This just in, courtesy of Lorrie Moore: Girls, apparently, have enough role models! She writes in today’s New York Times:
They have their teachers and many other professionals to admire, as well as a fierce 67-year-old babe as speaker of the House, several governors and a Supreme Court justice. The landscape is not bare.
Ms. Moore goes on to add that:
Boys are faring worse — and the time for symbols and leaders they can connect with beneficially should be now and should be theirs. Hillary Clinton’s gender does not rescue society from that — instead she serves as a kind of nostalgia for a time when it might have. Only her policies are what matter now, and here — despite some squabbling and bad advice that has caused her to “go negative” — the Democrats largely agree. But inspiration is essential for living, and Mr. Obama holds the greater fascination for our children.
Excuse me? While it may be true that the tide has turned in the world of education — girls perform better than boys, girls graduating at higher rates, girls going to college at higher rates — that tide has not trickled all the way up the ladder. There is still a glass ceiling in politics, my friends. Women make up the majority of the population in the United States, but we only have one female justice on the Supreme Court and the majority of our Congress is male. I could ramble on and on about the fact that men are still paid more than women for similar jobs; that there are very few women promoted to the top of the Fortune 500 companies; that our country’s horrible family policies (no subsidized child care, no requirement for paid maternity — or paternity — leave) penalize women; and so on and so forth. Morgan’s argument just does not hold water with me.
Finally, if we’re holding Hillary responsible for her politics, then the same should be true for Obama, even though he has apparently captured the imagination of our collective children. Let’s not apply the double standard here as well.
One of my thousand or so reasons not to get a PhD has to do with how women are treated in academia (perhaps it’s biology specific). While women are treated better than they have been in the past…that doesn’t really mean much. *sigh*
I want to be a bed tester and a book critic (only for books I want to read though). Or perhaps a nurse…women do well in that field. *sigh*