Driving diversity
The battle for balance
Women are still hitting the glass ceiling and entitlement may be the reason they can’t break through, according to US sociologist Dr Michael Kimmel.
The pay gap in New Zealand has remained static at about 12 per cent for a decade, and although recent research found women were more qualified than men in a range of fields, the gap hasn’t narrowed.
Michael Kimmel, a bestselling author and New York Stony Brook University distinguished gender studies professor, said entitlement was keeping the final hurdle upright.
Kimmel was called ’’the world’s most prominent male feminist’’ by The Guardian and has just finished a tour of New Zealand, visiting three boys’ schools speaking to parents, teachers and students about boys’ development. Now he’s off to Australia to speak about gender equality to women in mining.
He said when it came to advancing women in the workplace, men who believed they deserved more could hinder progress.
‘‘There is resistance to having women on boards and in leadership and it comes from a particular strata in the workplace,’’ he said.
Privilege came in many forms: gender, race, religion, even weight and height. But those who benefited from those things were often unaware how those invisible forces pushed them along.
‘‘It’s the guys who are just below the C-Suite and what they feel is: I play by all the rules, I finally got there and the next step is CIO and now you’re telling me some woman is going to leapfrog over me.
‘‘That’s not fair, I paid my dues, I’m next in line, you’re letting them cut in.
‘‘This resentment is really powerful but this resistance doesn’t come from being qualified, it comes from being entitled.’’
This feeling of deserving privileges or special treatment is also what’s fuelling the Trump phenomenon, Kimmel said.
After Obama was elected it was a monumental win for minorities around the world. Then came Trump, driven largely by the resistance and resentment of white men.
‘‘What fuels resistance to any equality is this sense of aggrieved entitlement, we are entitled to that and you are not, and we need to get what we deserve.’’
Kimmel’s book, Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, is set to be republished in 2018 to address the Trump era.
The book focuses on how masculinity drives some men to feel they have been tossed aside and don’t matter in the pursuit of gender equality.
‘‘If you have benefited from inequality for centuries, equality sucks,’’ Kimmel said. ‘‘Gender equality is asking men to play fair.’’