Because it's 2016

Roughly half the human population is female, yet in almost every country on the planet, no matter how rich or poor, citizens with the XX chromosome configuration lead harder lives than the XY crowd. The rising tide of civilization has lifted a lot of boats, that’s true, but those craft carrying women and girls do not seem to be as seaworthy as the ones full of men and boys.

The three major religions originating in the Middle East fill their highest leadership roles with men. Not surprisingly, then, there is considerable toleration (and, in many cases, encouragement) for the notion that the solution to the problem of men not being able to control their reproductive urges is to confine women literally and figuratively—keep them out of sight in buildings or tent-like clothing, behind second-class schooling and third-class access to healthcare. This is, in every case, justified as being a directive from God.

Other societies and religions (both sacred and secular) practice similar policies. The two largest nations, India and China, have actually tipped the male-female ratio to 112 men per 100 women through gender-selective abortions and infanticide. Those girls who do survive receive less support in everything from food to education, even though studies indicate that countries with gender equality in primary and secondary education improve their overall economic status considerably.

In India, they can look forward to arranged marriages and the charming post-nuptial custom of bride-burning. In China, there’s such a surplus of males that they’re already worrying about the potential for violent crimes expected to result from the prolonged frustration of adult men deprived of, um, wives.

Like no one could have predicted that when they started aborting female fetuses.

But we in the western world should not be brushing up our tut-tutting skills. Not with our dismal statistics on domestic violence, our patriarchal policies on reproductive rights (Viagra sí; contraceptives no) and our pay gap (after 40-odd years of record-keeping, women have moved up from 59% to 79% of men’s wages for similar work; yippee).

Wealth and intelligence do not mitigate this mindset. By way of example, I give you the Valley They Call Silicon, the self-proclaimed meritocratic vortex of Advanced Thinking and The Next Big Thing. Seldom have I worked in a more testosterone-driven arena, and this includes association with three branches of the military and a couple of police forces. No matter what your race or ethnic background, if you’re male you are de facto a higher-value asset than a female, in every organization from three-guys-and-a-dog startups to behemoths. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the statistics reported under duress (after a lot of pressure from organizations like the Anita Borg Institute) for male/female employees.

Those numbers are even worse if you restrict your view to the higher-status/pay engineering and other tech job categories, filtering out things like admin and food service.

Sexism—the denigration of contributions from females—would have to peer very intently into its rearview mirror to see the rampant stage way back in the distance. Its brochacho, sexual harassment, is not far behind, either. Some of that is conscious and malicious, some not. When software development teams hold their monthly off-sites at Hooters, there could be passive-aggressive motives, or simply obtuseness, but the atmosphere is toxic regardless.

Consider the monumental cluelessness involved in Microsoft’s CEO assuring women at the über women-in-tech conference, the Grace Hopper Celebration (a ballroom full of tech-savvy women with mobile devices and connectivity), that not asking for a promotion or pay raise is actually some XX-chromosome “super power”, which will lead to the Universe of Divine Largesse noticing how good they are and rewarding them accordingly.

Could that super power of silence account for the fact that we’re still making only 79 cents on the dollar, from baristas to CEOs, that our male colleagues are earning? Hmm?

Beyond the Valley, though, take a look at the world of scientific research, where a Nobel laureate (Tim Hunt, Physiology/Medicine, 2001) proclaimed publicly last year, “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls [sic]… Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.” Therefore, research labs should be sex-segregated. Like madrassas, monasteries and other places where men can’t concentrate on things through no fault of their own.

When I say “publicly”, I mean he made the declaration to a large audience at the World Conference of Science Journalists—a ballroom full of writers with mobile devices and connectivity. He didn’t think there was anything at all wrong with what he considered to be a statement of fact.

That a lot of male scientific researchers share Hunt’s low-distraction-level syndrome is evident from reports of decades of sexual harassment by senior (and mid-level) practitioners of more junior-level female colleagues, like this one out of UC Berkeley. Institutions almost never reprimand these men, much less fire their asses, so women are told (sometimes in quite venerable publications) that it’s just one of the costs of being in science, so suck it up, babycakes.

And this is before we get to Congressmorons with freaking medical practices assuring us that in the case of “genuine” rapes, women’s reproductive systems have natural ways of shutting down pregnancy.

Well, you get my point.

It’s International Women’s Day 2016 and we have so far to go, my brothers and sisters. We can do better. We have to.