As a man
One day I wondered
How come there are so few
Women politicians
Women economists
Women lawyers
Then it occurred to me
Maybe they know something we don’t
The quest to understand the difference between men and women has probably been around as long as there have been men and women. This feminist poem seeks to stimulate reflection around the issue of self-selection of a career or vocation. While there are certainly barriers to women entering, succeeding or advancing in certain male-dominated careers or vocations, there are definitely self-selection factors based on gender. In this poem, I choose the specific fields of politics, economics, and law for reflection. These fields are dominated by men. However, I suspect that much of the reason women are not attracted, or dare I say engendered, to these fields is because of both the nature of these fields and the way these fields have been shaped (or distorted) by a male point of view. As a man and a feminist, I try to understand and value women’s experiences, ways of being, and points of view. Of course, men’s experiences, ways of being, and points of view, are transmitted more easily in our society due to men’s dominant role and control over many structures and processes in our society. Given these realities, we should all be feminists, seeking to strike a more healthy balance between the genders. This requires that we all pay more attention to what women know; and by knowing I mean much more than simply intellectual content but the whole range of experiences, ways of being, and points of view. And by all means, I don’t relegate the field of “doing” to men, given the fact that women do most of the work in the world. Simple curiosity demands that men especially seek insight into what women know that men may not. Of course, being counter-cultural, this takes work, and for some reason women either seem more willing to take on work, or just experience ending up doing more of it.. Either way, we should all pay more attention to these differences.
