Posted on 01/11/2013 2:35:31 AM PST by Kaslin
I suppose I'm a bad woman -- by today's standards that is. For some reason, I take absolutely no pride in the accomplishments of women per se. I am utterly uninspired by first women astronauts or Secretaries of State. It is of no consequence to me what percentage of the United States Senate or House of Representatives shares my chromosomes. I don't wait with gnawing impatience for America to pass the milestone of needing a fellow to fill the post of First Gentleman.
This is not to say that I resent or disparage female accomplishment. I admire excellence wherever it is found, and many women occupy plinths in my personal pantheon, including Margaret Thatcher, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Priscilla Buckley, Jane Austen, Joan Sutherland, Aung San Suu Kyi, George Eliot, Yelena Bonner and Golda Meir.
I just don't have a rooting interest in the decisions of one-half of humanity. These reflections were occasioned by a meeting of the Kirkpatrick Society -- a luncheon group of conservative-leaning women created and managed by the Hoover Institution's Mary Eberstadt. Most women, I suspect, including most conservative women, are not like me. They do feel female solidarity.
It's odd that we are exhorted to feel solidarity with fellow women but not with fellow Americans (that would be unbecoming chauvinism) or with co-religionists (that would be excessively sectarian). Men, of course, may cheer for women but not for their own sex.
I know, I know. Women were discouraged from pursuing careers beyond certain narrow constraints as recently as 40 years ago. But invocations of the bad old days when women could be only nurses or teachers have always struck me as overwrought. Labor-saving devices, a dynamic economy and changing social views permitted women to expand their horizons professionally, but it wasn't an unmixed blessing. It's become harder, for example, to lure really smart women into teaching these days, because they can get higher pay and more prestige in other work. And children are no longer benefitting from the full-time attention of at least one parent. Also, surveys have shown that women are less happy now than they were 35 years ago.
Three cheers for great women in politics. Suzanna Martinez was terrific at the Republican Convention. Nikki Haley seems very solid. But let's face it, most women in politics are liberals, and women voters tend to prefer Democrats.
Karlyn Bowman, a wise demographer and student of American politics, offered the Kirkpatrick Society some insights into why women are not better represented in politics. Surveys of potential candidates have shown that women believe the system is biased against them. They are also more risk averse than men, and more repelled by negative campaigning. In 2001 and in a follow-up study ten years later, women reported that they were more concerned about the potential loss of privacy and family time than men. Doesn't sound like the patriarchy at work, does it?
Bowman cited another study that examined this apparently widespread belief that women have it worse in politics than men. Jody Newman assembled a huge database on candidates for state legislatures, governorships, and House and Senate races. She concluded that at every level, women are just as likely as men to be victorious.
There's a footnote though. Democratic women candidates do better than Republican women at attracting the votes of women. Among 24 Senate and gubernatorial races in the 1980s that featured a woman, only one Republican woman received a larger share of the women's vote than her opponent. Since 2000, in only four races did Republican women get more female than male support (and two of those were for Maine moderate Olympia Snowe).
Still, Bowman reminds us that 2012 ought not to become calcified as the "free contraceptives" year. She's found no evidence that birth control was a big factor in the race. Nor was it a victory for the "Julia" narrative -- the Obama campaign cartoon that depicted a prototypical American woman being cared for cradle to grave by the state. Mitt Romney won white women by 56 to 42 percent. He won 53 percent of married women. It was the lopsided majorities of black (96), Asian (66), and Hispanic (87) women who gave the election to Obama.
I believe that women -- and the country -- would be far better off if all Americans married before having children, stayed married wherever possible, and if at least one parent held down a job. Then again, I'm a bad woman.
A seldom-mentioned factor in the precipitous decline of public education.
It would be very interesting if someone were to compile statistics on the average IQ of public school teachers over the last 50 years.
>> It would be very interesting if someone were to compile statistics on the average IQ of public school teachers over the last 50 years.
It’s become a union job. Adjust your expectations accordingly.
True. However, they are to some extent independent variables.
