Earlier this month, we were asking where chivalry had gone – and I’m down with that, I’d like to know where the little sucker slipped of to, too. But what I want to talk about now is, if chivalry is gone, do we really want it back? And should we expect it?

No matter how you slice it, chivalry always smacks of gender inequality. And yeah, it’s a lot harder to complain about inequality when you’re the one benefiting from it, but shouldn’t we still stand up against it? Are we hypocrites if we don’t? Add to that the fact that most of the little things we ascribe to the idea of chivalry (flowers, love tokens, professions of undying love) are all essentially just methods of winning over or even buying our affections. Isn’t that something that we in the post-feminist era should rebel against on principal?

We’ve fought for years to say that we’re just as good as men, that we shouldn’t be treated differently – and now, like it or not, this lack of chivalry is basically just guys treating us exactly like they treat each other. Hello, feminist victory here!

But at the end of the day, say what you like about feminism, we aren’t all the same. Genders are different, not better or worse, but different and we will always, in some ways, want and need to be treated differently. Beyond that even, when you really break it down, chivalry is a respect thing – it’s good when a guy will respect you enough to at least offer to pick up the tab at dinner or hold out a chair for you. I mean, ultimately, chivalry is as much manners as anything else, and what’s wrong with expecting a guys to have manners?! There’s nothing inequitable or anti-female about wanting and expecting a certain level of manners and courtesy!

OK, on one side, I’m a Southern girl and I was brought up with a definite emphasis on manners so chivalry has always been up there on my list of things a good guy should have. But, at the same time, I’m also a modern girl and I really don’t care who opens the door – if you get there first, open it – no big, right? Are these contradictory ideas? Can we really have our cake and eat it too?

What do you think ladies? Does the idea of chivalry just hold us back? Or are we taking the whole gender equality thing too far when we can’t even be treated special?

Duke it out!

For the last ten years of her life, Ledbetter has fought for equal pay rights in the work place for women. After experiencing pay-based discrimination because of her sex (and learning about it through anonymous letters in her work mailbox), Ledbetter filed a complaint of gender discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Making a long story short (however, you should read the whole story over at CNN), President Obama stepped in and signed the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Restoration Act this past week making the fight for women’s rights and equality better upheld through the law.

While I feel gratitude for Ledbetter’s ongoing battle with the Supreme Court and Congress to pass this act that will give women the rights they warrant and money that is rightfully theirs, I know that work is still left to be done.

It may seem hard to believe, but to this day, full-time working women get paid “on average, only 77 cents for each dollar full-time working men get paid,” according to the Wage Project. This happens in every occupation across the nation, and while it impacts women in different ways, the reality of it is that hardworking women with outstanding college degrees lose money in their pockets simply because of their sex.

Think about it. Imagine working at the same place, doing the same job as a man (who has the same degree and amount of experience as you), putting in the same hours, only to find out he is, in fact, making more money than you on an annual basis. How is that fair? It’s not, at all.

But it is reality.

Amazing women across the nation have been fighting for women’s rights for equal pay for decades now. In 1963, the Equal Pay Act (EPA) was signed by John F. Kennedy in hopes to help stop the divide within the work place. While it drew attention to issues involving work discrimination because of sex, it did not necessarily revolutionize the issue over night. Nearly 50 years ago, when the EPA was signed, women were only making 55 cents to the male dollar. In the last four and a half decades, only 22 more cents have gone into making up for those earnings.

As a young woman about to enter the workplace after college, I am outraged to know that I won’t make what my fellow male peers will. However, while it is scary to know that such discrimination still exists, I do feel some relief knowing that laws are out there to protect us, and a President looking out for us, too.

Why is it not acceptable for girls to be interested in technology? Unless you’re an ugly girl with no social life and no social skills, of course. I guess it could be because there just aren’t a lot of women who work in technology jobs, such as IT, science, and engineering. But why aren’t there?

A recent Boston Globe article says that the reason girls are underrepresented in technology jobs is not because they’re not smart enough or feel like they’re not wanted, but it’s because they’re just not interested in them. According to a study done, “…women’s own preferences are the single most important factor in that field’s dramatic gender imbalance.” And another study, “followed 5,000 mathematically gifted students and found that qualified women are significantly more likely to avoid physics and the other ‘hard’ sciences in favor of work in medicine and biosciences.”

The bottom line of the studies is that women like working with people, while men like working with “things.” Allegedly, this is supposed to confirm the fact that women aren’t swayed from these jobs due to sexism or differences in aptitude. I agree that women are generally more inclined to choose jobs that allow them to interact with people; but really? In most cases, one of the main jobs of engineers and scientists is to work directly with each other. Aren’t most writers more secluded than engineers? So how can we explain why so many writers are women?

The article says that many feminists are worried that due to this “self-selection” women are actually responsible for the gender gap. I’m not so worried. Isn’t the point of equality being able to do what you want? Equality doesn’t mean that each field has to have an equal number of men and women working in it; it simply means being able to work in it if you want to.

