by Rosemary Redfern

Created on: September 24, 2009   Last Updated: October 01, 2009

The fact that this question has been posed shows that the bias against intelligent and educated females is still around. It poses another question. What is it that people fear about a successful woman taking an important office? Gender has nothing to do with the ability to do the job.

What matters in a Supreme Court nominee is their experience, skill, humanity and ability to interpret the law. The gender of an individual is not going to influence their ability to think and solve problems. Both men and women are capable of being professional in this capacity so this should not be an issue.

There are confused ideas about gender in the population at large. Traditional ideas of male and female roles has set minds to think that only men can do some jobs and only women others. How many frustrated women are there because they are expected to be housewives and that is not their most productive form of work.

How many men are there struggling to earn enough to keep a family which his wife could do better. It is the ability of the individual which counts. There are female engineers and male nurses. Both cross the lines of traditional jobs.

However women are handicapped by their biology. If a woman wants to marry and have a family, she does not have a house husband to run things in the background, usually, as many men have. The act of producing a child is time consuming and exhausting. This break from the employment that is recognized as work by society should not mitigate against her.

Once this stage of her life is over and the children are nearly grown, a woman is free to follow her career choice. While she may have missed some career experience, the experience gained by running a family has given her a depth of understanding of humanity which cannot be gained any other way. It also gives staying power.

Nominees for positions like the Supreme Court need to be competent individuals. The training for lawyers requires them to be able to search past cases and to be able to find precedents. To a layman the law appears to be flexible in interpretation. It seems the most useful capacity a nominee has is the capacity to think outside the box. Both genders can do this equally well.

Gender determines ones biological phenotype, the sex one presents to the world and it might predispose an individual towards certain interests. For some cases a strong stomach is more important than gender.

Gender is no more relevant to the capacity of a nominee for the Supreme Court than any other job.

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