Like any good employee working the overnight shift, I dedicated some of my time last night to looking at my old tweets (productive, right?). I was reminded that once upon a time, I wrote a letter to the editor of the AU Eagle opposing $50,000 for a Women’s Resource Center (at a college that is more than 60% female from predominantly middle and upper class backgrounds). After giving it a little thought, I am probably more opposed to the idea now than I was 8 months ago.

From what I can recall, the majority of those who commented on my letter told all sorts of stories about how it is possible for women to be harassed by professors, things could happen without consent if girls go out and drink too much, something or other about social narratives (because I went to AU) and blah, blah, blah. These girls needed a place to go to help and how dare anyone think otherwise. Again, these were young, privileged women at an expensive, private university where they were the majority.

For 6 months now I have been in the middle of 2 male dominated worlds – Kuwait and the United States Armed Forces. In both worlds, I have had the opportunity to interact with all sorts of different women. My general conclusion is that their American and/or civilian counterparts have grown soft and (worse) whiny.

Kuwaiti women are pioneering for a new generation of successful Middle Eastern women. Wealthy (by nature of being Kuwaiti) and educated, women are bankers, entrepreneurs, etc. Only granted the right to vote in 2005, there are 4 women currently sitting in the Kuwaiti Parliament. Organizations like the Business and Professional Women of Kuwait give women an outlet for networking, professional development, and so on. Many of its members can document harassment of the group (including an occasion when they showed up for an evening meeting to find that their parking lot was filled with a GIANT pile of dirt, just large enough so you could not see the building from the street – and therefore could never find it for the first time).

Never has that been the topic of conversation for the group at large (I only heard about it because a colleague and I could not find the building the first time). These women have better things to concern themselves with – like honing their skills and developing their businesses. What, of course, would be the purpose of fighting for certain political and social rights if you didn’t have something to contribute when it was all said and done? It is also acceptable to think (and this is my personal view) that if you have to be twice as good as the competition because you are an outsider, then why not go there. At the end of the day, you are twice as good as the competition.

This can also be the case for women in the Armed Forces, although under a very different set of circumstances. Demands of the American public (and vocal whiners like my counterparts at AU) create interesting circumstances. For example, women at the US Naval Academy make up about 20% of each class (give or take I suppose). Attending the Color Parade the day before graduation a few weeks ago, I noticed an abnormally large number of female company commanders (while its nice to think it was all purely meritorious, its probabilistically unlikely). The Navy Times (or maybe it was Stars and Stripes??) covered a story recently about a woman with an abusive leadership style rose very quickly through the ranks.

The majority of women you meet out here, however, are doing their job in spite of all the other stuff. Leading in this environment is not easy on anyone, no less a woman who (practically speaking) needs to deal with guys being guys (and usually gross). You can be a talking head for days about sexual harassment policy and equal opportunity and so on, but war is not the time or place to try and civilize a man. The successful ones are successful because they are good at their job. Nothing more, nothing less. The ones that are bad at their job are obvious, and everyone under them points to the fact that they probably shouldn’t have been promoted in the first place.

A coworker (former sailor and equal opportunity rep) and I disagree on the implications of that last part. The essence of her argument is that everyone should have equal opportunity to screw up their job (since when promotions are giving to undeserving men, the response is rarely “He shouldn’t have been promoted in the first place”). While I see the point, I think that since there is all sorts of “social narrative” out there that doesn’t inherently support women in leadership (Hilary’s glass ceiling), I would like all those women screwing it up to get out of the way (because you are screwing it up for the rest of us who are actually good at our job).

Prolonged exposure to these two very different environments has convinced me that the self proclaimed, American feminism activist is a counterproductive annoyance. True feminism is expressed and achieved through excellence and relentless hard work in ones chosen field. After all we would all end up better off if female students majored in Biology and became doctors rather than talk about how not enough women are doctors.