Confronting Societal Sexism
When the Young Democrats Club at Jordan High School in Sandy, Utah held a bake sale earlier this month, they knew they would garner controversy. At the bake sale, they sold baked goods to male students for $1.00 and to female students $0.77. After news of the event spread through various news outlets and Facebook, many began criticizing this bake sale by saying it promotes “reverse sexism” and that it was unfair and that it spread an inaccurate representation of the status of women in the United States. Those people are entirely missing the point.
Even though the often cited statistic that women are paid 77 cents for every dollar a man makes is not perfect, it represents the undeniable fact that women are still not held equal to men in the American workforce. The purpose of the bake sale was not to promote the statistic, but to raise awareness to the fact that even though the size of the pay gap changes between race, age, location and professional groups, it undeniably exists. The number is also skewed by the fact that women tend to choose jobs that allow flexible hours to make childcare easier since more women are likely to stop working to care for their children. That reflects that men and women continue to unequally share household duties nationwide, further reflecting that our culture continues to struggle with sexism. Women are also less likely to be in higher paid fields, but again, that reflects societal sexism that urges men towards more lucrative, stereotypically male dominated fields such as technology and finance.
Many used the idea of “reverse sexism” to argue that the bake sale was morally wrong and to argue against the feminist movement. Sexism that is detrimental to men isn’t reverse sexism—it is simply sexism. The feminist movement doesn’t seek to bring men down or promote misandrist beliefs. It seeks to treat all people equally, regardless of gender and to raise awareness of the fact that women are historically disadvantaged. While this bake sale did treat men differently from women, nobody was forced to take part. Unlike institutional sexism, someone having to pay an extra twenty-three cents for an absolutely non-essential commodity that can be bought in many other places for one day doesn’t affect the livelihood of a person.
Ultimately, this bake sale sought to get attention, to highlight an issue that is far from being resolved. Sexism in the United States is a nuanced issue and one that is hard to discuss without offending. Social exercises such as that bake sale are intended to incite conversation. It is very impressive that a high school bake sale in small town Utah managed to garner so much attention, and even if some people are offended, any conversation on societal sexism opens the door for greater discussion.