I was in a meeting a few weeks ago when we talked about finding a new executive director for our nonprofit group.
It dawned on us as we talked that in Memphis, we are always talking about diversity and we’re always talking about making sure African-Americans are represented.
When do women get their turn?
It seems to always happen that it never matters than more than half of our city is female. When it comes to running organizations or government departments or government programs, no one thinks about women, or if they do, they can always think of several men instead.
It happens time after time. Whether it’s the Music Foundation, Riverfront Development Corporation, the new talent office, the tourism group, Beale Street and more, men have a leg up.
It happens over and over. I don’t remember a woman on the list of people considered for Center City Commission. If there hadn’t been an African-American, it would have been an outcry, but women just don’t matter.
Shelby Farms Park Conservancy is picking a new executive director to replace the man who left, and if it’s not Laura Adams who made it possible to even have the park that gets the job, every woman in Memphis should revolt.
We never seem to have done enough to get our chance. We never seem to be plugged in enough to know the secret good old boy handshake. A friend of mine calls it the “rule of testicularity,” which means you have to have testicles to be considered.
Whenever I hear a black leader complaining about the power structure in Memphis or questioning why a majority African-American city has no people that look like them heading up these semi-government agencies or the most powerful nonprofit organizations, I say it applies also to women, just twice as much, because you can count the women running prominent groups on one hand.
The next time African-American men are saying that they aren’t represented fairly, or they’re complaining rightly that no black men were considered for a job, take a closer look. I bet you that there was not a single woman considered either.
I think we’ve been patient long enough. We need to take inspiration from the civil rights movement. It’s time for equal rights for women.
Equal rights like being forced to sign up for Selective Service upon turning 18?
Equal rights like being assignable to combat?
Equal rights like having the 100% say-so whether a fetus you’re carrying gets aborted or birthed, regardless of the wishes of its natural father?
I can’t be silent when I read BS like this.
I’ll assume this was written by a 10th grader as an example of ‘essay’ in her English class.
Nice post. I’m a bit surprised by the responses – probably written by insensitive men who have no insight or interest in this topic. I hope they don’t have wives or daughters – feel sorry for those ladies if they do.
Thankfully, I was raised by a loving, motivating father who got into women’s lib as a teen and raised us with the notion that we are a superior gender who can do anything we aspire to do. I kid with the superior concept – he just wanted to instill such esteem and security in us and make sure we never felt slighted as women. When my sister was 9 years old, she took on our methodist church asking our minister why women were not included in the offering. The next week, the church announced that a child had pointed out a serious oversight and they wanted to make it known that all female members were invited and welcomed to participate; from then on, there was an equal mix of men and women. Sometimes it just takes one voice to affect change.
What a irrelevant post by wintermute. You men (especially white men) have it so tough, don’t you?
You’re right – women are often overlooked for these positions. Unfortunately, the good ole boy network still lives on in this city. Don’t get discouraged – there are so many talented women in this city and more women graduating from college than men these days. We’ll get our chance.
It goes like this:
Throughout history there has always been more women in the world’s population than men. All species are predisposed to have more female children than male children. The reason men can continue to sire offspring into old age is in response of this condition’s persistent manifestation.
The NIH has proven that the human brain is very different in men versus women, the connection between the hemispheres is less connected in men than women giving men an advantage in differentiating thought patterns, an edge in hunting/acquisitive skills, and an innate ability to self analyze even if the outcome is not personally positive information. This gives men an edge in fast decision making.
Women get the ability to hear many things at once and still distinguish each sound, to hear an entire group or many similar sounds well. Voices in Councils. They can also make very good long term choices if trained in that discipline.
If you are going to maintain an equal and egalitarian workforce, it will work to employ more males as they do not have anywhere near the same chance of being hired as women just because of their numbers. Giving the higher proportion of the population more of a chance for employment is actually counter to equality based on gender and dilutes the talent pool, and gives unfair advantage to the majority.
That’s a simple, inconvenient, and not politically correct fact of NUMBERS.
Women do not want to know this fact and when presented with it get indignant and deny it.
Why?
