Word: genders
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...entire four years at Harvard without ever stepping through one of the clubs’ heavy wooden doors. But the existence of alternatives does not eliminate the problem. Many women may not participate in final club culture, but many others do—as long as some suffer from gender discrimination, the issue is not resolved. And while it might seem that students could simply cut clubs out of their social lives, this request is not as reasonable as it sounds...
Even the most sought-after girls, who never struggle to gain admission to exclusive parties, get, as Schuyler aptly put it, "second-class citizenship" in the final club nation. A world of male hosts and female guests creates a fundamental asymmetry in gender relations. Women can’t return the hospitality that is constantly bestowed upon them. Since they don’t have social space of their own to give or withhold, they’re simply expected to, as one female student put it, "smile and look pretty...
This anachronistic system perpetuates an old-fashioned and destructive conception of gender at Harvard. Men are the providers—they pay for the clubs, assume the liability for the parties, plan and make decisions. Women, meanwhile, are passive recipients of this largesse, always subject to the whims of their male classmates...
...when the Bee was founded with the help of Porcellian grads who wanted to grant their daughters something resembling the social experience they had enjoyed in college. By the late 1990s, the Seneca (not technically a final club, but founded with the express purpose of changing Harvard gender dynamics) had joined the mix. With the new millennium came the Isis, the Sabliere, the Pleiades, and most recently, La Vie. Many of these clubs are empowering in both intent and effect. In her young organization’s constitution, La Vie founder Oluwadara A. Johnson ’10 gives...
Moreover, even if the pipe dream of equal resources were attainable, creating more single-sex social space still wouldn’t address all aspects of the problem. One of the most unfortunate consequences of the current system is that it institutionalizes gender divisions, reinforcing the idea that men and women are fundamentally different. This promotes a culture in which men are friends with men, and women are friends with women. Neither group is encouraged to interact with the other as equals. The consequences of this are far-reaching. "It’s not surprising that men feel more comfortable...