…determine who is equal.

Strange how similar discussions take place with very different people in far ranging venues.

So women are finally allowed to be “equal” in the military and over on the NPPA facebook page there’s a lengthy thread about equality. Some who think there never can really be equality and some who say it is a step forward.

After going around and around in some of the sparring I came to an epiphany: Those who make the rules determine who is equal. Those who have no input into the rules can never be equal.

So if I’m part of a bunch of guys wearing wigs in the 1700s and we decide that “all men are equal” it’s really just our way of saying guys like us. It takes two hundred years to look around and slllllooooooowwwwwllllyyy change the rules because, well not everyone’s happy with them. But in changing the rules I’m giving up my control, my power. The guys like me aren’t always happy about it. And even though it’s a rule…the law…I can kinda ignore it until I’m caught. Then they slap my hands a few times and I know it will take forever to really make that law effective.

Why the fuss here?

Let’s time hop back to the early 1970s. Freshly minted diploma and eager to work, I got told way too often that I wasn’t getting interviewed BECAUSE I WAS FEMALE and nothing could force a company to even look at me.

Well I didn’t want to force anyone to do anything…I just wanted a job. And I know (now) at that time there were millions of other women, blacks, Asians, you name it all in the same predicament.

Thank you FCC for that ruling in the summer of 74 for mandating that anyone using the airways in this country HAD to consider all comers. What happened is there was a scramble to hire anything female or not part of the mainstream white male culture that controlled broadcasting in those times. (Not saying that was a good thing…because in those early years there were some pretty bad hiring decisions made in haste, but over time those who couldn’t hack it were history.)

The door was open and I went in.

Six months after getting my first job I went to an NPPA workshop taught by Ernie Crisp. Who told the assembled newbies that women would never be able to work as broadcast cameramen because the gear was too heavy for them. That was the mainstream thinking of the day.

Hmmmm….guess I wasn’t good at listening, cause I stayed under cameras for the next 25+ years.

Those who make the rules determine who is equal.

Think about it.