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Last night I came back home from the Netherlands, where I’ve attended a leadership retreat focusing on sustainability. I was both a participant and a teacher at the retreat, and one of my two workshops was about gender issues and leadership.

I presented some of the ideas that I write about here on the blog, especially focusing on how gender roles developed historically, and that the goal was never to oppress either women or men, but to be as efficient as possible in obtaining food and security. In my opinion, it’s tremendously important that we stop shaming men and women for the gender roles we have been handed down.

When we say that men as a group have conspired to oppress women as a group for thousands of years, we are labeling men as evil and women as sheep. Is it really plausible to assume that men have managed to collectively oppress women across all cultures and large time spans? That assumption gives men far too much credit; it is exceedingly hard to maintain an empire, and to continually oppress 50 percent of the population seems like an impossible task. Women also aren’t as meek or weak as the radical feminists suggest when talking about patriarchy having a stranglehold on women since forever. It’s crucial that these historical insights become mainstream knowledge, so boys and girls aren’t taught confusing and incorrect insights about their ancestors.

This is not to say that gender roles haven’t been oppressive, because they have, for both sexes. I’m also not saying that feminism is entirely bad. Classical feminism, the original form of feminism that simply strives for equal rights between the sexes, is an honorable struggle. However, once equal rights have been achieved (which includes any laws about the draft or military service, mind you), then we need to focus on both gender roles, not only the female one. Only looking at the female gender role is far too partial, and therefore feminism quickly becomes outdated the moment a society is fully democratized and has equal rights between the sexes.

I also talked about male disposability and “the missing men’s studies” (hardly anyone studies men’s issues without having a feminist agenda).

All the material was well received by the group and relevant questions showed that the participants were following the line of reasoning without any trouble. People were also curious about my personal experience of growing up in a country where (radical and poststructural) feminism has a strong presence in public policy and the media. My experience is one of having been shamed for being male, so my work on gender issues has a very real personal experience as its starting point.

The feedback after the workshop was the the material and the discussion had been both usable and “fresh”, as opposed to the standard take on gender issues that most leaders and professionals have heard more times than they care to remember. So all in all it was a very positive experience for me, and it fills me with hope that parts of Europe are ready to move on beyond feminism, and into an era where gender roles are looked at with compassion and intellectual sharpness.

When I think about gender issues, I always try to touch base with four different basic dimensions. I find that it’s very easy to become lost in one of them, so I consider it a good practise to keep coming back to all four of them. In this post, I’ll simply describe the four different dimensions I work with.

I. Culture

One important aspect of culture is that men and women have different value spheres, from having had different gender roles for thousands of years (quite possibly innate factors affect these values spheres as well):

• Female value sphere: nurture, create deep relationships (needed for children, and to make sure the father doesn’t leave), focus on raising children, keeping the children and yourself safe.
• Male value sphere: take risks, be disposable, cooperate in a “shallow” way with other men to get things done, compete with other men to be successful.

Gender roles thus have a strong culturally constructed component, that cannot be ignored.

II. Society

Society’s institutions were created by men, as feminists often point out. But these institutions were also created to be staffed by men - disposable men as it were - which also had consequences (men being killed or hurt, or men having to spend most of their lives away from their families). If we want to reform these institutions, one way may be to bring in perspectives from the female value sphere (a process that started when women first entered the workforce, but which still has some way to go). We also need to remove the structures that keep men disposable, a process that probably could be helped by applying some of the female value sphere to men as well.

III. Innate factors

Modern research shows us that gender roles and gender patterns are influence in a very real way by brain differences, hormonal differences and body differences (such as women giving birth and breast feeding, while men have superior upper body strength).

While body differences and hormonal differences have been accepted for a long time, brain differences are more controversial. However, research has accelerated during the past couple of decades, and we now have ample proof of these differences:

• Women’s brains are different from men’s - and here’s scientific proof
• His Brain, Her Brain
• David Reimer: The boy who lived as a girl
• Sex Differences Extend Into the Brain
• Evolutionarily Preserved Signature Found In The Primate Brain

IV. Inner psychology

Examples of this dimension include:

• How do women feel knowing that most men have the physical strength needed to overpower them?
• How do men feel about becoming a man, when manhood means disposability?

How many dysfunctions in either gender are related to these facts?

Conclusion

Gender issues cut across disciplines, and any intelligent discussion around gender needs to include at least these four dimensions.

I visited the American Military Cemetery in The Netherlands yesterday. More than 8000 American soldiers are buried there, most of them represented by white crosses.

All of these soldiers have one thing in common: they were men, and they died because they were men.

Never has my experience of male disposablility and male sacrifice been stronger than when walking around that cemetery. It angers me that many feminists will dismiss male war sacrifice by saying that “men are the ones who start wars anyhow”. Saying that is akin to dismissing women traditionally being stuck in the home by saying “that’s where women have chosen to be anyhow”.

We all need more compassion when discussing gender issues.

The men who lie buried in Margraten, The Netherlands, fought to keep Nazism as bay. As such, they are heroes. And as always, when humankind needed a dangerous task to be performed, men came to the rescue.