Of all the things about Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate, that bother me, her identification as a “feminist” is not one of them.

Yes, I realize she is not a feminist in any authentically enlightened sense of the term and her feminism doesn’t make conservatives flinch even a little bit.

But I’m so tired of “feminism” being a dirty word, that I don’t mind a little misappropriation.  It’s just too much fun to see Pat Buchanan defending McCain’s choice on MSNBC Friday night by gleefully shouting, “But she’s a feminist!”

On a serious note, however, I agree with Tanya Melich, writing for Women’s Media Center, that the choice of Palin is actually a continuation of the Republican backlash against women.

Melich admits that, at Friday’s announcement, “Palin was energetic, warm and reminded me of all those earnest young women we feminists have been recruiting into the women’s political movement since the early l970s.”

But she sees McCain’s choice of her as simply a political “disguise”:

McCain hopes that by picking a woman he can show he’s open to doing things differently, but his selection is window dressing and insulting to anyone who knows that he opposes equal pay for equal work legislation and opposes a woman’s right to choose.  And this is just part of the list of issues of concern to women that he doesn’t champion.

(more…)

First, it’s from the Guardian — so we have several British men we’ve never heard of. But, come on, George Michael in the Top 40? And the only reason you provide is that “he’s been writing songs that women love from 25 years.” I know he’s bigger over there on the island, but stop it. Just stop it.

For every inspired choice — such as Carl Djerassi, the “father of the pill,” at number 2 — you have two depressingly shallow ones — shoe designer Manolo Blahnik at 23 and botox-creator Alastair Carruthers at 49.

But nothing puzzles me more than number 4: Bill Clinton. Now, I’m one who thinks you should be impeached for making up intelligence rather than dalliances in the White House hallway, but that’s number 4, folks, as in only three people ahead of the guy who is best known for sleeping around on the country and his wife.

via Bill Crider

The July 21 issue of The Economist features an article titled: “Women in Business: The Conundrum of the Glass Ceiling.” I don’t have a print copy at hand, and unfortunately the full article is available online only to subscribers, so I can’t comment directly. But I will point you to Dara Purvis’ take on it all.

Purvis, a columnist for RawStory.com, looks at the “Women in Business” report alongside celebrity culture stories that have garnered plenty of recent attention: Jude Law’s infidelities and the break-up of Brad and Jen.

This may be a superficial form of recognizing real-world examples, but in a way I feel that the sexist assumptions reflected in the more innocuous world of celebrity relationships more overtly reflects the much more powerful, yet insidious, anti-feminist mind-set operating in the corporate world. It is much more accepted, and thus much easier, to say “well Jennifer Aniston should have spent a year without making a film and had a baby, if she really wanted to save her marriage,” than to say “well we can’t put women on a corporate board, because then how will they be able to make a home-cooked meal for their husbands every night?”

I think that is one of the rarely-stated, yet most damaging, gender stereotypes in effect in America today. And it definitely cuts both ways — men who choose to be stay-at-home fathers, or even stay-at-home husbands, are seen to be lesser in status, even less manly, than their working counterparts. The charge is often leveled at feminists that they don’t want women to stay at home, that they think any woman who chooses not to pursue a profession is somehow less than a woman with a professional career. I don’t think this charge is true of the feminist movement — the whole point of feminism is to allow women free choice, not to simply push them into a different life path than before — and furthermore, I think the accusation muddles the real issue. The only “problem” feminists such as myself have with the idea of “women’s work” at home is that it is labeled, and continues to be considered, the exclusive province of females. Being a stay-at-home parent is just as much of a full-time job as being the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. But somehow Americans still have in their heads, even if they claim to accept a CEO of either gender, that “stay-at-home parent” equals a female.

And that, perhaps, may be one of the hardest stereotypes to overcome before we can refer to the days when a Glass Ceiling Commission was necessary as the equivalent of living in the Dark Ages.

Read the rest here.

