Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars...

... And "gender equality" is a black hole. I was about to link to a great column by Lorne Gunter, when I came across this nail-on-the-head offering from Karen Selick about Stephane Dion's promise, if elected, to create a "Commissioner of Gender Equality."

But, as Selick points out, no matter how hard the social engineers try, they just can't convince women to act or think like men, something for which most of us are quite thankful.

The authors acknowledge that Canada already provides what they call "formal equality," or equality of opportunity. In other words, our laws treat men and women equally. But equal treatment, they claim, has not turned out to yield "the expected results."

That depends, I venture to suggest, on what results you expected. If you expected women en masse to behave exactly like men en masse merely because there were no legal obstacles to their doing so, then of course you would be disappointed. The biological differences between men and women make such an expectation ridiculous. There is ample scientific evidence of differences between male and female brains that accounts for the tendency of men to excel in — and therefore cluster in — certain occupations, while women excel in and cluster in others.

I wonder with Selick whether there would be "equal opportunity" for the position of "Commissioner of Gender Equality."

Both "gender" and "equality" are very loaded words in our culture. Whenever I hear them together, I'm reminded of a book by Elizabeth Elliot called The Mark of a Man. In her discussion of biblical masculinity and femininity, she begins by describing the ways in which men and women are equal. For instance, they are equal in being created in the image of God; in being called to serve Him faithfully; they are equal in being given the grace of salvation. But it's a pretty short list.

Then Elliot describes the many ways in which men and women are different, especially from a biblical perspective. We are so different that she speaks of a "glorious inequality," one in which we serve God and each other best. Selick aptly describes the practical and logical fallacies of the feminist ideology; Elliot shows that we are best off when we follow the Maker's instructions.