Yashar Ali believes that part of his success comes from his gender. And he wants to get the discussion out in the open.
Seven months ago I began actively writing about women. Two months ago I launched a website featuring my point-of-view. I discuss issues that brilliant women writers and commentators have already written and talked about for many years—these women are much more talented than I am and they are the ones who actually face the issues I address.
Even though I’m not always discussing anything new, my site has received hundreds of thousands of hits in the last month and a half, with little promotional effort on my part.
And while I know I worked hard to get here, hours and hours of endless writing and research, more all-nighters than I can count, there’s an overriding element that plays into my success: I am a man.
I am a man living in a culture that has more respect for a man’s voice. Somehow, when I, or other men, write about the issue of gender imbalance, the work gets more widespread attention and is more accepted by readers.
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Even before I created and launched this website, I’ve been the beneficiary of the privilege and benefits that come with my gender, male privilege—since birth. I didn’t go to college, but I managed to build a successful career in politics, a business with rampant and shocking sexism, even on the most progressive campaigns. No doubt, I worked extremely hard—often logging 19-20 hour days and sleeping 2 or 3 hours a night—for a long time. But that’s all I had to do: work hard. I didn’t have to come up against bias or judgments about my opinions; I didn’t have to deal with people ignoring me or taking me for granted. I just had to work hard. It’s a fairly simple formula, one that women don’t usually benefit from.
In the past few years, there’s been a boatload of books, shows, and commencement speeches encouraging women to “work hard and ask for what they want” at work. These comments are based on what is considered a confidence gap with respect to women in the workplace.
It’s a bunch of bullshit.
Yeah that’s right, ladies. That’s what’s been missing this whole time! You haven’t been working hard enough—you just have to ask for what you want and your bosses will hand it to you! It’s that easy!
Are they kidding? Sure, being more assertive can help women in certain circumstances, but the concept of “ask and ye shall receive” does not, to this day, exist for women in the same way as it does for men.
If all it takes is working hard and asking for what you want, there wouldn’t be the depressing statistics about women and success in corporate and political America. According to the 2010 Catalyst Census of Women Executive Officers, which counts the number of women in upper management in Fortune 500 companies, women hold only 19.1 percent of the executive offices in the finance and insurance industries. Out of all the Fortune 500 companies, only 13 of them have women CEOs. Out of 50 U.S. governors, only 6 are women. And the United States Congress counts less than twenty percent of its members as women.
This gender imbalance issue isn’t just related to women who are trying to climb to the top of the corporate ladder, women across all the job sectors are prevented from even having an opportunity simply because they are born women. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), pregnancy discrimination complaints increased by 53 percent, from 1997 to 2010. If employers are discriminating against women who are pregnant and discriminating against women because of the possibility of pregnancy, how can women secure the right job so they can put themselves on the path to success?
The statistics are even starker on the international level, with women holding only 11.7 percent of the seats in the world’s parliaments. And to offer a statistic every woman, in every country, who reads this column can relate to: women comprise of 70 percent of the world’s poor.
These numbers clearly fail to match up to the wide and proficient skill sets wielded by women. And they also fail to match up to the hard work and commitment women put into their careers and work.
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I don’t believe that women lack the mettle to succeed. What I am suggesting is that women are forced to meet a higher bar: they not only have to work harder than men, but they also have to push against our deeply ingrained patriarchy…while often carrying a much bigger burden at home than men.
While this issue is not new to anyone who reads feminist writing and anyone involved in academia, the concept of male privilege is still on the fringes in our gender discourse. In the mainstream, we wouldn’t dream of openly discussing and acknowledging male privilege.
Why?
We all live in a patriarchy. Any concept diminishing a man’s success is obviously going to be maligned and not discussed or acknowledged. But, I also think the problem lies in the reality that a lot of good men out there can’t imagine how they have greatly benefited from male privilege. They haven’t mistreated women in the work place, they’ve supported women in their professional and private lives, so why should they admit to something so terrible as their success being boosted dramatically by their gender?
Gender bias is not compartmentalized in our culture; the benefits of discriminating against women don’t just exist for the men who actively discriminate them. So, if we men don’t acknowledge that we all get an extra boost because of our sex—we are essentially saying that gender bias doesn’t exist.