An analysis of two midwestern U.S. newspapers found that men appeared more frequently than women — by a whopping ratio of 4-to-1 — in news stories — and by a ratio of 2-to-1 in photographs.

The study, “Representation of Women in News and Photos: Comparing Content to Perceptions,” was recently published the Journal of Communication.

“If newspapers serve as the record of the day, yet under-represent women, then they unwittingly contribute to public consent of masculine cultural,” lead author Maria Len-Rios, an assistant professor of advertising at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism, said in a news release.

“Appearing in the newspaper is deemed special and noteworthy, and presence in the news reinforces one’s status. If women do not appear as frequently as men in newspapers, then they are excluded from an important cultural symbol of power,” she added.

Three weeks worth of articles from February 1998 to March 1999 were analyzed from a medium-sized newspaper and a larger-sized newspaper. The study examined the actual news content and compared it with the perceptions of newsroom staff and newspaper readers “to further explore the concept of masculine cultural hegemony.” Some details from the release:

Of the 4,851 individuals mentioned in one newspaper’s stories, 79 percent were men, compared to 18 percent women. The other paper had similar numbers, with 75 percent of its news stories mentioning men and 21 percent mentioning women. In photographs, the first paper showed men 67 percent of the time and women 30 percent of the time. In the other newspaper, men appeared in photographs 68 percent of the time, and women appeared 27 percent of the time.

When women did appear in the newspaper, the study found that they were more likely to appear in the entertainment or lifestyle sections of the newspaper, which are stereotypically female sections. Women were less likely to appear on the sports or business pages, but more likely to appear in local or metro sections. Newspaper staffs generally agreed that their paper did a poor job of covering women in all sections except entertainment and travel.

Len-Rios also found that female news staff members are more likely to notice discrepancies in coverage than male staff members. The study showed that 72 percent of female newspaper workers from one publication agreed that men dominate coverage in news photos, while 60 percent of male employees agreed. Twenty-four percent of male newspaper employees said they strongly disagreed with that assumption, while 4 percent of female employees felt that way.

Although more than half of all news staff reported news photos and stories contained more men than women, Len-Ríos found that staff members (older than 45) thought that newsworthy events should be covered without consideration of diversity 31 percent more than younger staff members (ages 18 to 45).

Also interesting: News readers perceived a greater disparity than the news staff.

The study itself states: “By providing men more of the news hole, journalists confer power to men. Although we have focused on gender, similar findings have been found concerning class, age, and ethnicity/race (Rodgers & Thorson, 2003). Can women achieve equality without equal representation in the U.S. cultural symbols of societal power? Even if women touted an alternative press, ’separate but equal’ may still not change the power differential.”

Co-authors include Shelly Rodgers, MU assistant advertising professor; Esther Thorson, MU advertising professor and associate dean of graduate studies; and Doyle Yoon, assistant advertising professor at the University of Oklahoma. Their research was supported by a Ford Foundation grant to the Missouri School of Journalism.

* “Last week, Marin Alsop was named music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, making her the first woman ever to head a major American orchestra — and drawing surprisingly public protest from, of all people, the Baltimore musicians themselves.” writes T.J. Medrek in the Daytona Beach News-Journal. “Friday night, at Peabody Auditorium, Alsop showed why any orchestra in the world would be lucky to have her. Those Baltimore folks should have been there.”

Members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra weren’t so keen on Alsop and urged the board to continue the search rather than offer her the position. News of the dissension made headlines last week, though Alsop was confirmed as expected. As this story explains, Alsop sometimes had to forge her own path to overcome “resistance, rejection and gender-based prejudice.”

“Though the breakthrough is overdue, I supported the decision for other reasons,” Anthony Tommasini wrote in The New York Times last week.

