You might assume the Michigan Gender Equity Team was founded by a woman. You’d be wrong. A man named Tom Wilson of Wyandotte, Mich., is behind the organization, which serves as a clearinghouse for organizations devoted to gender equality.


Tom Wilson Mr. Wilson, a real estate associate at Detroit Edison, says his always-strong sense of justice and his religion, the Baha'i Faith, inspired him to create MGET. A core belief of the Faith is equality between the sexes, which Baha'is believe is one of the prerequisites to world peace and human progress. Inequality between the sexes, they say, retards not only the advancement of women, but also the progress of civilization itself.

Mr. Wilson discovered just how devastating gender inequality can be after hearing about Samantha Reid, 15, of Rockwood, Mich., who died in 1999 after drinking a beverage that some boys had spiked with a date-rape drug.

Around that time, a number of girls in Detroit were dragged into vacant houses and raped. Compelled to do something, Mr. Wilson began investigating what was being done to deter male violence.

“Everyone I talked to was a woman,” he says, “and they were suspicious because I was a man who was interested in this issue. What amazed me was that at least 40 different groups in Michigan were working independently on the gender equality issue. And they didn’t know what the other groups were doing.”

Ah…thought Mr. Wilson -- unity in diversity, another Baha'i belief. His path became clear: Gather these groups under one roof. Thus, the Michigan Gender Equity Team was born. Mr. Wilson also joined a state task force to prevent domestic and sexual violence, and founded the Female Alumni Athletic Boosters of Wyandotte, which helps direct sports scholarships to girls.

For his ongoing, intensive efforts to achieve gender equity in Michigan, Mr. Wilson recently received the Philip A. Hart Award. The honor is bestowed annually by the Michigan Women’s Studies Association to a man who has demonstrated “a unique understanding and support of women’s issues and concerns.”

Mr. Wilson says his wife, Jan, an administrative assistant at the Bacon Memorial District Library and a Baha'i, has been supportive of his crusade for gender equality. So have his daughter and son, both grown.

As a husband and father of a daughter, Mr. Wilson says the biggest and best lesson he has learned is the importance of good communications between men and women

“Women and kids aren’t going to be well served until men adopt women’s style of communicating,” he says. “When women get angry, they try to talk things out. When men get angry, they stop communicating. As I observe and talk with men, I am convinced that a lot of men want to be better people and have a better relationship with women.”