30 Blog Posts In 30 Days - Day #2

[blythechild]

Okay, so in my commitment to 30 blog posts that, you know, say something, today's topic is the 'Strong Female Character' in fiction and why we should hate her (thanks to x_los for the link

Comments

[minouette]

You can disagree of course. The thing is though, that often perceived differences in quality of candidates is in fact due to our biases. In my experience, we still need to force people to think about these things. I know some very smart people, who don't think they are sexist, who believe some really stupid things (i.e. there are not many women in physics because women don't like physics... which you can actually prove is untrue with hard statistics). If you work in a highly male-dominated field, you find for instance, that professors go and ask their networks (which tend to be all male) for suggestions for candidates, and the suggestions tend to be all male... even if every single one of them believes that there should be more women in the field, or that women are equally capable. Also, in a lot of really skilled fields all job candidates who make the short list are 100% qualified to to the job. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, but ranking these entirely qualified people is inherently arbitrary. And such inherently arbitrary selections if unchecked will always go to people with whom we feel more comfortable (i.e. alike). I think it's a very small imposition on people, and it is the way to get to a place where we might change out '-isms' as you put it.

[blythechild]

I think that we'll have to agree to disagree on this one ;)