Instead of turning to an elderly European eminence, as major American orchestras so often have, the Baltimore Symphony was putting its faith in a 48-year-old American dynamo, a formidable musician and a powerful communicator, a conductor with a vision of what an American orchestra could be in the 21st century. Ms. Alsop has also proved to be a programmer with a knack for mixing old and new, a champion of contemporary music and living composers, and someone who can talk from first-hand experience about the new-music scenes and the standout composers in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and London.

But the battle is far from over, notes Philadelphia music critic Peter Durbin. On Sunday he wrote: “[T]here’s a bit of still-unrealized history that’s just as important: finding a way for musicians and management to shed their old roles as opponents so orchestras in America can finally arrive at true institutional cohesiveness.”

* Meanwhile, Pamela Rosenberg, general director of the San Francisco Opera, was appointed administrative director of the Berlin Philharmonic. The New York Times reports that she is the first woman — and the first American — in that position.

“Women as arts executives are increasingly commonplace in the United States, but less so - though by no means unknown - in Germany,” writes Allan Kozinn.

The Berlin orchestra began hiring female players only relatively recently. The first, Madeleine Carruzzo, a violinist, joined in 1982. When the orchestra’s music director Herbert von Karajan appointed Sabine Meyer as principal clarinetist, also in 1982, the men in the orchestra rebelled, and Ms. Meyer left after less than a year.

Helge Grunewald, the orchestra’s spokesman, said there were 17 women in the orchestra. There are 53 women in the New York Philharmonic. Both orchestras employ more than 100 musicians.

* Anton Polezhayev, however, is most interested in the gender breakdown of the New York Philharmonic’s violinists. The 29-year-old violinist won a seat with the Philharmonic when he was 26, but was let go at the end of his probationary period, reports The New York Times.

Polezhayev is now suing the Philharmonic for sex discrimination. He claims there’s a pattern within the Philharmonic of preferring female musicians and is demanding a permanent job, back pay and unspecified damages.

The lawsuit said his complaints about “discriminatory practices” might have helped motivate his firing.

“Everybody says Anton is incredibly talented,” said his lawyer, Lenard Leeds. “We can’t figure out the reason why the Philharmonic won’t give him tenure, except for gender discrimination.”

“Whatever the merits of his case,” writes Daniel J. Wakin, “the matter sheds light on the internal dynamics of a world-class orchestra.”

* In a separate piece, Wakin takes a closer look at classical musicians and gender parity.

“[W]omen have come to dominate the violin sections of some of the nation’s leading orchestras, or at least hold their own,” writes Wakin. “But men still predominate in orchestras, and the testosterone level rises with the string instrument’s size.”

According to the Philharmonic’s Web site, women count for 7 of the 12 violists, 6 of 11 cellists and 2 of 9 double bass players. At the Boston Symphony Orchestra, men trail in the violins 13 to 18, and lead 7 to 5 in the violas, 9 to 1 in the cellos and 9 to 0 in the double basses. In Cleveland, women outnumber men by only one in the violins, and at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, men dominate that section, 18 to 10.

The proportion of women in the top 24 orchestras by budget rose from 28.7 percent in the 1994-95 season to 34.7 percent in 2003-4, said Julia Kirchhausen, a spokeswoman for the American Symphony Orchestra League. “When orchestras started, obviously the available players were all from Europe, and the orchestra tradition back then was all male,” she said. “This is kind of a natural progression as women have entered the work force in all walks of life.”

* Finally, a story having nothing to do with classical music or The New York Times: The Telegraph (UK) reports on the new American invasion: mom rock. Catherine Elsworth writes:

Bands such as Housewives on Prozac in New York, Placenta and Rockin’ Moms in California and Frump in Texas began rehearsing in basements and attics, thrashing out punk songs about everyday problems.

Eat Your Damn Spaghetti, Dishwashing Blues and Pee Alone are some of the tracks that have given the “mom rockers” recognition.

There is an annual festival, Mamapalooza, across eight cities and next week sees the release of the first all “mum rock” compilation CD.

