Standing in the fourth row of black belts at the 116th
ITF Taekwon-do International Instructor Course in New York, I witnessed a
real-life representation of the gender leadership gap. Women were well-represented in the ranks of 1st
Degrees, showed up to a lesser extent among 2nd and 3rd
Dans, could be seen here and there in my line of 4th Dans, but only
one or two stood in the front three lines. I literally got goose bumps when a woman
was promoted to Master (7th Degree), joining just one other female
Master in the room. It made me want to ask them: How? What’s the secret?
The decrease in female representation with seniority is not
unique to martial arts, of course. One
of the best visualizations of the leadership gap in business appears here. Similar trends had shown up in academia
and in politics. The reasons for these gaps remind me of the reasons why
there aren’t more female Taekwon-do Masters.
History
Taekwon-do (ITF) was founded by General Choi Hong Hi
on April 11, 1955. For the first 20 years or so, women were not allowed to
train in the art, and the first female competitors appeared in the World
Championships in 1978. According to the (current) official regulations,
it would take a practitioner a minimum of about 25 years to attain the rank of
Master. Thus, from the get-go, women lagged behind, simply due to lack of
experience, with men having a 23-year head start. This kind of historical lag applies to some
extent to all originally male-dominated areas from politics to finance to academia,
making it challenging for women to catch up.
Life
But now there are no explicit
barriers to entry into Taekwon-do, or any other activity or occupation for that
matter. So, here comes the first of the implicit barriers: the disproportionate
expectation of child-rearing that falls upon women. Here, let’s ignore for a moment the real
possibility that many women actually prefer to be primary caretakers (see
subsection on preferences below), and focus on the societal perception that all women must sacrifice career
ambitions in favor of family life. Then, it is not so surprising that even
serious female Taekwon-do students fall out of practice around 4th
Dan, right when they are in their late 20s/early 30s – the prime age in the US
for marriage and child-bearing. Yes,
there is a real physical difference between men and women: women cannot really
practice martial arts when they are about to give birth (though see my very
pregnant pic below). But, once the natural hiatus happens and the baby arrives,
priorities begin to shift resulting in a greatly reduced likelihood of the
mother returning to her practice. This
latter part is simply not the same for a man, whose stereotypical role allows
him to continue pre-children activities with little interruption. Princeton public-policy
scholar, Anne-Marie Slaughter, sites care-giving obligations as a main
driver of gender inequality in the workforce. Research by Claudia Goldin, a Harvard
economist, shows that women choose to pursue occupations and activities
that allow greatest flexibility to juggle work and family obligations. In
return for this flexibility, some women accept lower wages and relinquish the
ambition to climb to higher ranks (in Taekwon-do, as well as in the office).
Preferences
What if women simply dislike certain aspects of Taekwon-do
that are essential for advancing in the art? A similar question can be asked
more broadly: Are there innate gender differences in preferences that can
explain the prevalence of men in certain professions? Together with my colleague, Catherine Eckel,
I explore these questions in a paper written for a forthcoming Oxford
Handbook on Women and the Economy. Research in psychology and economics suggests
that women do indeed exhibit different preferences: they are, on average, more
risk averse, less willing to compete in stereotypically male-dominant
environments, and less willing than men to engage in negotiations. Despite the
many caveats and exceptions to these general trends which are explained in
detail in our handbook chapter, these differences can help us further explain the
leadership gap.
Unobservable stuff
Finally, there are two polar opposite explanations that both
fall in the “elephant in the room” category. The first is, <gasp>,
ability. In Taekwon-do, it is easy to
see that biological differences can drive some of the pure physical ability
gap. A man and a woman who both weigh 160 pounds and who are both at the intermediate
skill level can bench press 196 and 116 lbs, respectively (see here). To draw the analogy to cognitive ability:
there are confirmed differences in male and female brains. However, just
like there is no evidence that these brain differences translate into inferior
performance by women as leaders or as managers (in fact, some argue that it’s
quite the contrary), there is no reason to think that physical
differences should cause women to be inferior as Taekwon-do practitioners, in
general. In fact, one could argue that women and children stand to
benefit the most from the confidence boost and the self-defense aspects of the
art. Therefore, I would argue that baseline ability differences should not be a
factor.
The second category is, of course, discrimination. That is, two
individuals who start a particular activity at the same time, who have the same
background, experience, and training, who have the same preferences and family
responsibilities are treated differently. Because there is no way for us to
find truly comparable individuals in every respect, other than gender, it is
next to impossible to prove existence of pure discrimination. However, plenty
of studies suggest that implicit bias, rooted in stereotypes and biased
beliefs, is real.
So, what’s the path to becoming a “Female Master?”
Unfortunately, I don’t have a quick-and-easy answer for how to become a “Female Master” in professions where men greatly outnumber women. I will
continue to post more thoughts on this in my later entries. Here, I will just
speak to my own experience that only applies to Taekwon-do “Master-hood,” and
explain why I have an actual shot at it:
- I have the experience and the ability (20+ years of training)
- I have the confidence to know the above
- I am married to another Taekwon-do practitioner and a great life partner who is dedicated to us both continuing our progress in Taekwon-do (to be sure, the majority of female 4th Dans and higher who have children must fall into this category – see the Life part above)
- I have perhaps “weird” preferences (people tell me as much): I love Taekwon-do despite being somewhat risk-averse
- I am stubborn and I want to break stereotypes: I am dedicated to working on introducing more women to Taekwon-do
Perhaps, these points might apply more broadly than just to Taekwon-do after all.
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| Continuing on the path! (Photo credit: Luis Mejia Optik Elements) |
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| 8 months pregnant with my son at Central Taekwon-do Academy |