What a luring title... but all we have in mind is sexual attitudes toward nuclear power. The polls show that women are less supportive of it than men; what nobody knows is the reason for this type of sex discrimination. We suggested that perhaps the brainwashers spend more time on women (Redbook and Ms bring all kinds of antinuclear trash absent from True or Guns and Ammunition), but last August two professors gave a paper at the American Sociological Association meeting, concluding (on the basis of some debatable correlations) that "women tend to be more moral and less pragmatic about this issue than men."
Perhaps so; and the same might hold for the other populous antinuclear constituency, the young. The tragedy is that for these very reasons they are on the wrong side; quite apart from the necessity of nuclear power, it is the more moral power since it exacts the least toll in human health (and environmental impact). It is highly probable that they would change their minds if the reasons of morality, rather than those of necessity, could get to them through the strict censorship by the mass media.
The moral point of view is, of course, of little concern to the leaders of the noisy campaign to liberate a minority of 51% from the equal rights that the US Constitution already gives them as individual citizens.(*) As a rule they are not merely antinuclear, but also committed to left-wing causes, as typified by la belle Abzug or Elizabeth Holtzperson. Conversely, anti-nukes like Sen. Kennedy ingratiate themselves with the unfeminine feminists by rewriting Thomas Wolfe's poetry ("So then to all persons their chance, to work, to be themselves"), and it is a pretty safe bet that the HEW sages who banned sexist words like policeman or housewife and the psychology professors who see a sexist symbol in Father Christmas, are also antinuclear.
Little do these ultraprogressives know about the place of women in the Second and Third Worlds, with which they so often identify.
In the USSR women have equal rights under the law; what they have in real life is treatment by the Russian proverb Kuritsa nye ptitsa, ryba nye myaso, zhenshchina nye chelovek (a hen is not a bird, fish is not meat, a woman is not a human being).
As for the Third World, this writer was in Africa (AtE Oct 80) just after three women in Kenya had suggested that wife beating is a breach of human rights, thus triggering a vehement protest movement
¾by outraged husbands. "No matter what the law says," said one of the many letters in a Nairobi newspaper, "it is a man's right to chastise his wife for misconduct... My wife, a fully fledged Kenya Registered Nurse, has read and approved this letter. She takes her beatings quietly...."But back to energy and the US: On Oct.24, the DoE announced a $50,000 grant to stimulate women-owned businesses, to identify interested firms, and to match specific DoE contract requirements with women-owned businesses as defined by President Carter's Executive Order #12138...
Women (we conclude from this news release) who count themselves inferior or consider their sex an affliction should apply to the National Association of Women Federal Contractors.
Other women will make it by ability.
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Vol. 8, No. 5
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 8 Issue/No.: Vol. 8, No. 5 Date: January 01, 1981 04:53 PM Title: Controversial controversies
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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