“A lot of women are strong individuals. But when we become moms, often the only identity we have is to go back to some retro image of the Fifties housewife,” said Joy Rose, 48, a mother of four from New York who is seen as the movement’s founder.

“This is about saying ‘I am a mom and a person’. You don’t have to become a cookie cutter, you can continue to explore who you are in the world. We’re spreading the message that moms rock.”

Now that it looks like Justice Ruth Ginsburg will be the lone woman on the Supreme Court, women on both sides of the political aisle, as well as retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, have expressed their regret.

“[In] an institution where nine justices deliberate behind closed doors on the most momentous issues of the day, something is lost when there is only one female voice in the room, said former Supreme Court law clerks and women in public life,” write Mike Dorning and Andrew Martin in this front-page Chicago Tribune story that looks at the potential impact on the court.

“While one woman can make the argument when it comes to sex discrimination, Title IX [equal educational opportunities], reproductive privacy, a second woman in the room helps solidify the positions and makes the men understand some of the ramifications,” said Karen O’Connor, director of Women & Politics Institute at American University.

“The hope was that this wasn’t a one-seat quota, that the number of women on the court would expand,” said Marci Hamilton, a former O’Connor law clerk who is now a professor at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School.

Even some Republican women senators, including two who sent a letter to President Bush last week asking that he nominate a replacement in the mold of O’Connor, acknowledged a need for more women on the Supreme Court even though they are inclined to support Roberts.

“Ideally, it would have been preferable to replace Sandra Day O’Connor with a qualified, capable woman,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).

The story notes that “commentators have pointed to O’Connor’s sex as well as her background as a state legislative leader as a reason for her pragmatic approach to the law,” and I really like the example that was used, as it upsets expectations of how a female justice might have been expected to rule:

Pamela Karlan, a Stanford law professor and former Supreme Court clerk, cited O’Connor’s dissent to an immigration decision upholding different treatment for the children of American mothers versus American fathers. The majority cited a special bond that mothers have with children, which O’Connor dismissed as a stereotype.

“I don’t think it’s any accident she had that view,” Karlan said.

The story also notes that Judge John G. Roberts’ wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, was executive vice president of Feminists for Life from 1995 to 1999 and continues to work as pro bono counsel for the organization.

Serrin Foster, Feminists for Life president, said of the new SC nominee: “He is not associated with FFL … Her work and what she does should stand alone.”

Plus: Feminist Majority and NOW held a rally on Capitol Hill Wednesday opposing Roberts’ nomination. (View photos here.)

“I am extremely disappointed that the President did not appoint a centrist woman to fill Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat on the Supreme Court,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority. “We are now going back to tokenism for women on the highest court in the land.”

“Everything we know about Judge Robert’ record this far indicates that he will be a solid vote against women’s rights and Roe v. Wade,” Smeal added. “If he is to be confirmed by senators who support women’s rights, he must say where he stands on Roe and the right to privacy. The burden is on him.”

Kim Gandy, president of NOW, said, “Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court, leaves us a legacy as a centrist and independent jurist who upheld the rights of women. We don’t need someone with an extremist political agenda, tied to special interests, who will tarnish that legacy.”

That’s the headline of this Washington Post story.

The story revolves around the naming of a conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The BSO board is expected to decide today whether to appoint Marin Alsop — outgoing musical director of the Colorado Symphony — as the ensemble’s 12th music director, reports the Post. Not everyone is happy about it — particularly the musicians.

Though they’ve been reluctant to criticize Alsop directly, there’s a letter from a board member that cites the orchestra’s concerns: “The overriding justification for eliminating Alsop is that 90 percent of the BSO musicians oppose her appointment,” the letter states, according to the Post. “In her appearances with the orchestra, the players say, Alsop has not produced inspired and nuanced performances of standard classical repertory. They cite ‘dull,’ even ’substandard,’ performances of Brahms’s Symphony No. 3, Mendelssohn’s music for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2.”

The New York Times has more on the orchestra’s dissent, and the Baltimore Sun has been tracking the story for days.

