This article caught my eye because of its headline in the UK newspaper The Daily Mail.  It is the word shame that got to me and the way it was used. It annoyed me given the fact that US women are doing a lot better on advancement than women throughout Europe and the word shame seemed quite inappropriate.

The article reviews US census data showing that women have received more B.A.s than men since 1996, and that of those over 25, there are more women with Masters degrees than men.  It then goes on to say that women still make less than 80% of what men earn although this is up from about 64% in 2000.  

I reacted to the word shame in the title by wondering if I should be ashamed by these results.  Should i be ashamed of my country for moving so slowly on womens’ equality?  I definitely feel disappointed that the progress has been slower than I had hoped but compared to the rest of the world, I think the US is doing pretty well. And I am sure that women in business are doing at least as well as they do in the UK. 

The use of the word shame reminded me of a recent reaction I had to the way the term humiliated was used with regard to Libya. I was watching the Sunday news programs where many were interviewed about our involvement in Libya. I saw numerous men say that now that we were in Libya, we had to replace Khadafi or the the US and its military would be humiliated(a word I think of as related to shame). My immediate reaction was to think that a failure to remove Khadafi would be a lot less humiliating than other things going on in this country. 

I feel humiliated and ashamed that so many leaders in my country are rejecting basic science on such matters as evolution and global warming.  I am also ashamed that we are allowing so many more children to slip into poverty, falling behind the world in education and are allowing the gap between rich and poor grow as never before. i am humiliated that there is so much anti- female policy that has been passed in our Congress 

I believe that words matter.  So Daily Mail, shame seems a little inappropriate to be applied to our slow but steady progress with gender equality.  To all you talking heads who think fear of humiliation should keep us at war, reexamine the other things that are going on around you. Our place in the world is at much at risk by our domestic policies and practices than by our foreign policies.  On those policies you should be ashamed, very ashamed.

Read the full article here.

-Fran