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10 July 2009 4:32 PM
All The Ladies Making Money...
Judith Warner begins her latest column with an interesting anecdote:
Ms. Warner and I are in agreement that charging this woman with a crime is absurd. But I am genuinely puzzled by the turn the column takes (emphasis added):Two years ago in June, Bridget Kevane, a professor of Latin American and Latino literature at Montana State University, drove her three kids and two of their friends -- two 12-year-old girls, and three younger kids, age 8, 7 and 3 -- to a mall near their home in Bozeman. She put the 12-year-olds in charge, and told them not to leave the younger kids alone. She ordered that the 3-year-old remain in her stroller. She told them to call her on their cell phone if they needed her.
And then she drove home for some rest.
About an hour later, she was summoned back to the mall by the police, who charged her with endangering the welfare of her children.
The issue I want to take up today, however, is not that of tricky choices, or over- or under-involved parenting, questions that have already been discussed with much gusto elsewhere. What really sent my head spinning after reading Kevane's story was the degree to which it drove home the fact that our country's resentment, and even hatred, of well-educated, apparently affluent women is spiraling out of control. The prosecutor pursued her child endangerment case ultra-zealously because she "said she believed professors are incapable of seeing the real world around them because their 'heads are always in a book,'" Kevane writes. "I just think that even individuals with major educations can commit this offense, and they should not be treated differently because they have more money or education," the prosecutor wrote to Kevane's lawyer.I know a fair number of well-educated women, and affluent women too. As yet, I haven't sensed that they are resented by "the country," whatever that means, and although I concede that they experience society differently than I do, I doubt many would say that hatred of people like them is spiraling out of control. This isn't to say that women don't face problems that men don't. The estimable Megan McArdle is an excellent blogger whose comments section is testament to the fact that being a woman elicits reactions from some folks one just doesn't deal with as a man. But all that is beside the point.
Ms. Warner goes on:
The idea that women with a "major education" think they're better than everyone else, have a great sense of entitlement, feel they deserve special treatment, and are too out of touch with the lives of "normal" women to have a legitimate point of view, is a 21st-century version of the long-held belief that education makes women uppity and leads them to forget their rightful place. It's precisely the kind of thinking that has fueled Sarah Palin's unlikely -- and continued -- ability to pass herself off as the consummately "real" American woman. (And it is what has made it possible for her supporters to discredit other women's criticism of her as elitist cat fighting.) The idea that these women really should "be quiet" comes through loud and clear every time.Admittedly, I don't really know who Ms. Warner is talking about here, but when I think of affluent, intelligent American women known to the general public, the most visible figures who come to mind are Oprah, Michelle Obama, Katie Couric, Meg Whitman, Bianca Trump, Karen Hughes, Condi Rice, Sandra Day O'Connor... that's just off the top of my head, but it doesn't seem to me that these women are hated for being affluent or educated -- indeed the majority of them are quite popular, the kinds of figures magazine editors put on their cover to sell lots of copies.
Am I missing something here? Isn't it affluent women who are basically accepted and emulated in American society? The example that opens this post notwithstanding, isn't it more often women like Britney Spears who are criticized for child neglect -- that is to say, women who are perceived as undereducated and ignorant of middle class child rearing norms -- and women like Paris Hilton who are stereotyped as "dumb" and "slutty" who come in for criticism in America?
Go read that Ruth Bader Ginsberg interview from the NYT this week. Will give exactly the perspective that you're looking for.
Comments to Megan are you referring to?