And maybe if we didn’t have so many people telling us we’re “too pretty” to work in the sciences, more of us would actually want to.

• Think you’re going through a dry spell? “The average [amount of sex oppourtunities] in the engineering school is probably like once a semester.” Tragic. (Miami Herald)

• The French Prime Minister’s son likes poop. And Facebook! And embarrassing his family! (Telegraph.co.uk)

• “Having women well represented in the corporate boardroom can help improve financial performance.” Maybe with that extra money we can all get paid equally…maybe? (Yahoo!)

• Why is it that I could feasibly post a variation of this story everyday? Stop the madness! (Telegraph.co.uk)

• Some fat guy ate 21 pounds of grits and won $4,000. That works out to be about $190 a pound. It was for the glory, people! (seattlepi.com)

I have a point.

Somewhere along the road, as intelligent ladies demanded equal rights to our male counterparts, (Which by the way we still don’t have. 77 cents to a fella’s dollar, ladies!) men consequently decided that equal rights meant the abolishment of chivalry. Either that, or they just got lazy. (Ahem, the latter. In my opinion.)

What makes matters so atrocious is not even the actual death of chivalry, but the fact that girls everywhere have accepted it, and don’t expect much anymore.

Nowadays, wined and dined makes less sense than that damn word that lost you the spelling bee in fifth grade. (Who knew pneumonia had a P?) Girls’ expectations have become so minimal that if a guy opens the door for you he’s a Casanova, if he pays for dinner he’s practically Romeo, and if he calls you again within three days, well it must be too good to be true.

Aside from my normal summer tactics (mortifying summer internships and a whole lot of Oprah), I recently returned from a fabulous week of vacation in London, England. Besides, of course, seeing all the sights (Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, pictures in bright red telephone booths, being embarrassingly touristy…) my lovely sister and I made it a mission to enjoy a pub crawl or two, and do a little British boy hunting. (Can you blame us? That accent.) Well ladies, I have news for you all. CHIVALRY IS NOT DEAD.

Well no, it is, but only in America! I hate to generalize and nationalize, but yeah. American boys have no game.

These English boys were attentive, they asked questions, they wanted to get to know us, they didn’t seem to expect anything except a phone number or business card so they could see us again. One night stands seemed not an option for these guys. And I’m not even talking about a specific group of friends. I can firmly state that my sister and I did an adequate amount of field work to come to this conclusion (hehe). British boys were aggressive but in the RIGHT way, their pick-up lines were as innocent as ‘Have you seen the latest stats on Wimbledon?’ and they were painfully polite. A group of guys even thanked us for riding the elevator with them. What???

It’s like that Sex & the City episode where Carrie’s overwhelmed by the Russian’s decadent romanticism. He writes her songs, he takes her to the opera, he makes her pancakes. When she shares this with her friends, cynical Miranda points out that the extent of romance in New York City goes as far as a guy handing off his seat on the subway. It’s so true. And there’s a lot to blame for it. The text messaging craze has caused guys to become less communicative and more distant, seeing as a text instead of calling or stopping by gets their job done. Then there’s the most troublesome aspect, the downfall of dates. Especially in a college setting it’s so much easier and casual for a guy to wait until he can hang out with his interest in a group (and usually intoxicated) setting. The point is, he still gets the poo-na-na in the end, does he not?

Forgive me for being so pessimistic, there are of course still those grand gestures every now and then that we can ooh and ah over, and I’m not saying past boyfriends haven’t done romantic things for me every now and then. After all I was asked to prom by a guy in a gorilla suit who sent me on a scavenger around town gathering red roses and bananas. (I wonder where he got the inspiration?) All I’m saying is yeah, girls want to be treated as equals. We don’t need to be protected or babied and we certainly don’t need a power and control imbalance, but at the same time, we wouldn’t mind a call now and then. Or having conversations that extend further than ‘What do you want to drink?’ Maybe some flowers, just because. Or, I don’t know, an actual date? One-on-one dinner together in the campus dining commons doesn’t count, but it’s a start. For a lot of girls, date standards have reached: anything sober.

If only guys knew how easy it really would be to get in our pants.

But according to a recent study done at the University of Florida, feelings trump societal gender expectations in monogamous relationships. When a guy and gal are committed and comfortable, society’s chains dissolve and love conquers (and allows for plentiful, egalitarian, guiltless sex). The study also discovered that men are more likely to find sex “physically and personably pleasurable.”

Surprise, surprise! Now tell me something I don’t know.

I give this study credit, though, for dispelling enduring and archaic gender roles. On the surface, we need these roles to categorize ourselves; you know, to decide who’s gonna cook and who’s gonna fix the car. Let’s face it, I don’t want to fix the car. Ever. It’s dirty. I’d much rather make a pie.

Therefore, gender roles, while restrictive, spring from truth. But they don’t need to extend past the chore chart. In the monogamous bedroom, everyone is equal. Until you hit that five – year mark and stop having sex altogether.