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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (4964)	11/6/2005 2:17:18 PM
From: Suma	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541990

Golly and to think what it took for us to be able to VOTE.. AND when I went to college the job opportunities mentioned were: Librarian,teacher,social worker, nurse or secretary. NEVER did I hear the titles doctor,lawyer or the other largely male dominated professions. In fact my uncle told my Father that he was wasting his money on me as all that women did was to get married anyway... I tried to convince them that a MRS was worth the effort. If women think of themselves as liberated in this society it IS in comparison to what existed previously or in my life time however, until we see more women in government, taking leading roles in policy making that determine their fate... such as the abortion issue which is surely going to come up in the Supreme Court for review... we are still second class citizens. Of course this is only my opinion and from my experience I should think we are almost there....

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (4964)	11/7/2005 1:40:22 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541990

When did these four other women get nominated to the supreme court? ... ...George W Bush is the 43 President of the United States. How many before him were women. Neither of those things really makes an argument against " The bad news is that the Feminist Movement never realized that the mission had been mostly accomplished. The women who want to become professionals--or do anything for that matter--can do it--including becoming wives and mothers if they choose. The war is won, but the Feminist Movement continues to battle on, oblivious to that fact" Obviously during most of those 42 previous presidencies the feminist movement was far from accomplishing its mission. A woman could get elected president now. As for the supreme court there are currently two women on it (until O'Connor's retirement becomes effective). And yes that isn't 50/50, but lack of 50/50 in a particular area is not evidence of strong discrimination either in general or in that area, esp. when you are talking about a group as small as the US Supreme Court. Even if women overall had clearly superior ability than men (and idea that I, like most people, would not agree with) there would still be areas, associated with prestige or high ability, where men would be over-represented, even in the absence of any severe or systematic prejudice in their favor. On top of all of that Karen said mostly accomplished. Not 100% completely accomplished in every detail. I had read somewhere, the President of Harvard University questioning whether for some innate reasons women had to prove they could make it in the study of science. 1 - Even if true that would be a sign that one person in a position of authority was sexist, not that a pervasive structure of sexist discrimination is keeping women down. There will always be prejudiced people. Eliminating prejudice entirely is not a realistic goal, and any serious attempt to root out every last drop of prejudice is more likely to move us toward totalitarianism then it is to eliminate prejudice. 2 - Your statement is a distortion of what actually occurred. Larry Summers mentioned possible reasons why women were unrepresented in the study of science. Simplifying the possibilities they boil down to inclination, ability, and discrimination. (Or of course it could be some combination). Summers didn't say it specifically was ability, and even the possibility wasn't presented as a possibility than women are intellectually inferior but that they might have differing abilities. They might be better in some areas or fields and worse in others. Or they might display less variability in intelligence which would statistically result in less at the elite top, and also in less total morons (but women would be excluded from neither group, they would include both geniuses and idiots, just lower percentages of each then men). Either one of these things might be true, or perhaps neither is. Either way raising the question is not some plot to keep woman down. It also isn't evidence of prejudice and sexism. Even if Summers didn't just raise this idea as a possibility, but had actively endorsed it, he wouldn't be saying women have less intellectual ability. And even had he said women had less intellectual ability (which he did not) he wouldn't be saying that "for some innate reasons women had to prove they could make it in the study of science." Tim