Gender equality. We’re not there yet. Yet it is an ethical1, social2 and economical3 imperative. But to get there, we need to decentralise the world from men.
Current political approaches all have the same flaw: they look at gender equality through the prism of men. Even when it comes to measuring inequality, we continue to measure it using men as a reference point.
Imagine you’re a man walking along a winding road and a female friend who also knows the way is following you. You want this friend to arrive at the same time as you, so you turn around often to check that you can see her, and to gauge the distance between you. There are several ways of looking at this situation.
- Either you choose to stay ahead and spend your time assessing the distance, then constantly re-accelerate at the right moment to stay ahead.
- Or you decide to stop for a few seconds while your friend joins you and you move forward hand in hand, but this means sacrificing part of your lead.
Except that sometimes the path isn’t just winding. It’s also narrow, and only one person gets through. To achieve equality between women and men, men have to agree to let women go in front of them occasionally and temporarily. And too bad if they speed up afterwards and overtake us, we’ll deal with that after.
Otherwise, even with the best will in the world, we men will always have women in our rear-view mirror.
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Human equality is a fundamental principle of justice. Every individual must have the same rights and opportunities. It is a matter of respect and dignity. ↩
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The emancipation of women is important for their personal fulfilment and the fight against all the consequences of discrimination, such as sexist and sexual violence, psychological violence, educational violence, but also - and we easily forget this - economic violence (control of money, access to accounts) and destruction of property. ↩
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Equality between women and men increases diversity in companies and enriches creativity, improves work organisation and enhances the financial prospects of non-heteronormative households. ↩