I have always taken pride, deserved or not, about being pretty progressive if that is the right word about gender issues.
For example, one of the proud moments in my younger political career happened when I was active in College Republican politics in the state of Maryland. One of the young women active in the Notre Dame club, a college in Baltimore, told me that even though we generally were on different sides, she always respected me. The reason was that unlike most of the other male CRs I treated her the same that I treated male CRs. I expected her to keep her word, to work hard, and on and on. Most others expected less from her because she was ‘cute’, which she was.
Ignoring for a moment that one reason I treated her the same was as much due to my social ineptness as anything else, I would say that I tried to carry that goal of equity to my professional life pretty consistently.
But that is not why I am posting this.
One of my standard comments about gender has been to note that in my house there are almost all women, my wonderful wife and two amazing, now college graduated, daughters. The only other male over the course of my marriage was a neutered male cat. I tell people that each day my goal over those twenty-some years has been to avoid doing whatever it was that caused that cat to end up like that.
When I last told that story a few days ago, Liz Renninger’s, http://www.linkedin.com/pub/liz-renninger/0/460/661, immediate response was “Well, I guess you failed.”
And thus one of my favorite stories about myself may have to be retired.