How a Gentleman Understands Equality in the Workplace

Critics of the gentlemanly ideal say that most men born before the 21^st century, and all gentlemen, were “sexists.” But in truth, the gentleman has a better understanding of equality than modern egalitarians probably do. To a gentleman, “equality” refers to every person’s inherent human worth, which is why he is polite and considerate to everyone in the office, from the corporate CEO to the janitorial staff. To the gentleman, equality, in any positive sense, does not mean coercing people, dividing people, or imposing quotas to achieve equal, bureaucratically enforced results in achievement, compensation, or the numbers of male and female doctors, engineers, accountants, lawyers, or teachers. The gentleman has too much respect for personal choices and talents to make those judgmental mistakes—and social science backs him up. 

Jordan Peterson, the YouTube sensation who is a Canadian clinical psychologist, professor, and author of the bestselling book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, points out that Finland, Sweden, and Norway are our best examples of societies that put a premium on achieving male-female equality, yet statistically men and women in those nations have largely segregated themselves into various occupations by choice. Peterson’s point went viral, with more than 14 million views on YouTube, when he debated British news personality Cathy Newman on this topic.

Peterson argued that the pay gap that exists between male and female employees is mostly the result of innate differences between men and women, especially on five big personality traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. In studies of these traits women consistently report higher neuroticism, agreeableness, warmth (a facet of extraversion), and openness to feelings; whereas men report higher assertiveness (a different facet of extraversion) and openness to ideas. In general, people who score highly on “agreeableness” gravitate to jobs that pay less and that have lesser chances for promotion. On the other hand, people who are “agreeable” are more likely to perform better in many healthcare jobs (especially nursing) and in teaching positions, fields dominated by women.

Peterson told Newman that all the available social science data show that the presumed sexism of employers is only one small factor in the pay gap that exists between men and women. A much bigger factor is biology—the fact that many women become mothers, and mothers, far more than fathers, choose to stay home to take care of their young children. If you want to rise to the top of a corporation, taking months or years off work is a disadvantage, but given a choice, many women would rather take time off to be a mother.

Peterson told Newman, “Many women around the age of between 28 and 32 have a career-family crisis that they have to deal with. And I think that’s partly because of the foreshortened time-frame that women have to contend with. Women have to get the major pieces of their life put together faster than men.”

He cited his work with law firms in Canada where many of the best performers are women, yet many women leave the firms before they can become partners, because they want a better work-life balance.

“Men and women won’t sort themselves into the same categories if you leave them alone to do it of their own accord,” said Peterson. “We’ve already seen that in Scandinavia. It’s twenty to one female nurses to male … and approximately the same male engineers to female engineers. That’s a consequence of the free choice of men and women in the societies that have gone farther than any other societies to make gender equality the purpose of the law. Those are ineradicable differences. You can eradicate them with tremendous social pressure and tyranny. But if you leave men and women to make their own choices you will not get equal outcome.”

The gentleman’s rule is this: treat everyone in the office with equal respect. The real equality that matters is not an enforced equality of jobs, salaries, or achievements, but the innate equality of every human being.