And for those of us who are willing to acknowledge that gender discrimination even exists, we tend to see it as something suffered by women—that it is just an aggressive act against them. We think that we only have to combat the aggressor in order to solve the problem.
We must recognize that we are the beneficiaries of that discrimination. We need to see gender discrimination as a regressive act against women, and as a result, a progressive act for us.
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How can we fix this gender imbalance if we don’t first look around our own lives and see and acknowledge the reality: yes, I move faster in my career because I’m a man, I didn’t have to sacrifice nearly as much because I’m a man, it’s easier for me than for my woman counterparts (if you have any) and colleagues. Who did I pass on the way here? How can I stop this from happening in my own life? Have I done everything I can to speak out against gender bias in my workplace and life, especially with men?
But that’s hard—the male ego is so fragile, isn’t it? Women are much better at admitting to the conditions of their successes.
Before publishing my work, I usually ask a few friends to be sounding boards for my columns—they serve as a focus group of sorts. Most of my “focus group” opposed this idea of my writing about the nature of success for men and women.
“Have some confidence,” a friend of mine admonished me.
“Saying your success is based on the fact that you’re a man totally diminishes all you have put into your work,” said another.
I’m not saying we should be in the business of looking at every man and telling him, “You only have your success because you are a man.”
Nor am I suggesting that we men should feel guilty about the success we’ve attained, not at all. What I want to advocate is that we have a responsibility to look around and think about what got us to where we are.
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What would it say about my confidence if my sense of self were based on ignoring the fact that I have been the beneficiary of male privilege?
I think it shows a shocking lack of confidence on my part if I weren’t able to say, “Yes, I had help getting here and I am here partially because women have not benefited from the same boost my gender allows for me. I am here because of what women have sacrificed for too long.”
I’m proud of my success, I worked for it, but not all of it. Many people, especially women, helped me become successful in life. And I am not an isolated case. Women have been the bulwark and support system for men to become successful.
It’s only with the power of acknowledgement about the realities women face in our world that we can start to balance this inequity. But as long as we men pretend our successes are solely based on our hard work and talent and nothing else, we are contributing to the gender bias in which women get the short end of the stick.
So, I have no fear in acknowledging the three words my mother and father heard on Thanksgiving Day, in 1979, played a really big part in my success and instantly put me in a position to succeed: “It’s a boy.”
And that’s why I keep writing what I write. Because it just doesn’t make sense that it should be this way.
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Originally appeared at the Current Conscience.
Photo: michael-elizabeth, Flickr
You know I have to put in a bit to say about my own experience. I work at a Stock Brokerage firm. First pay. There are 7 of us in the department all low level. One of my co-workers complains endlessly about the pay gap between my colleagues and herself. She’s been there for 8 and a half years. But she’s making less than a guy whos only been there 2 years. Why? Not directly because of gender. It was because he’s been constantly studying and getting his Series 7, 63 and now trying for his 24 license. She’s done… Read more »
How do men who are unsuccessful (in materialistic terms) fit into your worldview?
Do they just fall between the cracks in your logic, overlooked and unacknowledged?
I wonder if this comment will get moderated like the last one, I’m not really sure what was so controversial about it.
Maybe because I said something to the effect that “loser” is often used to describe these men, and their failure to live up to expectations depicted as representative of men of our generation.
You worked 19-20 hours a day and you don’t credit that for your success, wow, you really are trying to “build a case” aren’t you.
The statistics that I have read indicate that women actually work approx 5.6 hour less a week at paid work and 4.9 hours more at unpaid work (i.e. house work), this actually leaves an advantage to women of 1.7 hours per week.
If women are working 5.6 hour less per week than males then one would expect men to get better reviews, pay raise etc.
Modern equality is about eqality of outcome not equality of opportunity, of course there is individual discrimination, I have no doubt of that, but systemic nope sorry don’t buy it.
Here’s my theory: I don’t give a rats ass if my success is due to my gender or not. I have tried very passionately to bring up the people in my life and they have often made decisions that were contrary to what I would have hoped. If I’m successful and they’re not, they have only themselves to blame. If one only wishes to look at the macro level, their solutions to societal problems are going to look very different from someone who takes the time to look at individuals. I usually side with the macro (societal) level, but in… Read more »
Thanks for this. It’s nice to have it acknowledged. I am a woman in a male-dominated field and I have seen this first hand. Women struggle to get recognition, whereas men are simply handed it. The funny thing is, I genuinely believe the men in my field are NOT misogynist or remotely sexist on a conscious level… I believe there is simply some subconscious disconnect going on. I have seen women ask questions in order to better understand a situation and get treated like they were idiots, I have seen men ask the exact same questions to the exact same… Read more »
“Women struggle to get recognition, whereas men are simply handed it.”
