Is gender equality practiced in other cultures?
I have a wonderful example of differences in treatment of gender. There is a well known writer. Her name is Sharon Bruch-McGrain., and she wrote about Nobel Prize winners in science. It is just a fascinating book going back to the Curies and all the obstacles that they faced. Well she sold the rights to Japan and she was going to be receiving the Japanese edition, and so the box came and she was all excited and she opened it up and she said oh they have made a mistake. Because it showed a woman by the stove, with a spoon, in an apron, and a little kid, teapots and little, just very domestic items on the covering. I think pink and blue. And she said, oh this must be a mistake. No it was not a mistake. It was called Mothers Who Have Won Nobel Prizes. And that is a really important illustration because it was okay to win a Nobel Prize, but first you had to be a mother. The mother came first. That was the primary role of the woman and then the Nobel Prize was just a secondary thing. But, because we are American does not mean that we do not do the same thing too. There was a headline in the San Diego paper about one of the Nobel Prize winners down there that was written about in the book. And they say LaHoya housewife wins Nobel Prize. So we do it too. As women we keep fighting it but, we have to scratch all the way up because we do not have equality. Let us face it. But it just seems more dramatic over there, and certainly the cover of that book is a wonderful illustration of attitudes.
