Lately, as state-level governments have tried to pass distinctly anti-women and anti-LGBT laws, the people putting their feet down and advocating for the rights of those groups are getting more and more important. Nashville seems to recognize this, which is why it has launched the Nashville Council On Gender Equity, a new committee that will help offer “data-informed recommendations and advice to address systemic differences in benefits and opportunities that might be unfairly provided to one gender but not another.”
That comes from The Tennessean, which also reports that one of the members of the newly formed council is none other than beloved Nashville man Jack White—making this sort of like the time Ron Swanson won the Woman Of The Year award on Parks And Recreation. We’re not sure what makes White an expert on gender equality, but he definitely has a lot of experience as a man, which tends to be pretty beneficial when it comes to life in general. After all, who better than a man to recognize when one gender is receiving benefits that the other isn’t? Men are the ones getting all of those benefits anyway, so they’ll probably notice if something isn’t fair.
Really, though, Jack White isn’t part of this council because he’s a man, he’s a part of the council because he’s a famous man. That’s why Nashville brought him onstage alongside Mayor Megan Barry to talk about the importance of these issues during a press conference. White posted a transcript of his speech on Facebook, but the gist of it is that he says he’s always approached making music with equality in mind, explaining that it wouldn’t make sense to pay a drummer less than a singer just because the singer has an agent or whatever, so it would make even less sense to pay two musicians different amounts just because one of them is a woman. He says it’s “embarrassing” that there are still differences in the benefits and wages between genders, adding that “gender equity is something that should’ve been solved a century ago.”
With a man on the case now, maybe that’ll finally happen.