If this were true, unemployment for women would be far higher than it is for men? But, the opposite is true. Explain that.
Much of male unemployment is structural in nature – the professions those men picked were destroyed by a changing economy. Let’s not overlook this. Likewise, let’s not overlook that the lack of “success” that women had, in the first place, was largely due to career choices they made.
I’m not arguing that career choice does not have an impact on unemployment as well as the so-called gender wage gap.
But, that still doesn’t explain or support her claim that “men are simply handed” recognition.
First of all, recognition and employment are not the same thing. If you want to talk about employment, that’s a completely different discussion. By recognition, I mean better performance reviews, quicker promotions, bonuses, larger salaries, higher positions. One could be employed and still be in a position of low-recognition. Second of all, you’re taking my words out of context. I meant it specific to my industry. Women are employed in it—often not for long—and stay at the bottom of the ladder, while men are awarded and promoted quickly. While something similar could be said for many of the places where… Read more »
“First of all, recognition and employment are not the same thing.” Absolutely untrue, based on your own definition. You claim that having a penis automatically grants humans “better performance reviews, quicker promotions, bonuses, larger salaries, higher positions”. All of those things translate to lower employment – just as women are automatically assigned (according to you) worse “recognition, worse performance reviews, slower promotions, less bonuses, smaller salaries, and lower positions.” All of that would (were it true) lead to higher unemployment. The facts oppose your argument. “Second of all, you’re taking my words out of context. I meant it specific to… Read more »
Let me give you some food for thought. If you’re male and you volunteer for the Marine Corps, the worst thing you can do for your chances of promotion is to go into the infantry. Why? Because it’s the biggest and most popular job with the most people competing for the same exact spots. All those men could earn more money and find much easier work by choosing a different specialty within the Marines. But they don’t. And there is no sexual discrimination against those men because it’s a job exclusively given to men. If your skills are interchangeable with… Read more »
Sorry Eric, that was meant for DIana
Diana, the solution to your conundrum is simple: get out of your industry. Yours is such a common refrain of women who insist on doing retail, nursing, and teaching. Professions that are jam-packed with women, where being a woman lowers your chance for promotion for a large number of legitimate reasons. You fall into the very trap that I warned about in my comment (below). Nobody forced you to get into your industry, in fact, you were probably warned against it numerous times by well-meaning people, probably almost all of them men in your life, and you probably chose to… Read more »
There is a study on the seeming gender pay gap in nursing. It turns out that men are more likely to become specialists in some area, which commands a higher salary. Even within the “same job”, there are choices to be made and behavior and choice will still have an impact on salary.
I would like to know how Diana knows what every male and every female gets for perfomance reviews, pay , etc etc in her industry. Sounds very suspicious to me.
This is unfort a very typical response to these types of discussions, they respond with anecdotal information from ‘their industry’ and they bestow on us some inside information and we can’t refute though they generally don’t really have any special inside knowledge.
i’m a baby boomer and a man. I’ve never felt privileged, never. I don’t recognise this stereotype. Being a man is crap as well a lot of the time. I had the other end of it: I didn’t see the early years of my children’s lives because I was on the road – which is something I will always regret.
I am not privileged, I was STUPID.
Success is better defined in terms of the quality, quantity, and longevity of one’s relationships. Not appreciating that devalues the important work accomplished by women who choose to work at home full or part time rather than climb the corporate ladder.
Ali, you’ve defeated your own flawed argument by contradicting yourself and not understanding what success really is. Your contradictory statements: “No doubt, I worked extremely hard—often logging 19-20 hour days and sleeping 2 or 3 hours a night—for a long time.” “What I am suggesting is that women are forced to meet a higher bar; they not only have to work harder than men. ” How much harder than 20 hours a day for years must they work? 24? So, all “successful” women work 24 hours a day for years? That shows your theory is broken. I know loads of… Read more »