Love this column. All of it. Mythbusting stereotypes on the gender front is important. I like the last line, too:
I don’t know how many women “should” be in top jobs, but it’s possible that there are about as many there as want to be there. Maybe our granddaughters will make different choices. In the meantime, maybe we should be congratulating ourselves for our success.
Why old school feminists won’t celebrate still baffles me–but perhaps that’s because they’d lose their Status of Women jobs. Some women have made a career out of complaining. Too bad.
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Rebecca adds: Ah, but “old-school feminists” are wedded to belief that gender is a social construct. If you deny the possibility that, at the level of large populations, men and women have different aptitudes, goals, interests and predispositions, then there can be no reason BUT sexism for them to have different career paths; even if we could prove to the Gloria Steinems and Andrea Dworkins that women are represented at the CEO level at about the same proportion that they want to be at that level, why that would simply prove that women are brainwashed by a patriarchal society to want different things. I’m afraid a lot of ideologues have made the small but important hop across falsifiability; there is nothing we could show them that would shake their confidence in their assumptions. Which, per Karl Popper, puts them squarely into dogma and superstition, rather than rationality, but that’s another post …
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Brigitte doesn’t know a lot about gender theory, but would like to say that as an incorrigible heteronormative kinda gal, I like it when men and women do different things just because they are, you know, different. I wouldn’t want men and women to be just the same. That would be boring and horrible.
by 
Well that hits the nail squarely on the head!
I am one of the generation of women who realized that although women are perfectly *capable* of having higher education and high-powered careers, and although we have the right to pursue these if we so choose, we should not feel obligated to. Just because we *can* doesn’t mean we have to!
I have a PhD. Years ago when my husband and I decided to start a family, I earned more than he did – on the order of 150% of his salary. My boss tried all sorts of things to encourage me to not leave, creating inventive part-time schedules and work-at-home possibilities to try to entice me to remain as a salaried employee. Attractive as all the scenarios sounded, I knew I wanted to be with my kids and actually be the one to raise them (versus a nanny or day-care). Thus, I chose to stay at home with my children. You know what? A multitude of hard-core feminists gave me grief about my choice to stay home. So much for the “pro-choice” falsehood, huh?
At any rate, friends have asked us for years how we could have made that sacrifice – but we don’t see it as a sacrifice. We are and always have been very happy and secure about the choice we made. And with all of the working female friends we have, high-powered, high-salaried, professional and career-oriented that they are – not one of our female friends who are mothers works because they love the job that they have. Although I am certain there are some who are out there, I would suggest that the majority of working mothers are on-the-job because they need the income (or, in the case of the majority of working women we know, because they want to afford the lifestyle their family has adopted).
So kudos to Ms Wente for putting it into print. Yes, 50% of the population is female. But the massive push to have every job type, school faculty or political party be represented by (at least) 50% women, is NOT representative of the proportion of the population who actually *wants* to be in those positions. Ms Wente let the cat out of the bag. The secret’s out. Some of us educated, employable and capable women really and truly would *rather* stay at home with our children.
Despite what the feminists told us we *should* aspire to…..
Saman Maydani, a woman spending time in Zambia, wrote on July 14, “I don’t really have this equality thing entirely figured out—I don’t know what ‘equality’ between men and women really looks like. Do men and women have to dress the same to be considered ‘equal’?” See http://glimpse.org/stories/view/ethical-dilemma-should-women-wear-pants/
I don’t think equality requires men and women be identical or interchangeable. But it does require they have the option, if they so choose. Women need to be able to devote themselves to a career and not have a family, or to work full-time if they do. Men need the option to stay at home and raise the children. It doesn’t matter that very few will make the decision to take up these options – for the sake of equality, they must be available.