But only the Washington Post directly tackles the issue of gender. Tim Page writes:

If Alsop is named, it will be against the express wishes of as many as 90 percent of the musicians in the BSO, who have asked for a continuation of the search to audition several other conductors.

If Alsop is rejected, it will be a huge setback for the management of the orchestra, which has backed her for the position and has suggested since late last week that board certification of her appointment was just a formality.

Complicating the matter is the fact that Alsop, if selected, would be the first woman to run a major American or European orchestra. Her appointment would therefore be of considerable historical importance and the word that she is the front-running — and only current — candidate has already been picked up by news organizations throughout the world.

There have been female conductors — Antonia Brico led a concert with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra as early as 1930 and Nadia Boulanger’s mid-century appearances with the New York Philharmonic were legendary. In recent years, artists such as Anne Manson and JoAnn Falletta (the latter will lead the National Symphony Orchestra at Wolf Trap on July 28) have won appreciative followings as guest conductors — and both have served as music directors of some well-regarded medium-size orchestras. But no female conductor has ever been selected to shape the overall direction of a group as significant as the Baltimore Symphony.

Page asks an important question: “In an era when women commonly run everything from universities to Fortune 500 companies to entire countries, why has it taken so long for a single leading orchestra to take the step?”

For the record, I think “commonly run” is a bit of an overstatement. But Page doesn’t succeed very well in answering his own question. First he offers the history of exclusion:

The fact is, classical music has been extraordinarily hidebound when it comes to gender issues. The Berlin Philharmonic admitted its first female player in 1980; the Vienna Philharmonic steadfastly refused to let women enjoy full membership status until, grudgingly, two harpists were hired in the late 1990s. (In a 1996 interview with West German State Radio, Helmut Zaertner, a violist with the Vienna Philharmonic, explained that because harpists were stationed so far at the edge of the orchestra, “it doesn’t disturb our emotional unity, the unity I would strongly feel, for example, when the orchestra starts really cooking with a Mahler symphony.”)

American orchestras have been far ahead of many of their European counterparts on this front, with women making up a third or more of the membership of several leading ensembles and regularly dominating the string section. (Brass remains mostly a male preserve, although the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has long featured Susan Slaughter on principal trumpet.) But things have been just as hard for female conductors in the United States as they are across the Atlantic.

Indeed, the late critic Harold C. Schonberg began his generally illuminating and entertaining history “The Great Conductors” (1967) with a grandiloquent definition of a “maestro” that would seem to rule out half of humanity:

“He is of commanding presence, infinite dignity, fabulous memory, vast experience, high temperament, and serene wisdom. He has been tempered in the crucible but he is still molten and he glows with a fierce inner light. He is many things: musician, administrator, executive, minister, psychologist, technician, philosopher and dispenser of wrath. … Above all, he is a leader of men. His subjects look to him for guidance. He is at once a father image, the great provider, the force of inspiration, the Teacher who knows all.”

There were no profiles or photographs of women in Schonberg’s book. They weren’t on the radar.

Page then culls from British critic Norman Lebrecht’s book The Maestro Myth (1991): “The idea of a woman managing the performance of music remains anathema even in societies where women have achieved the highest office. … Committee wives in Middle America are said to abhor the notion of a female incumbent, while male commuters want the symphonies they hear while driving to work to be conducted by one of their own. Whether they act tough or soft, women conductors have been given a hard time by male-dominated orchestras.”

One wishes Page had talked to more experts today, rather than relying on older texts. Back in May, ms.musings linked to a Denver Post story (no longer available online, unfortunately) in which art critic Kyle MacMillan asserted that there’s no question of Alsop’s talent as “a major international conductor.” MacMillan was less certain, however, that Alsop would break the glass ceiling that still exists for female conductors. Perhaps today we’ll find out.

Michelle Wie just barely missed the cut at last week’s PGA tour event. Her performance, nevertheless, silenced the critics that said her game wasn’t up to par.

