…Mrs. Clinton is still, well, a woman and more than a few citizens (myself included) think having a woman president long overdue.
Why overdue? Because, frankly, I have three daughters among my five children and it would be salutary if they would be less subject than my wife’s generation to arbitrary gender-based impediments as they reach toward their aspirations. For over 30 years now, I’ve watched highly talented women law graduates face the same overly-rigid law firm and corporate structure that somehow pretends not to know that many (not all) women have a desire to both practice their chosen profession and parent. I’m all for the free market, but the market has been treating families as if they were a free good, and just as “the tragedy of the commons” despoils the commonly held air and water, corporate elevation of its bottom line over family well-being short-changes the family, and us all.
Men, of course, too often silently shrug this off as if it were none of their business, perhaps even thinking again silently (since openly would yield cold-stare or litigation) that gender-based distinctions are not arbitrary impediments at all but simply the rational economic calculus applied. Of course, we men know it’s darn hard to do parenting and professional work at the same time, which is, of course, why most of us don’t attempt it. So it came as no surprise when, lo and behold, a recent Canadian study by Jean E. Wallace and Marisa C. Young proved the obvious that women with children are less “productive” than women without children.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/convictions/archive/2008/04/08/not-just-women-s-work.asp
Tags: daughters, gender, hillary, wallace and young, woman president
