[Opinion] Gender Discrimination

Wives are very apt in doing two or three things at the same time. They can read the newspaper while listening about family life and chide their children who are playing computer games when they should be in a private institute studying. They can iron, watch TV and receive phone calls almost simultaneously. Meanwhile, men can’t listen what their wives are telling them while reading newspapers or watching TV. They aren’t doing so on purpose. It is due to differences in their brain structure. The brains of men are divided into separate compartments, and each compartment has only one main function, acting independently from other compartments.

It is a well-known fact that many women are clumsier than men at driving and reading maps. On average, women’s senses of space are poorer than those of men. Harvard University President Laurence Summers once said that the reason there are fewer female professors in science and engineering departments was due to the innate differences between males and females, and was lashed by feminists, but many people think that he is right. Women are more outstanding in verbal skills. For instance, over 90 percent of Graduate Schools of Interpretation and Translation students are female. In the latest national college aptitude tests, the verbal part was rather easy and math difficult, causing some to claim that female students were at disadvantage.

Differences between men and women do exist. The best female golfer, Annika Sorenstam, played in several PGA tournaments, but she failed to make the cut a single time. She is good at the short game, but no matter how great her tee-shot is, she can’t send her ball farther than her male counterparts. We are living in an age where women pilot fighters and drive tanks. However, the U.S. military does not station women in special warfare areas. Only a few men can win an argument against women, but in the same way, only few women can beat a man in a fistfight.

The National Human Rights Commission declared, “It is gender discrimination that the police agency selects more men than women,” and urged amendments. In tasks such as traffic police, women can do a better job than men. However, when fighting with gangsters or arresting an armed robber, male police officers have an advantage. Difference and discrimination are different. Equality means treating same things the same, and different things differently. If we follow the Human Rights Commission’s way, then bearing the duty of military service only to men is also sexual discrimination.

Hwang Ho-taek, Editorial Writer, hthwang@donga.com