It bothers me that women and children are so often grouped together as if they form some cohesive social unit in social, economic, and other contexts, particularly times of emergency. I just saw it again today in this article about the daughter of an Auschwitz commander, in which the article states that the daughter has tried to portray her father as a man who still had compassion and who felt guilt over his role in the murder of “women and children.” It left me wondering how he felt about his role in the murder of men.
As I am sure other people have, I have always noticed the “women and children” grouping, even as a kid. It seems to have always been around, although I can’t find any articles on how it all started. When the movie Titanic came out in fifth grade (which led to my temporary obsession with all of the happenings and history associated with the Titanic), I learned that as the ship sunk on her maiden voyage, the frantic crew began calling out “Women and children first!” urging women and children to come forth for the lifeboats before men could board. At the time, it seemed a little strange, but then again, I understood that this was happening way-back-when and understood that things were different then. Women were in a different social position than they are now.
Randomly, I heard about the “women and children” grouping in the context of the Titanic again. In sixth grade, one of my classmates asked my history teacher why “women and children” got to get in the lifeboats first. The history teacher probably didn’t really know either, and mumbled something about “chivalry” and “only women can bear children,” but nothing that truly justified the grouping.
I’ve heard the argument. I get that only women can become pregnant, and they can only be pregnant with one man’s child at a time. On the other hand, some say, men can impregnate many women in the same time period. The syllogism being implied is somehow that therefore, an individual man’s life is less precious than an individual woman’s life. One man lost doesn’t mean much, because there are other men available to impregnate the women, but one woman’s life lost means that population growth will be stunted.
(Taken from here.)
First of all, how was the human or American population as a whole in any kind of danger of extinction in the case of the Titanic or any other disaster? Do we really need to make sure we can overpopulate the earth, to the extent where we actually value females over males?
The argument also fails to consider the culture in which we obviously live. In the Western world at least, most people are monogamous. They might choose serial monogamy–in which there are many sex partners, but only one actively at a time–but in terms of having children, most people still choose to have kids with one person. So the idea that somehow one man will be able to sow his seed in many women is preposterous. How many women would line up to have children with the same man?
Third, other than the idea that men are less important than women being patently sexist, it’s prima facie untrue. As much as a lot has changed in the past half-century, men still constitute a greater fraction of the workforce than women, and are in more positions of political and managerial leadership than women. The vast majority of combat positions in the army are reserved for men. I’m not saying this is how it should stay, but the fact is, even today, men occupy a unique position in society and men and women are not fungible social and political entities. The take home message is, however much women have unique abilities in terms of reproduction, their abilities don’t make them any more important than men.
Whether an article is talking about some horrible atrocity, natural disaster, or poverty, I see the fact that “women and children” were hurt inevitably thrown in there. It’s as if an event that harmed “women and children” is somehow particularly heinous, beyond what could be expected in tolerable circumstances, if there were to be any, of death and destruction. It’s a phrase that sensationalizes, that supposedly stirs the passions of the public and makes readers gasp at the horror. But is it worth instilling misconceptions in the public about what makes something truly horrible, and does it wrongly group together two distinct groups?
Not only have I shown that the “women and children” grouping is unfair to men, it is also unfair to women. Perhaps there was a time, and still is a time in some places, when women were treated like children. However, the use of “women and children” is not carefully limited to those contexts, but is instead found in articles about the modern Western world and other unhelpful contexts. The grouping insinuates that women are somehow similar to children, that they are helpless, that they can’t fend for themselves the same way men can. While in some cultures, particularly Middle Eastern ones, women are disenfranchised and excluded from the public sphere to this day, the fact remains that women are not children. Women are adults, have adult abilities, adult intellect, and adult physiques. Women are fully developed and mature, and have overcome numerous barriers–traditions, childrearing responsibilties, and discrimination–in order to become visible in the political arena. Women are a force to be reckoned with.
How long is it going to be before our self-proclaimed progressive, culturally sensitive, and politically correct society realizes how backwards they are being with the “women and children” grouping? So much for the strides of 20th century feminism. What is it going to take to make this end? Until we stop seeing “women and children” starving and dying, people will subconsciously believe that women and children form some kind of cohesive social unit. I have shown you that not only is this untrue, this also implies that men’s lives are somehow of a different value than women’s lives. All we need is to say “people” or “the innocent” died or starved, and if we really want to emphasize that is was everyone, then we can say “people of all ages.” Unless it was only women and children or disproportionately women and children, which I don’t expect is true of a natural disaster or civilian bombing, then don’t say “women and children.” Please.
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