700 to 1

Last month, the World Cyber games, a kind of olympics for computer gamers, was held in Singapore. According to the Economist magazine ('Computer gamers gather', issue 24 Nov 2005), "Over 700 boys and men, and one woman, crossed swords over eight games, including Counter Strike: Source, Warhammer and StarCraft Brood War." 

"More than 1.25m people participated in qualifying tournaments in 67 countries, and the prize money, thanks to sponsorship from firms like Samsung and Intel, topped $2.5m," explained the Economist.

A few weeks after the Games, Samsung was still promoting its game consoles, seen here in this picture I took of the atrium of Funan Centre (the leading shopping mall for computer-related stuff)

Once again, you'd notice that everyone at a terminal is male. Even the passers-by watching the action on bigger screens (see the clusters of people at the bottom-left and top-right of the photo) are all male. The only two females visible in the picture are at the top edge, seated against a pillar, and having a chat. They have absolutely no interest in what's going on.

In the previous article, Female presidents and prime ministers, I said the complete absence of women in the senior ranks of political life in Singapore points to a structural bias. But I took care not to say that only 50% representation would indicate absence of bias. I will allow for the possibility that politics as a profession appeals more to men than to women, perhaps not to the same extreme degree as cyber gaming, but to a significant extent.

I think it is hard to deny that psychologically, men, generally speaking, are different in many ways from women. This is not to say that all men are like this and all women are like that. There will be overlap, just as some women are taller than the male average and some men shorter than the female average. But if we count people standing over 180 cm, you'd get a preponderance of men. Likewise, it may be that if we count people with the driving ambition and interest in politics, we'll see more males than females.

Just this afternoon, I came across 6 older teenagers sauntering down a walkway towards a traffic crossing. When they were 30 or 40 metres away, the traffic light gave a green man. They still walked normally, bantering with each other. Then the green man began to blink and the boys decided to run for it. So they ran down the walkway, nearly knocking over a newspaper vendor, and across the street.

But what was interesting was the way the run spontaneously became a race among themselves to see who would get to the other side first.

This is typically male behaviour, firstly that they go around in gangs of 6, and secondly there's that competitive spirit.

It is most unlikely to see girls of similar age behave this way.

* * * * *

What then do we mean by equality? If people are inherently different from each other, they are like apples and oranges. How is one to be compared against the other? At what point are apples and oranges equal?

I don't pretend to know the answer, for surely, there is no simple formula. At our present stage of moral enlightenment, humans feel a need to moderate, if not eliminate, the considerable and often unequal differences between individuals and groups of individuals. We hold "equality" as our compass bearing, without knowing exactly what equality looks like.

All we can do is to correct one situation at a time, as and when we see them, but even then, the method to be used in the correction is often contentious. Quotas? Affirmative action? 

A better way is to examine the assumptions we make which may give rise to structural bias, and eliminate them. For example, until it was highlighted in the press, some employers used to advertise job openings for Chinese only. What they really needed was for an employee to be able to speak, read or write Chinese. They simply assumed that all Chinese spoke Chinese and all non-Chinese did not. 

Of course it isn't true. If a qualified non-Chinese came along with the requisite language skill, she should have an equal chance at the job. Skin colour shouldn't matter. 

Yet the theory is not enough; the reality must be appreciated. How many non-Chinese in Singapore have mastery of Chinese? If they do not, are they then excluded from a great swathe of employment opportunities? We then have to go on and examine our educational system and ask whether non-Chinese children should be learning Chinese if that's where their future jobs are.

While we cannot make non-Chinese racially Chinese, we can reduce the linguistic disadvantage they face.

Another area worth examining is whether a sexist bias underlies the refusal to include domestic maids within the ambit of the Employment Act. As explained in the article Inhumanity towards maids, only now is there some sort of private action to ensure that maids get at least one day off a month! Private action by maid agencies, not a government demand. In fact, the government resists changing their policy.

Foreign workers in other industries are covered by the Employment Act which mandates at least one rest day a week. 

The government's reasons for maids being outside the scope of the Act include being needed to look after young children at odd hours, but this kind of reasoning is far from convincing. Young children need care at odd hours, but it doesn't mean the maid has to provide it. What happened to parents? Grandparents?

Likewise, one could say some industries need to operate around the clock. Does that mean the employees must work around the clock too, and be exempted from the Employment Act?

I have a faint suspicion that reliance on such a weak reason is simply because our government leaders have not penetrated their own bias, which may be sexist in nature. Of course a domestic worker's job is different in nature from a construction worker's but it doesn't mean that legal protections from exploitation should be different too.

For an example of homophobic discrimination in 2005, we need look no further than the Vatican's latest ruling on admissions to seminaries. Released at the end of November, it says men should not be admitted to seminaries or ordained as priests if they practice homosexuality, have "deeply rooted homosexual tendencies" or "support so-called gay culture." Those with only "transitory" homosexual tendencies must be celibate three years before being ordained as deacons, the step before priesthood.

Words like "deeply rooted" and "transitory" are not only vague, but represent a complete failure to understand the objective, scientific basis for sexual orientation. Since all sexual orientation, gay, straight or bisexual, is deeply embedded, they effectively bar gay men from the priesthood.

This is an example of a bias that comes out of refusal to recognise known facts, sticking instead to discredited ideas about sexuality.

As these examples show, if we care about equality, we have to engage in a never-ending process of interrogation. We need to check our assumptions against the latest state of knowledge, and we need constantly to reflect upon our own thought processes. People will never be equal in the sense of being identical -- males and females will never be physically or psychologically alike, straights and gays will never be mirror images of each other -- but that is no reason for us not to work at reducing the disadvantage of difference.

© Yawning Bread 

Footnotes

None

Addenda

None