Why Gender Equality Is Good For Everyone

About The Video

Michael Kimmel, an american sociologist, makes a funny and practical case for treating women and men equally at home and in the workplace. In the video, he explains why gender equality is not about women or men. It is an issue about visible or invisible structural inequalities. The world is easier for a white middle-class man, a privilege which is not visible to those who have it. Making privileges, like gender, visible for everyone is the first step to support equality.

Kimmel introduces the speech with one of his experience during his university life. He met with 11 women every week to speak about gender equality. One day there was a discussion between two women. One was white and the other one was black. The white woman said: “when i look in the mirror, i see a woman”. The other woman responds saying “well, that’s the problem. When I look in the mirror, I see a black woman”. After hearing this, Kimmel was uncomfortable, because he sees a human being if he looks in the mirror.

After this discussion he realized that if you have a privilege, you don’t see it, it’s invisible. 

Another interesting part of the speech is that he talks about the importance of gender equality in mainly 3 contexts:

• Countries 
• Business
• Men’s point of view

In the show, he said: “It turns out, according to most studies, that those countries that are most gender equal, are also the countries that score highest on the happiness scale. So the more companies that are gender-equal, the better it is for workers.In addition, the happier workers are, the better it is for companies, because they have lower job turnover and easier recruitment time while workers have the highest job satisfaction. This is a win-win for everyone.

Women made progress also in the working environment, even to change new generations’ mentality. Even Kimmel understood this after an experiment with his sixteen years old son and his friends. He posed a riddle to them. The riddle was something like: “A man and his son are driving on the freeway and they’re in a terrible accident. The father is dead and the son is brought to the hospital emergency room, and as they’re  bringing the son into the hospital, the emergency room attending physician sees the boy and says:”Oh, I can’t treat him, that’s my son.” How is this possible? They immediately said “It’s his mom”.

That’s a sign of how things have changed. A lot of younger men today want to be dual career couples.

That’s right and good.

The more people who understand the importance of gender equality, the better is for the future.

According to us, one of the most effective solutions is education, because only the wise man is able to not have prejudices, because only a world without stereotypes will be able to give women their rights. For us, one day isn’t enough to remember the battles of women towards freedom and towards a better world. The violence suffered, the many discriminations which, still today, remain deep, painful wounds…. to be healed.

By: Erelin Beqaj, Sofia Hu, Edoardo Ballero, Rebecca Gualeni – 1°D