Equality and equity

As an Australian with Y chromosomes I was born a male chauvinist and remained true to the associated beliefs and values through my school and university years. I believed that males were inherently superior to females in all respects. It was a belief that seemed as immutable as belief in the law of gravity.

Imperceptibly this belief began to be eroded, at first so subtly, so insidiously that I can't date the onset of doubts about the natural superiority of males. In retrospect I think the first onset of doubts may have arisen when I began seeing sick people. One would have to be as thick as two planks to fail to notice that women and girls withstood suffering and sickness, chronic unremitting pain, devastating loss, with courage, phlegmatic calm, philosophical insight, a sense of humour and constructive foresight, rarely equalled by their male consorts. Reluctantly also I had to concede that there were women who could out-perform me on every criterion it's possible to measure. Being married to Wendy played an important role in the slow and steady process of conversion, or enlightenment.  I owe to Wendy the erosion and ultimate obliteration of my sense of the natural superiority of males (and the sense of entitlement that accompanied it).

Ultimately hard facts that came to light when I was doing research for the UK Royal Commission on Medical Education in the early 1960s impelled my conversion from male chauvinist to card-carrying feminist. I "came out," so to say, and I had facts and figures to back me up. These were published in one of the papers that summarized the results of meticulous research projects I did with help from Gillian Stanley and others. (Stanley GR, Last JM, "Careers of Young Medical Women." Brit J Med Educ, 1968, 2:204-209, and Appendix 19, Report of Royal Commission on Medical Education. Cmnd 3569; London: HMSO, 1968, pp 320-396).

Conditions have been improving for the female half of the human race since long before the 1960s, although obviously there is a long way to go before we achieve genuine equity between the sexes in all the nations and cultures of the world. Karen Trollope Kumar and I summarized some persistent appalling facts in a background paper for a WHO conference on "Women, Health and the Environment" in Bangkok in 1997. By then it was possible to use official demographic statistics from very large populations in both India and China to reveal the devastating distortion of the naturally occurring sex ratio of male:female births by the selective abortion of female foetuses. That distortion has led to large cohorts of men who have no marital partner, with consequent insoluble social problems.

All of this bad news has been put in a more cheerful, more positive and hopeful perspective by the enlightened actions of Canada's new prime minister, Justin Trudeau.  He has selected a cabinet with equal numbers of women and men. (When asked "Why?" he had a simple conversation-stopping answer: "It's 2015!")  Today I watched the swearing-in ceremony and was enormously impressed by the range, depth, and diversity of experience of the new cabinet. Collectively they have tremendous potential.  If they fulfill only half their promises, it will be a spectacular success. I know and have worked with one member of the new cabinet, Kirsty Duncan PhD, and have great respect for her expertise and ability; she and I were in the vanguard of scientists studying the causes and effects of climate change in the 1980s.   She and Catherine McKenna, my local member, new minister for environment and climate change, are safe hands and minds to manage this urgent problem.