Am I the only one who feels that last week's news events prove that the women's movement has failed?
First, the first woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket alienates everybody who the first woman with a real chance to be president hasn't alienated already. Then we find out that there are prostitutes who are paid $5,500 an hour, and the consolation prize for earning a Harvard law degree is that you get to stand by your husband's side when he resigns from public office in disgrace. Even worse, because Silda Wall Spitzer is accomplished and beautiful, the whole scene serves as a grim reminder that even amazing women become sexually disposable after a certain age.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, March 19, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 17 Editorial pages Desk 2 inches; 76 words Type of Material: Correction
Feminism: An Op-Ed article Tuesday on feminism stated that women who are mothers are paid 10 cents less for the same work done by women who are not mothers, and cited Anne Alstott of Yale Law School as the source. The research was not limited to mothers "doing the same work," and Alstott in her book, "No Exit," attributed the research to Jane Waldogel of Columbia University and others. Also, the figure is 10 percentage points.
Is this the world that feminism hath wrought?
If Hillary Clinton does manage to become our first female president, I say, so what? Look at the place she'd be leading.
Walk onto the trading floor of any of the hedge funds that crowd the Lever House building in Manhattan and hardly a female face will be seen who is not a secretary or an assistant. Enter the software shops of Silicon Valley, go to the rows of terminals where geeky computer programmers design cleverly crafted new media. They are mostly smart boys, playing with their toys. Everything that keeps our economy running is run by men. Yes, of course there are women around -- no one needs to remind me that Meg Whitman was the powerhouse behind EBay -- but these are still treehouse atmospheres, boys' clubs.
For all the dynamic, visible women who are chief executives -- like the CEOs of Xerox and Kraft -- only 16% of corporate officers and 17% of large law firm partners are female. After all this time. Meanwhile, women still make 80 cents on the man's dollar. And, for whatever reason, women who do the exact same work but are also mothers make 10 cents less, according to Anne Alstott of Yale Law School. It seems that the only industries in which women earn more than their male counterparts are pornography and prostitution.
And it's 2008.
My Sunday night summer viewing, which once consisted of the slumber-party gab of "Sex and the City," is now the lad-happy cool of "Entourage." I really do love that show, but most of the women -- girls -- in it cannot even kindly be called sex objects: They are simply sockets. And this portrayal of prop whore-things is OK by everybody; it seems to go largely unnoticed and uncommented on because life is like this now. While the economy recedes for most people, in the unreal world of high finance and Hollywood, the people who set the tone for society -- which is to say, the rich -- set one of male fantasy.
