If you look at it from a historical and global perspective, a lot of this other stuff (active discrimination, different socialization, social prejudices and expectations) is a derivative of the disproportionately larger responsibility that women have had for bearing and raising children. What is at the root of the social/political/economic marginalization of women? If we look at the millenia of global history, there are only two things I can think of as root causes - 1) greater physical strength of men combined with the use of violence to achieve power and access to resources through battles and raping and pillaging, and 2) greater responsibility of women towards bearing and raising children, combined with the incompatibility of this work with gaining access to public power and resources.

It is only recently that things are changing so that women can control their fertility and combine having children with gaining access to public power and resources (it might still be difficult, but at least it is not impossible). Also, physical strength is not as linked to power and resources as before.

To the extent that women bear disproportionate responsibility for childcare/housework, to that extent they will be marginalized in social/economic terms. There are always individual exceptions you can point to, but I am talking about statistical distributions.

Many of the people who don’t “get” LH seem to think in terms of individual dots instead of statistical distributions. The idea is not to make each and every woman into a president or CEO, but to have equal representation at every level of the social heirarchy. The reason why women are disproportionately at the bottom levels of the social/economic system is because of their disproportionate share of childcare/housework responsibilities that disproportionately keep them out of the upper levels where public power and decision making resides.

“Indeed, if you talk to life skills or professional coaches they would probably tell you that what holds women back isn’t just time spent away from work — it’s their emphasis on things like being part of the team and not claiming and demanding credit, not networking, not being willing to take professional risks, and so on. I am guilty of a lot of this, and so are many men, but probably not proportionately as many. ”

All of this, to the extent it is true, is linked to the relatively lowly position of women in the workplace, lack of role models, lack of a sense of entitlement that comes with seeing people like yourself in positions of power. You can talk to life skills coaches who propose band-aid treatment of surface symptoms or you can work towards changing the roots of the system as LH is suggesting.

Furthermore, I know that LH is a professor so I am doubtful that she has a firm grasp of other types of employment, but after all these years it dawned on me, as it should have a long time ago, that devoting time to one’s job often does not lead to the type of advancement that LH apparently yearns for women to obtain. Indeed, if you talk to life skills or professional coaches they would probably tell you that what holds women back isn’t just time spent away from work — it’s their emphasis on things like being part of the team and not claiming and demanding credit, not networking, not being willing to take professional risks, and so on. I am guilty of a lot of this, and so are many men, but probably not proportionately as many.

As much as I believe that LH is making a few valid points, I do see that she is starting from a point that accepts that it’s natural to box women (and men) into a view of success and power that is itself often inimical to social advancement. I do not see women who succeed in those terms wanting to change them so as to make their own success seem less important. Carly Fiorina is Exhibit A of this type of LH icon. Carly was often quoted as saying that she saw no impediment to female success. I don’t think more Carly’s are going to make my duaghters’ lives better than mine is.

So are you the same as Creative Destruction? If so, when you comment on other blogs, do you submit two comments, one under each identity? Why? It just makes it look as if more people were saying the same thing? What am I missing here?

Creative Destruction is not an personal identity. Both CD and Alas are multi-author blogs. If you look carefully you’ll see that the article is under the same by-line on both - ‘Ampersand’.

Why two blogs? Different focus. Alas is a feminist blog. CD aims to bring authors with widely disparate viewpoints together. Both blogs aim for constructive and courteous argumention. Being all human, we don’t always succeed in either place.

Amp, I don’t know why you’re so down on this particular cartoon’s drawing. To me, the only weakness in it is that the man and woman don’t age, though the child does.

Unless you’re of the “feminists who don’t share my opinion on porn aren’t real feminists” camp of analysis - which I trust you’re not - the comparison to Jewish Hitler fans fails because there is no legitimate disagreement among Jews of what to think about Hitler.

This could be taken as a snarky, backhanded way of me saying that I think Samantha IS in that camp. That’s not what I meant, at all, and I hope nobody took it that way.

I apologize to Sam for my poor writing, and for the unintended snarky tone of my post.

The idea that “elite” upper class feminists need to be judgmental and critical towards women who do not follow Hirshman’s ordained path, which of course Hirshman herself did not follow, is one I simply can’t accept, even if she makes some valid points about power and economic vulnerability.

You know, I’m really tired of ideas of this sort getting trotted out routinely. I don’t know Italy, but yes, Spain does have a patriarchal ideology……and so does the US, and the UK and all those other English-speaking societies. As I’ve said dozens of times by now, that ideology might be different in some aspects, but it’s not somehow “worse” (neither is it “better,” but that’s for a different discussion).

I’m tired of people talking about my culture in ways that come from what they’ve heard or they assume or, hey, “everybody *knows* it’s true.” Yeah, just like all those other things that “everbody” knows are true, but are actually complete myths, such as the idea that in the Middle Ages, most people thought the world was flat.

Just look at what’s going on regarding women’s rights and issues of sexuality in the US today and tell me that you haven’t got a problem with an extremely repressive patriarchal culture. I confess I haven’t actually done a point-by-point comparison with Spain, but my guess is that most women are currently in a somewhat better position there than in most parts of the US regarding reproductive rights & sexual freedom.

Also, it’s not an isolated incident relating only to this thread but a woman-scapegoating tactic of Katha’s on pornography, and only on said subject so far as I can tell, I’d like to see go the way of the dodo.

http://www.centerfornewwords.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=46

That we know of. There are some non-white folks who very much enjoy and defend white-supremacist literature. The problem with this “it’s all a matter of opinion” argument is that you’ll have to give the same weight to the Flanagans and Hoff Summers that you do to Freidan and Steinem. Just because some of the oppressed class like their oppression doesn’t mean that it is not oppression.

My point was not that what Steinem said was wrong (although I disagree with it). It was that Hirshman was wrong to characterize her as wishy washy and uncritical, as a kind of feminist smily face (in distinction to Friedan, whom Hirshman prefers).

I think that Brownmiller pointed out, in In Our Time, that this sort of mistake - specifically about Steinem being a softy, and Friedan being more militant and harsh - is pretty commonplace. This seems to have more to do with stereotypes about Steinem’s and Friedan’s looks than with anything either of them say or do.