The volume of responses to Harvard President Lawrence Summers' comments last month on the supposed futility of achieving gender equality on his science and mathematics faculty seems to represent a collective exhalation. University campuses are somewhat accustomed to considering questions of gender difference and equality. But in the midst of war, Bush and "Desperate Housewives," and after another election in which feminist organizations focused solely on abortion rights as a rallying cry, Summers' remarks have generated public debate over questions and problems we haven't talked about for quite some time: the glass ceiling, possible genetic differences between men and women and the "second shift" domestic responsibilities of working wives and mothers.
If more powerful American men would make speeches about the (lack of) women in their professions, maybe debates like this one would occur more regularly. Women who stand up to speak about such things are, of course, crazed, agenda-driven feminists. In the Atlantic Monthly Online Feb. 8, Stuart Taylor Jr. wrote a piece called, "Why Feminist Careerists Neutered Larry Summers." Try unpacking that headline - beyond the ridiculous suggestion that feminists are out to castrate the reasonable, articulate men around them, we've got "careerist" used as a slur. Ambitious women are so out-of-line!
This feminist, for one, would like to thank Larry Summers for pushing the national conversation about women and gender out of the academy and into the papers. In France, for example, lively disagreement surrounds PACS, the civil unions utilized primarily by heterosexual couples, and parity, a legal principle enacted in some municipalities requiring 50 percent of the candidates fielded by any political party to be women. In some French cities, female representation in city councils has already approached 50 percent thanks to parité. Now the European Union and Canada are discussing parity policies, despite the logistical and political difficulties of enacting them.
But in the post-post-feminist United States of 2005, we rarely stop to consider the lack of women serving in government, nor do we wonder out loud whether the institutions of marriage and parenthood really do afford women equality, even as our pitiful lack of reliable, affordable, guaranteed childcare programs forces more mothers than fathers to make painful choices about how to split their energy between work and family. Our women's movement, silenced for decades now by anti-feminist rhetoric, maintains a public presence only to fight for our necessary bodily rights. But with abortion remaining a divisive issue, especially during election years, it seems counterproductive for women's organizations to limit their agendas, especially when they claim to represent a "feminist majority."
In a Jan. 22 New York Times essay on President Bush's inaugural address, Orlando Patterson discussed two competing American conceptions of freedom. The liberal conception sees freedom as encompassing rights such as political participation, free speech and minority group protections, while the model of individual, market-driven freedom conceives of liberty as simply the right to go wherever and do whatever one wants on a day-to-day basis, without being bothered by government interference. In other words, liberal freedom focuses on participation in government, while individual freedom emphasizes the man-as-island theory. The American women's movement advocates this second type of freedom, but neglects the pressing need for women to exercise the first by breaking through the glass ceiling in government and the professions. National health care, national childcare, income equality for women - aren't these freedoms that our women's organizations should be talking about and organizing around? Increasing women's political representation would help to achieve these goals.
Summers threw up his hands, indicating there was no hope for women achieving true parity. This Harvard incident has brought one of the central questions of academic feminism to the public eye. To what extent are women fundamentally different, and to what extent are we fundamentally the same? Who knows the answer? But by dislodging abortion even for a moment as the centerpiece of our national discussion about women's rights and participation in politics, Summers did Americans a huge favor. Now it's up to the interested parties -- political organizations, scientists, feminists, women everywhere -- to keep this conversation going. It's an important one.
Dana Goldstein '06 lives in Hegemania.
