternity a responsibility and a joy. Yet it conflicts with their careers.

Therefore it is not enough to give women jobs. It is equally important to create an environment where women can excel professionally without sacrificing their personal, especially maternal, needs.

When I first came to the United States, I was surprised by the number of handicapped people I saw on the street and at work. In China, I rarely met a handicapped person. Was it because there were more handicapped people in the States than in China? Not likely. The true reason is that more convenience is extended to the handicapped population in the States than in China. From designated parking to the wheelchair accessible bathrooms, the American society has created an environment where the handicapped enjoy as much mobility as the otherwise privileged population. In contrast, China, until recently, has not provided the same facilities for its handicapped population, who are consequently confined in a narrower living space.

Similarly, if we want to foster women’s professional success, we must not only give them the initial access to an opportunity, but more importantly, we must create an environment where they can excel with as much ease and freedom from biological burdens as men. This is especially important for women with babies. A firm that provides wheelchair access to its handicapped employees should similarly allow new mothers to bring their babies to work and provide the necessary breast-feeding stations. It should provide daycare centers so that young mothers can go to business meetings without worrying about their children.

Significant changes must also be wrought upon social conventions. Feminists have long been arguing that men should share the burden of rearing children. Yet this is difficult to practice as long as the society exercise the conventional pressure on a man’s professional success. Just like women, men cannot simultaneously shoulder the responsibility of rearing children and pursuing their careers. Something has to give. The society must relent on its obsessive value set on men’s professional success. Women should cease to select mates based on their career success. Only when men can proudly declare themselves house-makers, can true professional gender equality be achieved. A single, childless woman should arouse no more pity than a single, childless man. Neither should a jobless househusband receive more frown than a housewife. Only then is gender equality a reality.

In Sex and the City, Miranda marries Steve. Samantha falls in love with Jared Smith. That should be a heartening ending for the professional women.