Aid workers are good people. We feed stray cats. We give children fluffy toys. We accept the continual theft of our clothes pins and petrol as a part of the inevitable, even essential, global redistribution of wealth.
Sometimes, however, we’re so nice that our niceness gets in the way.
Like when we balk at firing the procurement officer who stole five hundred breastpumps. Or accept a meal of bat wings. Or tell the donor what they would like to hear, on the – generally accurate – assumption that they’ll never come out to monitor.
Or when we try to insist that women and men are equal.
Women and men are not equal. Not at all. And here are a few reasons why.
1. Lack of a barrel chest
Women are under-represented in NGO management positions, but that isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s just biology.
A randomised control trial [publication forthcoming] found that the most effective leaders in the aid industry are personable, well-liked, and confident. They play squash. They are tall – preferably tall enough to loom. They are married to a woman who makes bruschetta and gets her hair highlighted every six weeks. If they have a barrel chest, that’s worth another 10k.
Women don’t usually have barrel chests. They can’t play squash because – vicious circle here – they don’t get promoted enough to live in places with squash courts. They rarely loom, except in high heels, which doesn’t count as heels are just another vehicle of oppression. Finally, a woman can’t marry another woman because that would undermine her sole strategic advantage over 80% of men, i.e. strategic flirting.
2. Overcompensation
Oestrogen hormones are volatile. Think hydrogen peroxide meets piri-piri. Once puberty hits, and the hormones disperse throughout the female organism, everything in their path becomes corrupted.
This partially explains why women are short, spindly, and prone to believe in astrology.
Eventually the oetrogens reach the brain, where they pool between the frontal lobe and the hypothalamus and, being highly caustic, create micro-abrasions in the grey matter.
In some women, the result is aggressive vegetarianism. In others, a fetish for accents. Some women are so damaged that they can only appreciate the color pink.
The most common result, however, is low self-esteem.
In the aid world, women’s (oestrogen-mediated! not their fault!) insecurity drives them to over-compensate. Women work overtime – at night, on weekends, on holidays, on R&R, during the World Cup (real women don’t care about sports), and even through the duller parts of funeral services. If a woman has to have an emergency operation, she will be answering emails from the hospital gurney.
When a woman’s micro-abrasions are severe, she scorns the idea of “free time”. She refuses to have fun. She is incapable of strolling, or lolling, or frolicking. She finds naps anathema and may forego sleep entirely. She happily takes on extra work, proudly covering the portfolio of two – or three! – normal people (read: men). Where work does not exist, she creates it.
It was a woman, for example, who invented the concept of operations research, and another who invented mid-term evaluations. Men invented consultants.
3. Risk aversion
In the aid world, things moves quickly. Tens of thousands of lives are staked on every decision we make. A recent study showed that, on average, more than 350,000 children die during a typical coffee break in a typical UN meeting. That’s 22,000 children per cinnamon bun.
A good aid worker takes calculated risks. Unfortunately, women don’t know how to take risks. They were raised to bake cakes and show empathy.
Men were raised to kill people and, in many cases, eat with their mouths open.
Thus the sexes view security – and mortality, come to think of it – quite differently.
When making a risky decision, a woman first asks, “what is the chance that someone will die if we do this?” A man asks, “does anyone have a selfie stick?”
As a side note, there is compelling evidence that it was Adam, not Eve, who recklessly ate the apple and bequeathed a more interesting life to humankind. I think Dan Brown is writing a novel about it.
4. Fatness
Women have breasts. Men don’t. Women, therefore, have a higher proportion of body fat relative to men. This is significant because fat cells stimulate leptin, a hormone that makes us thrifty.
Because women are thriftier than men, they’re okay with having a lower salary. This is why women who want to make the world a better place go into the humanitarian field, while men with a conscience turn to currency speculation.
We’re very fortunate there are more women than men in our sector; it allows us to keep our costs down.
5. Premature aging
Despite their limitations, women are essential to world peace. After all, what would we do if everyone insisted on taking credit for their work? If nobody wanted to be an intern? If each person had the right to sick days?
It would be chaos. Anarchy.
So let’s celebrate our female aid workers and encourage them to carry on working 80-hour weeks, clad only in pink. Eating only rice and plantains. Aging prematurely. For without them, men would not be saving the world, one child at a time, between their squash games and happy hours.
Thank you, women for doing your gender proud!
Dara Passano is a pseudonym.
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