WHEN a woman breaks a glass ceiling and becomes the presidential nominee of a major political party, what should men think?

　　当有一名女性打破玻璃天花板成为主要政党的总统提名人时，男性应当作何感想？

　　Should men applaud that another barrier has fallen so that our world is more fair and equitable? Or should we fret that when women win, we lose — that soon we’ll have to give up grunting and football games for putting down toilet seats and talking about our “feelings”?

　　男人们是应该欢呼，又一道藩篱倒下了，我们的世界变得更为公平公正了？还是应该感到烦恼，女人赢则意味着我们输——眨眼间我们就得放弃不屑一顾的态度和橄榄球，换成放下马桶坐垫、大谈自身的“感受”？

　　The Democratic National Convention this past week was one long celebration of XX chromosomes and the emancipation of women. A spine-tingling moment came when 102-year-old Geraldine “Jerry” Emmett, born before women could vote in federal elections, announced Arizona’s votes for Hillary Clinton — and then cried.

　　过去这一周的民主党全国大会(Democratic National Convention)，是对XX染色体及妇女解放的悠长庆祝。一个让人激动到全身战栗的时刻是，102岁的杰拉尔丁·“杰里”·埃米特(Geraldine “Jerry” Emmett)宣布亚利桑那州投给希拉里·克林顿(Hillary Clinton)的票数——继而流下了眼泪。她出生的时候，女性尚不能在联邦选举中投票。

　　Yet Democratic strategists also worry, rightly I think, that the giddy enthusiasm for gender progress may turn off men. Already, Donald Trump has a huge lead among white men with no college degree, and that’s the reason the overall polls are close.

　　不过，民主党策略师也担心，这种对性别进步的欢欣鼓舞或许会让男性倒了胃口。我认为这一担心不无道理。唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)已然在没有本科学位的白人男性当中取得大幅领先。正是由于这个原因，两人在民调中的整体支持率不相上下。

　　So let me try to make the case that when women win, we men win, too.

　　因此，请允许我证明，当女性赢的时候，我们男性也会赢。

　　Put aside your feelings about Hillary Clinton: I understand that many Americans distrust her and would welcome a woman in the White House if it were someone else. But whatever one thinks of Clinton, her nomination is a milestone, and a lesson of history is that when women advance, humanity advances.

　　先按下大家对希拉里·克林顿的情绪不表：我明白有不少美国民众不信任她，假如换个女性候选人就会很乐意让女人入主白宫。不过，不管对克林顿怎么看，她获得提名都是一座里程碑，一堂“女性进步便意味着人类进步”的历史课。

　　Grant Miller of Stanford University found that when states, one by one, gave women the right to vote at the local level in the 19th and early 20th centuries, politicians scrambled to find favor with female voters and allocated more funds to public health and child health. The upshot was that child mortality rates dropped sharply and 20,000 children’s lives were saved each year.

　　斯坦福大学(Stanford University)的格兰特·米勒(Grant Miller)发现，各州在19世纪到20世纪初相继给予女性在地方层面的投票权时，政坛人士争相讨好女性选民，将更多的资金分配到公共卫生与儿童健康领域。结果，婴幼儿死亡率大幅下降，每年有两万名孩子的生命得到拯救。

　　Many of those whose lives were saved were boys. Today, some are still alive, elderly men perhaps disgruntled by the cavalcade of women at the podium in Philadelphia. But they should remember that when women gained power at the voting booth, they used it to benefit boys as well as girls.

　　活下来的儿童里面，有许多是男孩。时至今日，其中一些人仍然健在，变成了或许会对费城讲台上络绎不绝的女性演讲者心生不悦的老头。不过，他们应该记住，当女性通过投票站获得权力时，她们使用了这种权力来同时惠及男女。

　　Another area where the shattering of glass ceilings by women seems to have benefited everyone is policing. Amalia Miller of the University of Virginia has found that in police departments that added more female officers, women in the area were more likely to report domestic violence, which prevented escalation.

　　女性打破玻璃天花板似乎让所有人收益的，还有另一个领域：警察部门。弗吉尼亚大学(University of Virginia)的阿马利娅·米勒(Amalia Miller)研究发现，在增添女警员人数的警局里，当地女性举报家庭暴力的几率增加，从而防止了暴力升级。

　　A result was fewer domestic violence killings in those cities, particularly of men (often men who had battered their wives or girlfriends). Thus the forward-thinking decision to add female police officers ended up saving the lives of backward-thinking men who beat women.

　　结果是，这些城市里源于家暴的死亡人数下降了，尤其是男性（往往是生前殴打妻子或女友的男性）。也就是说，增加女警员这个有先见之明的决定，到头来拯救了殴打妇女的后进男性的生命。

　　Esther Duflo, an economist at M.I.T., tells me that discrimination seems to harm not only the direct victims, but all of society. Research suggests that’s partly because the groups that make the best decisions are not those with the highest-I.Q. members, but rather those that are more diverse in gender and in other ways. In one study of 12-member teams of students running businesses, teams that were all male or all female didn’t perform as well as those that were more evenly divided. The optimal mix was 55 percent female.

