Wednesday, February 04, 2015

TIME & the Glass Ceiling

In the 09 February issue of TIME, editor Nancy Gibbs discussed the lack of women “at the top” (only 5% of Fortune CEOs) but also mentioned that 75% of women polled by REAL SIMPLE indicated no interest in their boss's job, preferring “happiness and a sense of purpose”—neither preference defined by Gibbs—over “fame or money.” TIME writer Rana Foroohar, in an article about the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, wrote that a proven solution for boosting economic growth was putting more women to work but lamented only 17% female participation at Davos. Could she be missing something?

More women- than men-students populate university campuses and are increasingly entering medical and legal professions. Soon if not already, most justice/court-systems will be run by women. Girls outperform boys scholastically K-12 as do females in college except perhaps in math. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (November 2013), 31.9% of physicians are women. According to the American bar Association (July 2014), 34% of practicing attorneys are women, both figures representing enormous expansion in the last 40 years and climbing rapidly.

Foroohar suggested that the government—presumably on all levels—should subsidize child-care, thus freeing women to do their thing and climb the ladder, greatly increasing their income but necessitating political action, something she opined in short supply. In his $4 trillion budget plan, Obama has just included subsidized child-care and mandated birth-leave, mostly by soaking the rich. He said he wanted to replace “mindless austerity”—something the bankrupted Greeks seem about to try, with—“smart investments.” His attempt, predictably, is the socialist model...government even raising the children.

According to the Wall Street Journal (05 February 2014), 69.3% of women worked outside the home while the other 30.7% weren't even looking for work. Is Foroohar missing something here, too? She sells women short. While surely acknowledging the intellectual superiority of women, she insists on a certain victim-hood for them as if with all their smarts they can't get it together. Is income inequality (whatever that is) the fault of intellectually inferior men, who subject women to low wages just because they can?

The women's movement has always insisted upon unisex as norm, an obvious insanity but politically correct, notwithstanding that it equals women with men in every aspect up to and including physical strength but non-unisex-wise embodying the claim that men are not as smart as women. Yet, victim-hood is the scream. In both 2012 and 2013, the Pentagon reported that there were, coincidentally, exactly 26,000 unreported rapes in the military. The figure for 2014 will probably be the same since anything unreported can be...well, anything. But women military types are supposed to handle assault because they're taught how to protect themselves, even when falling-down drunk. Get the picture?

Victim-hood is claimed by brilliant college coeds vis-a-vis rape. College administrations hem and haw when they should be banning coed dorms and enforcing strict “rules of engagement” among equals. Coeds have carried stupidity (hormones over brains) to a new level by getting drunk, drugged and hanging out at bars and frat houses, all avoidable circumstances, then screaming rape. A tipsy University of Kentucky freshman coed allowed a tipsy guy in her dorm-room in January 2013 and something happened. She said rape, got the kit, the whole nine yards. According to him (no witnesses, of course): “He said, she said.” He went free, she committed suicide.

Finally—to get down and dirty chauvinistic—women often sell themselves as shallow, literally. A program on Fox News is called “Outnumbered,” a guy dressed to the nines on a couch with five women, knees forward and no coffee-table between viewer (voyeur) and group. The off-the-shoulder deep cleavage along with the high-thigh and never-uncrossed legs by the women told the story. The guy was there to talk. The ladies, steeped in leftover adolescence, seemed hellbent on showing everything they had. Taking them seriously was a laugh. The same is true in the serious news-programs. The picture accompanying Foroohar's piece included a picture of four CEO-type men—suit and tie—and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg— deep cleavage and bare thigh-to-foot—in the same pose...made her look silly and even disrespectful.

Lesson: Reality trumps whining and facts beat fantasy.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

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