Men interrupting women isn’t a problem confined just to debate stages—it also happens on the Supreme Court. According to the Harvard Business Review, 65.9% of all interruptions on the Supreme Court were directed at Justices Ginsberg, Kagan, and Sotomayor. And it’s not just the male justices who are at fault—male advocates do it as well. Female justices are also more likely to frame their questions more politely earlier in their tenure, which the HBR says “provides an opportunity for another justice to jump in before the speaker gets to the substance of her question.” Manterruption also happens in the workplace, in everyday conversations, even in class discussions.
So what can we, as a society, and as a campus, do about it? There’s the usual approach—that of telling women to simply assert themselves—but that’s simply not enough to restructure a sexist space into a more equal one. Part of the work must also be done by those in power. On campus, that means professors and TAs have to be a part of the solution themselves. Enforcing no-interruption policies in class discussions would be a great start—if figures of authority express public disapproval of a practice, that practice is, at least in some measure, delegitimized. Parents can teach their male children not to talk over the women in their lives, and their female children that they’re worth listening to. Employers can call out their male employees when they interrupt—and if those employers are male themselves, they must acknowledge their own complicity in the problem. Equality can’t be achieved via a single Women’s March or a single speech given by a leader—it requires a constant conversation, but that conversation can’t be had effectively if the people most affected by it are crowded out before it even starts. Manterruptions, as silly as they may sound, are a significant part of the larger problem, and they too must be addressed.
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While sentiments regarding gender equity may be changing and liberalizing in certain groups, national recognition of gender issues is reflected in the gender representation in the national government, particularly the legislative body. In the United States, only 19.4% of 535 congressional seats are filled by women, shedding light on the ridiculous gender imbalance and sexism that is still rampant in the US. Furthermore, the US has yet to elect a transgender or genderqueer representative to Congress, demonstrating America’s transphobia and adherence to the gender binary.
Disappointingly, the US’s percentage of female representatives is actually lower than the world’s average, 22.8%. I find this statistic somewhat surprising since the United States is often globally thought of as a center of liberation and justice. In fact, Rwanda proudly has the highest percentage of female representation in parliaments worldwide, having 63.8 percent of their seats occupied by women. This notion many Americans often have, of American equality versus the developing countries’ oppression of women, is an incredibly incorrect concept. Countries around the world have elected women as heads of state and into high ranking government positions, many of them countries Americans consider underdeveloped. Bangladesh, Chile, Liberia, India, etc., have all experienced time under female leadership. 70 countries worldwide have, for at least some time, have had a female head of state: 8 of these in Africa, and a considerable number in South American and East and South East Asian countries. While these numbers are not remotely perfect, they do speak to a certain degree of prejudice that is lasting and adamant in the United States that other, even more stereotypically oppressive countries, have overcome. As more and more countries shatter this glass ceiling, it will be interesting to witness how the United States handles its own gender discrimination, specifically in regards to people across the gender spectrum and their representation in government. After all, if the purpose of the legislative body is to represent the people in government, then the people that compose it should demographically reflect its constituents. |
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