It looks to me like Dowd has let ideology get the better of her rational faculties, which is a polite way of saying that she has her head so far up her ass that she has to open her mouth to see.
First of all, she fails to demonstrate that the problem she is lamenting exists at all. She cites figures like these:
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist, conducted a survey and found that 55 percent of 35-year-old career women are childless.
Between a third and half of 40-year-old professional women are childless. The number of childless women age 40 to 44 has doubled in the past 20 years.
And among corporate executives who earn $100,000 or more, she says, 49 percent of the women did not have children, compared with only 10 percent of the men.
From this she concludes:
Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women.
The data obviously do not support this conclusion. There is no effort to determine how many of these women are chlidless and/or mateless by choice. There is no effort to determine how many are mateless because they have set their standards so high that nobody they meet measures up. There is no effort to determine how many waited so long to decide that they wanted a family that when they made the decision, most of the family-oriented males of suitable age had already started raising families.
There is no way these data can be used to support Dowd's conclusions. But even assuming that men are shying away from highly successful career-track women, what would that prove? Maybe a lot of men feel that kindness, gentleness, empathy, and just plain niceness - none of which are qualities that promote success in the career marketplace - are more important qualities in a mate than money and professional accomplishment. Is that so stupid? It seems smarter to me than the common female attitude of desperately trying to ensnare the dominant male, and then complaining that the dominant male, once ensnared, turns out to be an asshole. As they say in the sixth grade, "like, DUH". Where's the surprise? The winner of a rat race is usually a rat. I'm glad there are successful rats out there, but I'm not sure I want one in my house.
I think Dowd needs to go back to basic biology and ask herself why men are programmed to seek dominance. Let's face it, biology has a major role here. Women are programmed to seek out and mate with dominant males. Males are programmed to seek dominance because that is what gets them laid. If women want to change men, maybe they should stop harping and vote with their feet. If men found out that women were rejecting the sharp-edged aggressive dominant types and selecting the gentle sensitive new age guys instead, you would see a very quick change in male behaviour.
I thought this was the funniest part of the whole thing:
On a "60 Minutes" report on the book Sunday, Lesley Stahl talked to two young women who go to Harvard Business School. They agreed that while they are the perfect age to start families, it was not so easy to find the right mates.
When has it ever been easy to find the right mate? Do these women think that because they go to Harvard they are entitled to have any mate they want?
Pretty ridiculous. |
