Women in Philanthropy (and Everywhere Else)

Group of strong women

If it’s June, that means it’s time to stream the movie Independence Day, one of my favorites. My husband, Otis, queued it up last weekend. But on what was probably my forty-seventh viewing, I saw it through a different set of eyes.

I took note that the lead women in the movie were:

• A stripper, unwed, with a young son.

• The President’s wife, who would not follow her husband’s instructions precisely and quickly, and so died.

• A woman who lost her marriage because she chose a career in the White House.

And the lead men in the movie? They were:

• Heroic pilot and astronaut wanna-be who ends up saving the world.

• Gentle son of an ambivalent father, still wearing his wedding ring after his career-seeking wife (see above) left him three years ago, who ends up saving the world.

• The President, an utterly kind and gentle man who finds the strength to…save the world.

Granted, the movie was made in 1996. Still, I am weary of this because it is still happening.

This past Sunday, at my progressive Presbyterian church, I was again subjected to the language that implies God is a man, “the Father.” Of course, if you hold down a pastor and waterboard them, they will confess that God indeed is not a man. The pastor may even confess that God is not Caucasian, but that is for another blog. However, you can bet they will wrap up the conversation with, “But! Jesus was definitely a man!”

What does it do to women to be constantly told in one form or another that their expectation is to be less-than? We are told by scriptwriters, the film industry, and our faith leaders. Now, most pointedly, we have been told by our government that we cannot make choices about our own bodies.

In philanthropy, why do women dominate in number, but not in pay or filling significant roles? This surely devalues philanthropy as an industry, like every other industry where women are present in large numbers, yet are relegated to subordinate status.

Otis and I discussed the implications of this situation. His theory is this – women dominate nursing, teaching, and philanthropy because it’s expected that the people in those roles exhibit caring, and women traditionally have been associated with caring. “That’s nice. Sweet, really.”

My (correct) theory is this – nursing, teaching, and philanthropy are arenas where women can exhibit leadership and authority without suffering the typical consequences of a female exhibiting leadership and authority. Namely, a generally negative reaction from both men and other women.

I am describing this conversation like we were sipping crisp glasses of chardonnay and sharing our ideas with equally crisp banter. But, instead, it was as if a hornet’s nest had dropped from the sky onto the couch next to poor Otis, and he was batting them away furiously.

So, Otis was quick to point out, once I posited my theory, that our two theories are related. Or, as he is fond of saying, “Two things can be true at once.” Peeking from behind the bathroom door where he’d retreated, he said that study after study has demonstrated that women are no more empathetic than men. That women are put into caretaking roles is a cultural norm.

We agreed that women are in “caring” roles because women have traditionally been limited to those jobs and have become associated with them. However, it’s not because that is where we women naturally fall; it’s because we are policed to be there. We are taught that exhibiting caring, nurturing behaviors are within acceptable social norms.

You’re probably familiar with the term “double bind.” This is the idea that assertive women are seen as being too aggressive, while empathetic women are perceived as weak.

Women don’t suffer the double bind in socially acceptable roles. Nurse Ratched never gets punished for being too aggressive. I am pretty sure I am in philanthropy because I can hide behind “doing good” to cover my own level of aggression, which most people find a “little too much.” This, even though I show my teeth and stretch my lips over them quite a lot.

What if we all stopped diminishing women? Otis was a lobbyist in the education industry. He tells the story about having dinner with the Chinese Deputy Minister of Education fifteen years ago. He told Otis, “We plan to transform Chinese education by giving teachers the same benefits as factory foremen. Same pay, same living accommodations. That will transform their status in society within a generation.”

Now, I don’t know if teachers are primarily women in China. I bring this up to illustrate how one might go about releasing a group of people (teachers) to maximize their full potential. China is betting that doing so will help China eat the US’s lunch. That seems like an important data point.

The executor of my father’s estate met with my family after Dad’s recent death. Reading the will, the executor’s voice dripped with disdain as he prefaced a portion with, “For the woke among us, ‘The masculine will be taken to include the feminine.’” The executor doesn’t get what it means to be taught, day after day, document after document, movie after movie, that you are not worthy of inclusion. He didn’t acknowledge that contracts are now required to have that language. The reason? Because for a long time in America, women were not included in “people who can form contracts.”

When Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, a good friend of mine said something compelling to me. My friend, who is Black, said, “I knew this country hated Black people, but I didn’t know it hated women even more.” I don’t think this country “hates” women per se, but it does have an unconscious bias and a conscious set of habits that hurts little girls, and thus all of us, every day.

Until we see every movie with new eyes, this will continue. This will continue until we question—awkward though it may be—language in every document that defaults to the male gender. This will continue until we question why women get paid less and promoted less. This will continue until we no longer allow anyone to interrupt us with impunity when we speak.

Until we faithful say aloud, “God is not a man,” the masculine will continue to define authority, excellence, and advancement. Until we stop training both men and women to unconsciously default to “masculine = good” with archaic language, we’ll continue teaching little boys and girls the gender norms that diminish women.

So, call it out. With patience. With love. With a willingness to deal with the blowback that will come. Because, as I ask myself—if not me, then who?