This post is WIBM’s response to The Seattle Times editorial board’s piece “A welcome boost toward gender equality from Melinda Gates and MacKenzie Bezos,” published June 18, 2020.
It is always a good day when billionaires donate their wealth. We are concerned, though, about the prevalence of philanthropists and nonprofits offering support, allegedly in the service of gender equality, that benefits girls exclusively. When Melinda Gates, MacKenzie Bezos, and The Seattle Times editorial board use the term ‘gender equality’, they apparently only mean equality for girls and women. They are accidentally or willfully blind to the other side of the equality coin.
“Gender inequality must be confronted in the U.S. and across the world, which continues to undervalue half its talent pool because of systemic sexism.”
Seattle Times editorial board
Gates and Bezos gave $30 million to launch the Equality Can’t Wait Challenge for expanding women’s power and influence – and yet it is referred to as a donation toward gender equality. The gender bias is obvious when one realizes that Equality Can’t Wait‘s metrics for gender equality are designed such that it is impossible for them to reveal areas where males are worse off.
It cannot possibly be the case in the twenty-first century that there are no gender disparities where boys and men are most negatively impacted, and that gender equality efforts need only to focus on lifting up girls and women. Discussions of gender equality must acknowledge that boys and men, too, receive unequal treatment and experience struggles unique to their gender (e.g. in education, health, homelessness, etc.).
The Seattle Times editorial should call it “women’s equality” or “female empowerment,” rather than “gender equality”.
Related WIBM post: Is the U.S. really 46th in educational gender equality, like the Seattle Times says?
Another local example: Pacific Science Center offers no-boys-allowed camps
Consider another local example of sidelining boys for the cause of gender equality: the Pacific Science Center restricts a portion of their camp offerings each summer to girls only.
Washington Initiative for Boys and Men is in communication with the Pacific Science Center about our proposal that they make available the benefits of single-sex educational experiences to girls and boys. We will cover this issue more on this site. … UPDATE: Pacific Science Center should stop discriminating against boys