From the Strategy Toolkit, September 2022 edition "Maybe"

The Strategy Toolkit Get smarter about strategy. By George Barnett

I am excited to introduce another guest author today. George and I met on one of the substack forums and had a fascinating hour long zoom meeting that led to this. Enjoy.

By George Barnett

After the unit known as family, or parent, it’s natural to take a look at the unit “gender”, i.e. the cultural identity that a person uses to describe their biology and which is associated with a fluid spectrum of characteristics ranging from traditionally female to traditionally male.  Until relatively recently, most research into gender has focused on the binary polar opposites of female and male.  The classic treatise* is that of anthropologist Margaret Mead, whose fieldwork in the mid-twentieth century documented changes underway in what it meant to be male or female in different parts of the world.

    * Mead, M., “Male and Female:  a Study of the Sexes in a Changing World,” New American Library, 1955

    Mead wrote her work in the aftermath of World War II and the onset of the US-USSR Cold War.  In her preface, she notes the collective social response known later as a baby boom, and what that phenomenon meant for women and men:

    “Perhaps it is better that the parent who wants the baby most be the parent who bears it, thus introducing some sort of check on the relationship between supply and demand.  But delight in large families of small children is definitely a factor to be reckoned with among the pace-setting middle class young people of the mid-twentieth century.”*

    * Ibid, p. vii

    What a difference 70 years makes.  Demographers chronicle falling fertility rates across most of the world and, for once, we may see the global population decline or at least stabilise, in response to increasing prosperity, levels of education, and stresses on the sustainability of the planet itself.  The wealthiest people openly dream of colonising the moon or Mars, at one time the sole remit of science fiction authors.

    One thing Mead did emphasise, nonetheless, was the differences between women and men.  It is quite possibly one of the most difficult topics for sociologists to contend with:  studying and influencing social equity for such distinct human beings.  Some progress has been made in some places since the 1950’s, but there is so much more to be achieved.  As Mead put it:

    “Because we are mammals, and male and female mammals at that, we have limitations, and we must know them, provide for them, keep them safely in our habits, if not continuingly and boringly in our minds.  There are certain things that men cannot do because they are men, and women cannot do because they are women:  begetting, conceiving, carrying, bearing, and suckling the next generation are divided differently.  As the bodies of the two sexes develop, to be ready for their different roles in reproduction, they have basic needs, some of which are shared, some of which are different even in little children.

    “When we ask the very urgent questions we must ask about the differences and the similarities, the vulnerabilities and the handicaps, of each of the sexes, we must also ask:  What are the potentialities of sex differences?...  If little boys have to meet and assimilate the early shock of knowing that they can never create a baby with the sureness and incontrovertibility that is a woman’s birthright, how does this make them more creatively ambitious, as well as more dependent upon achievement?”*

    * Ibid p.26

    Such are the questions of a sociologist, albeit in this case one who self-describes as an American woman of middle age.  What would she find by reviewing the work of her peers in the early twenty-first century?

    Well, disappointingly, the majority of religious practices justifies blatant discrimination of women in favour of men.  This is true whether one looks at current events in Iran and amongst the orthodox in Israel and the United States, or whether one looks back over the past century to places like Spain, where the role of women in Spanish society fluctuates in parallel with the degree of collusion between the federal government and the Catholic Church.*

    * Anonymous, “Beaten by men,” The Economist (August 11 2001): 42

    As John Updike noted, in his review of scholarly writings concerning women in Christianity:

    “Male attitudes towards women, mixed of the wish to draw close and the wish to flee, of resentment and adoration, of a child’s dependence and a dominator’s sadism, are bound to be somewhat sick; that is, unstable, fluctuating, and muddy.  The whore / angel dichotomy occurs in the Bible and even approaches resolution there, in several-sided figures like Eve and Mary, a sinner and a virgin who are nonetheless paradigmatic mothers.”*

* Updike, J., “Can Eve be Reprieved?” The New Yorker (September 14 1998): 93-97

Mead would find an intense argument, with supporting evidence on each side, on the topic of competition, over the differences and similarities between supposedly how men compete and women compete.  If competition is defined as physical activity, one set of studies is cited.  If competition is defined as intellectual effort, another set of studies is cited.*

* Anonymous review of “Eve’s Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History,” by R. McElvaine, Publisher’s Weekly (October 30 2000): 60

* Anonymous review of “Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry,” by S. Barash, Publisher’s Weekly (December 12 2005): 49

* Anonymous review of “Catfight: Women and Competition,” by L. Tanenbaum, Publisher’s Weekly (October 21 2002): 66

* Anonymous, “Be a man,” The Economist (June 28 2003): 64

Yet, despite much-vaunted policies and efforts to address disparities in compensation, women continue to be paid less than men for the same or similar work.

“Despite Dowling’s emphasis on the new goal of “physical equality,” it seems that when it comes to old-fashioned economic equality women are still looking for a level playing field.”* 

* Mead, R., “The Gender Game,” The New Yorker (August 21 2000): 164-165

Ironically, to this day, in a classic zero-sum approach to life, many describe the somewhat limited gains made by women in society as being at the expense of men.  These studies range from the somewhat superficial* to the more nuanced, a reflection of just what an early stage of development we find ourselves in.

* Anonymous review of “Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood,” by G. Taylor, Publisher’s Weekly (October 30 2000): 60

“Few things are harder to take than the voice of privilege when it feels put upon…

“But, reading [author Charles] Jennings, it seems the chief source of male anxiety lies not in external villains—the iniquity of the divorce laws, the sexual banter of the screen, and so on. Rather, male angst springs from within. Men are impatient with the bonds of family, and want to strive professionally. Yet they also fear loneliness, and seek to dull mortality by passing on their genes.  Caught between these conflicting urges, men inevitably feel restless.  It is rather generous of women to put up with these want-it-alls.”*

* Anonymous, “Mournful man,” The Economist (July 10 1999): 80-81

When we do make much more progress, then, as Margaret Mead concluded, “we will increase our faith in our full humanity… capable of rising to heights of which each living generation can only glimpse the next step in the ascent.”*

     * Mead, M., “Male and Female:  a Study of the Sexes in a Changing World,” New American Library, 1955;  p. 26