Whenever I ask for evidence of a Western patriarchy, the answers are always the same – ‘men are 72% of politicians!’ Or ‘men are 85% of Fortune 500 CEOS!’ I’m quickly pointed to how many male billionaires or heads of state there are… And there it is, did you see it? It’s called the Motte and Bailey Fallacy, and it is characterised by someone making an outrageous and indefensible claim – i.e. that the West is a tyrannical structure of male oppression. But when challenged, the person switches to a *similar* claim that is mundane, highly agreeable and easy to defend – i.e. ‘we have lots of male politicians’. And we do have a lot of male politicians, but these are not the same argument, at all. That’s the point really. So many fall into these widely accepted ideas of societal ‘male advantage’, and when questioned, we are often presented with a list of facts about the high percentage male billionaires, male CEOs, and male politicians… But guess what; I am not a billionaire, or a head of state, or CEO of my own Fortune 500 company – and I doubt you are either. So if like 99.99% of us, you are not a billionaire CEO politician, how are such facts (albeit accurate) relevant to our lives? Why are our measurements of gender equality so narrow and well… irrelevant? Aren’t health, education and life expectancy, for example, far better and more honest ways of understanding equality? What do you think? Typo *health 😔 ~ Sources [1] Mens Health Life Expectancy Education Number of Billionaires Billionaires by sex Homeless Population Images by Ali Morshedlou, Adam Nir and Gabrielm Ihalcea from Unsplash Illustration by! Teewara soontorn

2022-10-23