For a little more than the first half of the last century, the most “intellectual” job most women could aspire to was being a teacher. Therefore, a significantly high percentage of high IQ women went into this field, greatly increasing the average IQ of the group.
I suspect it has gone way down in recent decades.
I’m a bad woman too. Or a dinosaur.
I believe women and men are inherently different and have different roles to play in life. Doesn’t mean there won’t be outliers and a qualified person should be considered for the job regardless of sex.
That being said, having spent most of my adult life around the military, one of the worst things allowed is a pregnant soldier in a deployable unit.
Another great article - count me in among the “bad” women.
“I believe that women — and the country — would be far better off if all Americans married before having children, stayed married wherever possible, and if at least one parent held down a job.”
The dwindling number of women who live by this creed are the envy of, and enemy of, women who will never have the chance to marry or breed. The liberal women who used to scoff at those ideas now host birthday parties for pets, cursing their miserable fate without tax deductions for their professional incomes, while listening to the jabbering of the neighbors’ children in foreign tongues.
To Hell with them; they “won”.
Having played Trivial Pursuit with some public school teachers, there is something very disturbing about people pulling down $80K+ (for 180 6.5 hour days) asking if Japan is an island or Jewish people speak “Jewish”.
Here in NJ we have a whole mess of “education” graduates, with no skills, that were shut out of those cushy jobs by the established, tenured class refusing to grant any concessions that would have freed up the funds to hire them. We’ve laid off thousands of teachers over the last few years, so class sizes swell, the costs spiral upwards (teachers are in no rush to retire, so their union contracts’ costs are through the roof), and companies and their employees are fleeing NJ to escape the marginalized Marxist dump.
You just made me spill my coffee
I must be a bad woman, too. I don’t feel “solidarity” with other women. Can’t stand chick flicks, women’s magazines, welfare parasites, etc.
I can’t tell you the number of times I have been ridiculed by female co-workers for wearing make-up, feminine clothing, and being a Mom to 4 children.
One woman told me, in a pre-meeting chat, that because I waited until marriage for sex, that I was abnormal and crazy.
Funny thing is, the men I work with all love me (not in a romantic sense), respect my opinion and have never insulted my appearance or morals.
I really don’t get the current brand of femi-nazi’s...they are their own worst enemies.
Hahahahaha! I guess I’m a bad woman for agreeing with the article and maybe for really liking that joke!
My workdays are often spent around career women. Incidental conversations often focus on our respective lives or activities. When hearing about my throwback lifestyle (semi-agrarian in an 1880 farmstead) they always ask, “What does your wife do/think of all that?” When I tell them she tells me at least once a week that she is happy, you can almost always see a flash of jealousy before they respond with a comment. I pity these women that insist on being in charge of their lives - the lives constructed for them by social engineers.
I get funny looks when I still practice chivalry and teach all my sons to do so. I just remember I don’t do it for them or the attention, I do it because it is right and my father and mother taught me right.
I believe that women — and the country — would be far better off if all Americans married before having children, stayed married wherever possible, and if at least one parent held down a job. Then again, I’m a bad woman.
&&&
Ditto from this woman!
....I still practice chivalry and teach all my sons to do so.
&&
And this woman thanks you. God bless you.
In raising my 4 GenX sons, I taught them to be respectful of women (and of people in general). I began having them open doors for me once they were big enough to do so.
I always found it very sad that the young women they knew before they were married found their chivalry charming but so very unusual.
The rampant disrespect and outright disdain shown toward men today is most disturbing.
They are communists first and women second. You are not part of the movement so you are the enemy.
Pray for America
Like you, I’ve always gotten along very well with men. I appreciate chivalry and old-fashioned manners from them. I’m a Southern woman, and there is still a good amount of that to be found here...for now, at least.
I’ve never understood the whole “sisterhood” thing. I have conservative female friends who get excited when a woman achieves something simply because she IS a woman, especially if it’s in a traditionally male field. That makes no sense to me. The two genders are different, but different does not mean unequal. I have never felt like a victim because I’m a woman.
I also know that a majority of women voted for Obama, so I’d be lying if I said I have a lot of respect for my own gender.
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