An All-Female Panel

Tonight there is an all-female panel on QandA, a trend that appears to have recently started again on a number of panel shows.  Now I have no problem with an all-female panel on a show, so long as it doesn't happen too often, but it annoys me that the media doesn't seem to feel the same way about an all-male panel.  How is this equality?

I'm not for one moment suggesting that "the pendulum has swung too far" or that "the scales have tipped" or any of the other annoyingly oversimplified expressions that are often applied to this viewpoint.  Personally I think that there are many areas in which more work needs to be done to achieve equality despite equality already being reached in others.

I don't think it's right for companies to have a policy outlining the minimum number of women on staff but not the minimum number of men.  I don't think it's right for all male support groups to have to justify their exclusivity while all female groups don't.  And I especially think it wrong for issues to be labelled the exclusive territory of either women or men.

I choose not to call myself a feminist, even though I believe in the ideals of equality that feminism originally stood for, because too many feminists seem to have lost sight of those ideals.  Also too many people seem to view the empowerment of women and the disempowerment of men as the same thing and call that feminism. While the ideals are good, the term feminist has acquired too much baggage to be effective, not least of which is the fact that the term emphasises the female - useful when the inequality was at the extreme level of the early 20th century, but not so useful now.  Masculinism (which unlike feminism isn't recognised by spell checkers) follows the belief that for equality the recognition and redress of discrimination against men is just as important as the recognition and redress of discrimination against women.  Despite this, though, I have trouble with masculinism as well, again the name emphasises one gender over the other.  Perhaps a better term would be equalism.

The whole premise that equality is a single issue is still problematic for me, though.  As I stated before, the idea that a pendulum swings or scales tip may be a nice visual but it oversimplifies the broad range of issues involved in equality in the worst possible way.  As long as equality is viewed as a single issue, rather than a set of problems requiring a range of solutions then it will be forever beyond our grasp because applying a blanket solution has never, and in all probability will never, work.

I understand that this is a touchy issue, but if what I've written offends you then tough.  I am merely stating my viewpoint and if you disagree then you are welcome to let me know your viewpoint in the comments.  I am thoroughly sick of being told that I'm wrong without people having the courtesy to justify their position or that I don't understand the issue and then have no attempt made to help me understand it.