Summary: Claudia Balducci, the chairperson of the King County Council, sees no need for gender diversity on the King County Women’s Advisory Board. She also will not be advocating for a Men’s Advisory Board to complement the Women’s Advisory Board, which has existed since 1972. These were the two messages conveyed in an email from Councilmember Balducci’s chief of staff to one of her District 6 constituents.
“Given that the systemic challenges facing women persist, [an advisory board] dedicated to women’s issues continues to make sense. Because men do not face the same types of systemic forces for discrimination, Councilmember Balducci will not be advocating for a men’s advisory board.”
– Chief of Staff to King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, in an email to a constituent. The complete email and the constituent’s response are below.
This blog post has two purposes:
- To show in black-and-white an example of local advocacy for boys and men that anyone can do. When governments seem to prioritize the well-being of one gender over another, all of us are empowered to ask our elected representatives “Why?”
- To highlight blatant gender inequality, gender bias, and sex-based discrimination practiced by the government of King County, which will be self-evident to some who read the two emails presented below.
A complete lack of gender diversity
In a previous post titled Should any government commission be a man-free zone? (Or, Aren’t women’s issues everyone’s issues?), we pointed out that there are zero male-identifying people among the 35 members of the Seattle Women’s Commission, the King County Women’s Advisory Board, and the Washington State Women’s Commission. There are a variety of ways of explaining the double-standards and inconsistencies inherent in this reality. Suffice it to say that a total lack of gender diversity on any government commission other than these ones would neither be affirmed nor tolerated by people who view themselves as supporters of gender equality/equity.
Those who believe in striving for genuine gender equality/equity view the existence of women’s commissions coupled with the nonexistence of men’s commissions as a problem.
Men and women are not monolithic
Councilmember Balducci appears to believes that women in King County face systemic discrimination and men do not. This view of males as monolithically privileged is a hallmark of second-wave feminism. What’s more appropriate is to look at individuals and subgroups as experiencing complex combinations of advantages and disadvantages.
It is our culture’s blindness toward male suffering that makes possible the widespread acceptance that females as a class of people deserve special government support and males do not. Our blindness stems from a combination of ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ — but it is not inevitable. Anyone’s eyes can be opened to empathize with boys and men. We need a movement – a movement that results in substantially more people’s hearts and minds being attuned to the range of important gender inequities where boys and men are really suffering. (See our posts categorized under Gender Disparities and our pages on boys and men’s issues. Contact us to help produce more content highlighting evidence that is specific to your locality within Washington state or to the state as a whole.)
A day will come when the concept of ‘gender equality’ will be about truly uplifting boys, girls, men, women, and those of other genders – each with their own struggles.
Claudia Balducci, King County Councilmember
Claudia Balducci served on the Bellevue City Council prior to winning election to the King County Council in 2015. In 2020, her colleagues selected her as chairperson of the Council. The King County Council is the legislative body governing King County, which has over two million residents, making it Washington’s most populous county. Its largest cities are Seattle, Bellevue, Kent, Renton, and Federal Way.
Councilmember Balducci’s biography says she has a husband and a son.
A constituent asks two questions
One of Councilmember Balducci’s constituents in District 6 called her office on May 17 and asked the following questions:
- Does Councilmember Balducci know what is being done, if anything, to increase the gender diversity among members of the King County Women’s Advisory Board, all of whom are currently women?
- Is Councilmemer Balducci interested in advocating for the creation of a King County Men’s Advisory Board?
The staffperson who answered the call said that she would speak with Councilmember Balducci and then respond to the constituent by email. Eleven days later, having received no email, the constituent called the Councilmember’s office again. A different staffperson answered the call and said she would check on progress toward providing a response.
‘Men do not face systemic discrimination’
On June 1, the constituent received the following email from Councilmember Balducci’s chief of staff:
I am following up on your phone call to County Councilmember Balducci’s office when you spoke with me. You asked if Councilmember Balducci was interested in advocating for a men’s advisory board similar to the Women’s Advisory Board and whether she would support more gender diversity on the Women’s Advisory Board. I’ve had a chance to talk with Councilmember Balducci about these questions.
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored and deepened the long-standing systemic inequities experienced by women. Women have disproportionately experienced job losses due to the pandemic for a variety of reasons, including being over represented in low-paying sectors such as hospitality, travel and childcare, and because they shoulder the bulk of the burden of caring for children during remote learning and reduced childcare options. Even a short absence from the workforce, assuming women are able to regain their jobs when the economy recovers, has a lasting impact on earnings over a lifetime. Again, women, particularly women of color, will feel this impact the greatest. There have been many articles and studies demonstrating the COVID impact on women – here’s just one.
Given that the systemic challenges facing women persist, a board dedicated to women’s issues continues to make sense. Because men do not face the same types of systemic forces for discrimination, Councilmember Balducci will not be advocating for a men’s advisory board. If you have a specific issue or situation where you feel men are facing systemic discrimination that falls within the purview of the County, please let me know.
As I mentioned on the phone, members of the Women’s Advisory Board are appointed by each member of the Council and the Executive so there is no mechanism controlling the make up of the board. Given the purpose of the board, an all-female list of members is not inappropriate and Councilmember Balducci will not advocate to change its composition or otherwise control the appointments of her colleagues.
Thank you for your call,
[Chief of Staff to Councilmember Claudia Balducci]
Note to reader: We admire and appreciate the clarity and directness of the chief of staff’s response.
