The Mismeasure of Woman

[joeycola]

I think stalled is the correct term.





http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/opinion/24lipman.html


October 24, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
The Mismeasure of Woman
By JOANNE LIPMAN

FINALLY! I hear we’re all living in a women’s world now.

For the first time, women make up half the work force. The Shriver Report, out just last week, found that mothers are the major breadwinners in 40 percent of families. We have a female speaker of the House and a female secretary of state. Thirty-two women have served as governors. Thirty-eight have served as senators. Four out of eight Ivy League presidents are women.

Great news, right? Well, not exactly. In fact, it couldn’t be more spectacularly misleading.

The truth is, women haven’t come nearly as far as we would have predicted 25 years ago. Somewhere along the line, especially in recent years, progress for women has stalled. And attitudes have taken a giant leap backward.

I never expected that we would be in this predicament. My generation of professional women took equality for granted. When I was in college in the 1980s, many of us looked derisively at the women’s liberation movement. That was something that strident, humorless, shrill women had done before us.

We were sure we were beyond it. We were post-feminists. After all, we lived equally with men. We felt that when we took our place in society, issues of gender — and race too — wouldn’t be a factor.

[cap]

1. the top jobs for women are still in the pink ghetto

just saw on CNN: Nurse, retail clerk, secretary.

It's just a sign of how far men's wages have fallen that women look so good.

[MH1]

2. 3 out of 5 software developers on my team are women

I am surprised that doesn't hold true more broadly. I guess girls are still being discouraged from pursuing programming as a career, but there is no good reason for that.

[fasttense]

3. The Shriver Report is over-hyped nonsense.

She's a useless tool of the Gubernator.

[Berry Cool]

4. This woman is excatly from my generation and she makes excellent points

but she loses me utterly when, in the name of that damn "balance" concept again, she implies Keith Olbermann is a sexist because he criticized Michelle Malkin's looks.

First, anyone who knows Olbermann's reputation in the workplace knows he's not a sexist. Second, he makes fun of the looks of EVERYBODY on the right--and only occasionally catches himself and decides it's more important to criticize what they ARE.

She also runs out of gas a bit at the end, because she sort of implies the old idea that women's strength comes from "acting like a girl" and caring more about life balance than men and so on. No, part of the problem right now is that ONLY women are expected to care about life balance. We're leaning over too far assuming that all women are still going to bear the primary burden of child and elder care while at the same time holding onto a job.

At the same time, our society has grown more unashamedly open about sex, which wouldn't be a bad thing except that it's gotten to the point that sex is inserted into places in public life where it never used to be, and where it doesn't even belong--and when it is, it's usually a man's version of sexuality: porn magazines, DVDs, strip clubs, pole dancing, men's medications for erectile dysfunction, women's body parts, all talked about and joked about now regularly in public. The climate of discussion has essentially created an environment in which it's "OK" to evaluate all women as sex objects again. She touches on that only briefly with the reference to discussions of Hillary Clinton's "cankles" (I'm surprised she doesn't rip Olbermann again for what he said about her, but perhaps this one's not a PUMA). Another example: I see sexist comments on DU every day, from men with supposedly progressive ideas about women.

I think the recent Google event in Taiwan, in which engineers and developers were treated to lap dances by scantily clad "Hack Girls," was like Exhibit A of what we've become. A gigantic cutting-edge company...turns out to be a gigantic cutting-edge company so long as you are a man, because most women aren't into getting a lap dance from a go-go girl. And I saw some blogs on which women developers defended this behavior, because, well, it's all about sexual liberation, it doesn't bother them to have to sit back and be spectators, right? What a bunch of "Aunt Thomasinas" they've become--and they don't even know it. Possibly because they are younger than me and don't even remember what old-fashioned "women's lib" looked like. They grew up in this new "Mad Men" throwback world, so they just shrug their shoulders at it. Or they defend it, lest they look like sexual prudes. NOBODY wants to be considered a prude!!

Every time I look at this stuff, I think "No, we haven't come a long way. At all."

[CitizenPatriot]

5. so well put

thank you!!!

[lupinella]

6. Brava!

Very accurate.

[Stargazer09]

8. Exactly!

I love the way you put my feelings into your words. :patriot:

[pansypoo53219]

7. we need to say no to

heels. no whore shoes.