Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The Struggle Revisited

I was in university during the international year of the woman. It was a heady time. We'd grown up with sexist textbooks from Dick & Jane onwards. The one day, we were told that our textbooks were biased and once that emperor is revealed to have no clothes, well you see things more clearly.
We fought for equality. We fought to have equal opportunity. We fought for a chance to complete on equal footing.
My son's Organizational Behaviour textbook is sexist. It says that women are better than men - that if there is a problem in the workplace, the atmosphere has been poisoned by male attitudes, male methods of leadership, etc.
I want to fight again. I want to fight for both my sons and my daughter to be treated like human beings with a mixed bag of talents and weaknesses. I don't want any textbook to tell my sons that they are better than my daughter or any textbook telling my daughter that she is better than my sons.
Why won't the world let people just be people? Why does some group always have to be better than some other group? We're all pieces of the puzzle, threads in the tapestry. There's so much work that needs doing - we have to collaborate, be a team, be a network, dance in the circle of life.

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