Gender Equity Discrimination

Although I am not ready to give up my feminist hat,as it has served me well during many cold conversations, I am intrigued by the article on Gender Equity Discrimination found in the National Journal. Of course I want equality between men and women for all things. "Equal pay for equal work""A woman can do anything a man can do"...etc/ But considering Stuart Taylor's comments on discrimination based on gender equality.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/openingargument.php

The premise is that men and woman (hold onto your hats people) may have inert, natural differences and therefore are not truly equal. Surprise surprise we are different. That's a good thing. Equal does not mean same. Why should we make sure that the same percentage of women and men are graduating in math and science? Sure I can see that it could be a symptom of a discriminatory acceptance policy. So use that as a starting point, and investigate if the admissions policies are biased but don't stop there. Seems to me that many policies hide behind statistics when really we should be using those statistics to uncover and investigate potential concerns, but we should not stop at a number and make fundamentally unmitigated assumptions. It reminds me of the school exams and "No Child Left Behind". Evaluate on the easiest criteria - test scores_ and make all policies based on that one statistic.

Men are different from women. We should embrace the differences. Generally speaking, men are traditionally better in science and math, while women are traditionally better in the human sciences. This does not mean that ONLY men should excel as biologists and ONLY women should partake in psychology forums. First and foremost we have to allow both sexes the opportunities to excel at their desires, regardless of whether those desires are traditional or unconventional. If I want to do research in BioInformatics and gain my phD, give me the opportunity and help to excel. And if my husband wants to stay home and raise our children, provide him with a support network and help him succeed. So evaluate the person on this skills and drive not on their sex. We have seen litigation and policies intended to help women overcome gender discrimination, but are we going too far now? Are we insisting that young women must go into the sciences to up our statistical averages? Are we doing a sort of affirmative action program? I am a big fan of ending discrimination in all aspects of life but don't turn us into replicas of each other.

I cannot discuss equality versus sameness without a reference to religion. Remember when the big debate revolved around Christmas trees versus Menorahs? It was determined that school were discriminating against different religions by displaying Xmas trees and decorations without accounting for Chanuka. I was thrilled to see that some schools embraced the differences and taught about other religions. Children were learning about the Muslim holidays and the Jewish holidays. Not all schools behaved in that fashion. Some dictated a no decorations policy so as not to offend anyone. What does that teach? How about the schools that insisted that same importance be placed on Christmas and Chanuka without regard to the higher and more significant Jewish holidays. Again, equal is not same. It takes much more effort to produce equal as opposed to same.

I want to be different and I want to show my uniqueness. As the Marine's say let me be all that I can be.