‘Both men and women face suffering and discrimination’
On June 4, the constituent sent the following email to Councilmember Balducci and her chief of staff:
Hello [Chief of Staff],
Thank you very much for your informative response. You addressed both of my inquiries very clearly, and I appreciate that.
If we can be open to the possibility that both women and men face unique forms of suffering and discrimination, then I don’t think the facts support the notion that in present day King County, women as a class of people face systemic challenges, and men as a class of people do not. The assertion that only one of the two major genders is deserving today of a special government commission to look out for its interests is itself evidence of systemic discrimination against men.
I’d like to make a case for Councilmember Balducci’s consideration that men, too, are deserving of a King County advisory board. Please let me know what she thinks. I would be delighted to have a follow-up conversation about this with her. Thank you, kindly.
Both men and women experience systemic discrimination
The problem of gender inequality in 2021 is an offender of both women and men. Both genders experience unique hardships and forms of discrimination. If that is the case, and I certainly believe it is, it seems fair that King County would not only have a women’s commission, to work on issues disproportionately impacting women, but also a men’s commission, to work on issues disproportionately impacting men.
In King County, the majority of people experiencing homelessness are men. Also:
- The majority of suicide, homicide, and violent crime victims are men.
- Men die at higher rates than women in every age cohort from birth to old age.
- The majority of those in jails and prisons are men.
- The majority of high school and college dropouts are men.
- The majority of suspensions and expulsions from school are young men.
- The majority of people addicted to drugs and alcohol are men, and the majority of alcohol and drug related deaths are men.
- The majority of people who die or are seriously injured while earning their living are men.
- The majority of law enforcement officers and military service members who die or are seriously injured while defending our society are men.
- I would argue, too, that the majority of publicly voiced sexism in King County is against men.
There are certainly a variety of gender disparities in which women and girls are most impacted, and that speaks to the presence of systemic discrimination that holds females back from their full potential. There are also a wide variety of gender disparities in which men and boys are most impacted, and that, too, speaks to the presence of systemic discrimination that holds males back from their full potential.
Considering the various issues in which men in King County are disproportionately impacted, it’s hard to understand a rationale for King County’s government having a women’s advisory board and no men’s advisory board in the year 2021. At the time the King County women’s advisory board was created, in the early ’70s, I can see that rationale. However, the situation for women and men in King County has changed dramatically since that time.
COVID-19 pandemic impacts on employment and health
- Certainly the COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on women. The New York Times article you linked to does not, of course, provide information on how the pandemic impacted men’s and women’s employment in King County specifically. Some reports have found that, nationally, more men lost jobs than women, like this article, which again is not specific to King County residents. (According to the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, men lost more jobs between January 2020 and January 2021 than women). If you have the data specific to King County folks, I’d be pleased to receive that from you.
- There is no denying the pandemic has been hard on women. Also, there’s no need to determine which gender has been hardest hit by the pandemic, as long as our hearts and minds are open to empathy and compassion for both genders. That leads, naturally, to the suggestion to have both a women’s advisory board and a men’s advisory board.
- COVID-19 killed more men than women nationally as well as in King County (source). We should not only be concerned about the pandemic’s impacts on people’s earning prospects but also on their health and their very lives.
The empathy gap helps us understand why women’s government commissions are normalized and men’s government commissions are not yet normalized
I’ll conclude by mentioning the concept of the “empathy gap,” which a man named William Collins has explained very well in his book The Empathy Gap. His explanations opened my eyes to the many ways that men suffer that I had never stopped to think about before. Below I have pasted a summary of William’s book:
The Empathy Gap proposes the thesis that men and boys are extensively disadvantaged across many areas of life, including in education, healthcare, genital integrity, criminal justice, domestic abuse, working hours, taxation, pensions, paternity, homelessness, suicide, sexual offences, and access to their own children after parental separation. The claim is justified in the book by empirical evidence, mostly but not exclusively from the UK, involving nearly 1,000 references, 179 Figures and 49 Tables. To most people, of both sexes, this will appear to be a perverse perspective as disadvantage has become the province of women, girls and minorities, not males. Yet the empirical case supporting the disadvantages suffered by men and boys is undeniable to the objective mind. But if this is so, why is the popular perception that males are privileged whereas disadvantage is the province of the opposite sex? Why do the male disadvantages go largely unremarked, by both sexes, if they are so pervasive? Presenting the case for widespread and substantial male disadvantage is also a challenge to the usual hegemonic paradigm of feminist theory. These issues are addressed within The Empathy Gap by presenting an entirely different orientation on the social psychology of relations between the sexes. Out goes the idea of an oppressive patriarchy. Instead, a man’s participation in the human pair bond is seen to be altruistic, a phenomenon arising originally from evolution and enacted in the individual via the emotional psyche. This is the origin of an asymmetry in the perception of the sexes which normalises the preferencing of females and therefore inevitably disadvantages males as a corollary. The successful evolved strategy involves male utility and relative male disposability, the latter being facilitated by a muted empathy for males, by both sexes: the empathy gap.
Thank you, and warm regards.
[Constituent]
By June 17 the constituent had received no response to his June 4 email, so he sent a follow-up email requesting a response. To date, he has not received one.
Read related post: Should any government commission be a man-free zone? (Or, Aren’t women’s issues everyone’s issues?)