Friday, February 03, 2006

Discrimination against men

Let me play devil's advocate.

I constantly hear that women are discriminated against based on the argument that "Women are underrepresented in X, so they must be discriminated against, because they are equally able and any lack of interest is pure social conditioning".

So lets turn this argument around.

Why are there so little male speech and language therapists? Are men being discriminated against? For example in the UK, I just know of one male SLP.

The other question one needs to ask is whether women SLP can truly understand the needs of male stutterers.

I have the impression that many (but certainly not all) fail to understand what works with men. Many (but not all) men don't want long talking sessions, they want targeted practise with specific goals and ideally in a competitive setting. They don't mind being told off from time to time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

the two speech therapists i had when i was still in belgium were both male...
but i agree with steppendraft--women are just more interested in speech in general, right?

Einar said...

Most SLP's I know or have heard of are male (in the US and Germany that is), and to my knowledge the most famous ones are men too...