Because of the forgotten history of why men got to work and why women got to make a great home. Sure, there have always been exceptions, but, when you give the larger part of the population “preferential treatment based on gender” you dilute the economy. If you don’t back it up with training about the economy and “credit”, instant gratification versus delayed, you get a credit crisis soon after and a siphoning of wealth by other nations willing to usurp and take advantage of that condition, i.e. China and the US.
When the equality movement came about the economy was set up where men made maybe too much of the money and maybe many more women should have made up some of the upper echelon of the workforce, BUT, given the disparity in the population based only on gender, there has never been a time in history that all of the women who seek those positions could be accommodated without upsetting any hope of achieving any sort of balance based on those criteria.
Since larger populations rarely have the training in the ancillary areas
of disciplines required to create a balance, an “anything goes” attitude accompanied by “get all you can get now” way of getting it takes over an that precludes any balance ever forming.
It seems both men and women suck.
I’m all for equality, but, it seems that no one knows exactly and provably what that is.
It’s not even worth looking into if the answers aren’t ever going o be honest.
Oh, I encourage my wife to take as many classes as she can, so that she can clearly see and do what is fair as judged by her own educated mind, I also encourage my daughter to do so and support her training in economics and reason. She’s pretty good too. I support astringent adherence to fairness, even if it costs me everything, which it has from time to time, but, I could have really screwed up large populations by just being conveniently greedy.
Adrienne is on the money. If I had a dollar for every meeting where it’s been said, we need diversity so do we have women in our process, I’d be on food stamps.
And as we wrote a couple of weeks ago, we can’t figure out what all these white men are made about. Yeah, you’ve got the hard life. Right.
>>> Yeah, you’ve got the hard life. Right.
Today’s Commercial Appeal: “A discrimination case involving 40 Memphis police lieutenants denied promotion when the city threw out test results …” “Because of the apparent adverse impact on minorities, the city tossed the results …”
The case began in 2006.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/jun/24/lawsuit-over-police-tests-near-resolution/
Nothing is cut and dry, especially not this issue. It’s nice to think and post like it’s only one way and the politically correct answer is the one that’s correct, but, it’s only politically correct.
Justice is meted out on an individual basis. Blanket policies, even ones like this, are just the lazy man’s way of getting out of dealing with each case individually and honestly.
That’s how it is in the real world, people do not want to listen and are afraid to get involved and really make things that are wrong work out.
Most of the time there is NOTHING real to be afraid of. When there is, you will know it.
Yo, woman! get me another beer and check out what silliness they talking about on this website!
Some guys just don’t like women very much. It’s wonder they ever even get laid. maybe that’s their problem….
I don’t think this blog is a “pick up joint” or even a determining factor for that. If it was, there’d be a lot more posters “sucking up” here.
It’s funny, but, if you look at it from a different perspective, you could really get the wrong impression from some posts.
I’m in agreement with the OP.
We’ve gotten more emails on this post than any in the past two weeks, and reduced to two words, the message was: Amen, sister. One thing for sure: We’ll be watching this closer because we made a list of the major organizations headed by men and ones by women and the tale of the tape tells it all.
Hey, women owned businesses make up fully 1/3 of all small businesses in the US and that is over 1/2 of ALL businesses in the US. They aren’t doing as badly as the hype might insist.
You really want to make a change?????
Stop all the we need more blacks, we need more women, we need more asians, we need more whatever.
Give the job to the best person available no mater what their color or sex and be done with it. The PC mentality in this country is going to bring us to our knees.
We’re already on our knees from oil and money, maybe we’ll be fully prostrate.
Chris, it’s only rarely been given to the “best person available” here in Memphis, so stop acting like there was some non-PC utopian meritocracy in the golden past in this city. It was always based on politics and who knew who and he’s a good ol’ boy so let’s help him out mentality. We DO need to bring more people who have been shut out of the process into the process. Doesn’t mean we should “give” anyone anything, only make sure that EVERYONE is included in consideration.
The only ay to make enough people competitive in the “merit system” is to educate all participants in he public system equally and well.
That utopia has yet to take place in Memphis either.
In little Rock they actually instituted the “merit system” for government jobs decades ago when Bill Clinton was governor. Consequently, it’s not a giant pain in the butt to interface with most government there.