　　麻省理工学院(MIT)的经济学者埃斯特·迪弗洛(Esther Duflo)告诉我，歧视伤及的似乎不仅是直接受害者，而是全社会。研究显示，其中的部分原因在于，做出最佳决策的并非成员智商最高的群体，而是在性别等维度上更为多元的群体。一项研究针对的是12人的学生团队做生意的情况，结果发现，全男性或全女性阵容的表现均不及更为均衡的团队。最佳配比是总人数的55%为女性。

　　Women may improve decision-making partly because they rein in a male penchant for overconfidence and risk-taking. One study found that men trade stocks 45 percent more than women do, actually reducing their returns by 2.7 percentage points per year.

　　女性也许能改善决策的一部分原因是，她们会收敛男性对过分自信与冒险的偏好。一项研究发现，男性买卖股票的频率高出女性45%，实际上却让他们的收益每年减少了2.7个百分点。

　　Other researchers found that the testosterone level in the saliva of male financial traders predicted profits earned that day, because risk-taking often earns more profits. But when things go bad, the result is a spectacular crash. I’ve noted that Lehman Brothers might have been better off with more female executives, but the optimal arrangement wouldn’t have been Lehman Sisters but rather Lehman Brothers and Sisters.

　　其他一些研究人员发现，男性金融交易员唾液中的睾丸酮水平预示了当天的盈利情况，因为冒险通常会带来更多的利润。但当形势恶化时，结果惨不忍睹。我说过，如果女性高管再多一些，雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)的情况可能会更好一些，不过最理想的安排不是雷曼姐妹，而是雷曼兄弟姐妹。

　　Higher education is another area where women have made huge inroads, despite early hostility from men.

　　高等教育是女性取得进展的另一个领域，尽管早期受到了男性的敌视。

　　“What is all this nonsense about admitting women to Princeton?” asked one Princeton alumnus in 1968. “A good old-fashioned whorehouse would be considerably more efficient, and much, much cheaper.” A forthcoming book on coeducation, “Keep the Damned Women Out,” by Nancy Weiss Malkiel, notes that the first female undergraduates at Princeton were derided as “critters.”

　　“所有这些关于普林斯顿招收女生的胡话是什么意思？”普林斯顿的一名男性校友在1968年问道。“一个不错的老式妓院会有效得多，也会便宜得多得多。”南希·韦斯·马尔基尔(Nancy Weiss Malkiel)即将出版的有关男女同校教育的著作《让该死的女人走开》(Keep the Damned Women Out)指出，普林斯顿的第一批本科女生被嘲笑为“怪物”。

　　Yet empowering women as students and scholars elevated American higher education in ways that benefited almost everyone, and the women quickly proved that they were far from airheads: In 1975, just the third year Princeton officially graduated women, its No. 1 and No. 2 graduates were both female.

　　但赋予女性成为学生和学者的权利这种做法，提升了美国的高等教育，惠及几乎所有人。那些女性很快便证明，她们并不是笨蛋：1975年，也就是普林斯顿正式有女生毕业的第三年，该校毕业生中的第一名和第二名均为女生。

　　Scholars have also found that female-owned businesses (and companies abroad with more women on the boards) were less likely than male-owned businesses to lay off employees during the Great Recession. This hurt short-term profits but may have been worth it to sustain morale and retain talent. Some male chauvinists may have grumbled about female bosses, but those bosses may have been the reason they kept their jobs.

　　一些学者也发现，在大萧条期间，老板是女性的企业（以及董事会中女性成员更多的外国公司）裁员的可能性低于老板是男性的企业。这种做法会损害短期利润，但从保持士气和留住人才方面来说，可能是值得的。一些男性沙文主义者可能会抱怨女老板，但或许正是因为这些女老板，他们才得以保住饭碗。

　　So to those men who worry about being hurt by the shards from one more shattered glass ceiling, I’d say: Not only is this inevitable, not only is it a matter of fairness, but the evidence is also overwhelming that when women gain power and a seat at the table, we men benefit as well. So let’s relax and join the celebration.

　　因此，对那些担心被另一块打破的玻璃天花板的碎片伤到的男同胞，我想说的是：这不仅不可避免，不仅是个公道问题，而且有力的证据表明，当女性获得权力，拥有一席之地时，我们男性也会受益。所以说，大家放轻松，一起庆祝吧。

　　In June, I wrote about an incredible young Afghan woman, Sultana, who lived in the Taliban heartland but secretly taught herself English, science and advanced math — and then was denied a visa to study in the U.S. I’m thrilled to report that Sultana finally obtained a visa and has just arrived in America.

　　今年6月，我写过一篇文章，是关于一个令人难以置信的阿富汗年轻女性的。她叫苏丹娜(Sultana)，生活在阿富汗腹地，但却偷偷自学英语、科学和高等数学，不过在申请来美国留学时被拒签了。现在，我高兴地告诉大家，苏丹娜最终拿到了签证，并且刚刚抵达美国。