So what does she do for an encore? How about making the cut at a men’s event this week?

She did just that at the Men’s Amateur Public Links championship in Lebanon, Ohio. It’s not a PGA event, but it is very prestigious, with the winner given an automatic spot at the Masters tournament next year. Selena Roberts of The New York Times has some fun imagining how Hootie Johnson would react:

What if she receives a blessed trip to Amen Corner?

To begin with, Hootie Johnson would be forced to summon a tailor through the gates of Augusta National Golf Club to stitch darts into the waistline and cut curves into the lapels of a green jacket - just in case.

While converting a men’s 44 regular to a ladies size 4, Hootie would be asked to answer one question as the club’s chairman and resident gender bouncer: If a woman can earn a berth to play in the Masters, why can’t a woman qualify as a member of Augusta National?

Wie’s place as a steel magnolia among azaleas would also challenge Hootie’s quaint notion of how women would prefer joining “sewing circles,” as he once said, to signing up for a business-perk membership enjoyed by some of the nation’s most hypocritical alpha-male chief executives.

Roberts piece — entitled “The Girl Who Dares to Be One of the Boys” — is one of the more insightful explorations of Wie’s motives and her impact I have read over the past month. Roberts sees Wie as “golf’s new Tiger-esque symbol of inclusion” — and her unflappable persistence on pursuing her own desires, even while female and male golfers think she is going too far, too fast — is disrupting a sport steeped in tradition and rigid social standards.

Wie discussed playing on the PGA tour last week: “You know, in the long run, I do want to play out here …. It’s very exciting, and ever since I was very young I wanted to play with the guys.”

For all the talk about making sure the girls of this generation see no barriers ahead of them, let’s not forget to admire the girls that are already breaking them.

Update, 2 p.m. EST: NASA calls off launch; new launch date not set

NASA’s first female commander, Eileen Collins, is leading the space shuttle mission scheduled to launch today (weather permitting) on a 12-day space station delivery and repair mission. Here are a few stories about Collins, who is described as one “cool, calm mom.”

Don’t miss this Seattle Post-Intelligencer column by Martha Ackmann, author of The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight, about the discrimination women who dared dream of — and prepared for — a trip in space faced in the 1960s. Ackman writes:

In 1961, 13 crackerjack women pilots secretly traveled to Albuquerque, N.M., to undergo the same grueling tests that John Glenn, Alan Shepard and the other Mercury astronauts endured. Dr. William Randolph Lovelace II, the head of Life Sciences for NASA, helped select the Mercury astronauts and wanted to find out if top-flight women pilots might perform as well.

They did. In some cases the women even surpassed the test scores of the men. Lovelace believed because women weighed less and consumed less oxygen, they might in fact make better astronauts than men.

Lovelace arranged for additional psychological exams and space flight simulation tests for the women. But at the 11th hour, just as the women were poised to begin final testing in Florida, NASA pulled the plug. [...]

They spoke out and arranged for the meeting with Vice President Lyndon Johnson, head of the Space Council. After listening to the women’s appeal, Johnson said his hands were tied: A women-in-space program was NASA’s call. What the women did not know was that Johnson later penned his opinion at the bottom of a letter to NASA. When it came to the possibility of women in space, Johnson had just four words: “Let’s Stop This Now.”

With few cards left to play, the women asked for a meeting before the House Subcommittee on Science and Astronautics. Standing before Congress, their request was plainspoken: “We seek only a place in our nation’s space future without discrimination.”

What followed was a nightmare. Congressmen made jokes about women’s reproductive capacities. Called in to testify, astronaut John Glenn said what many were already thinking. Men go off and fly the planes and fight the wars and women stay at home. “It’s a fact of our social order.”

Collins invited the Mercury 13 to witness her flight today. “I stand on their shoulders,” Collins said. As do we all.

Finally, Molly M. Ginty of Women’s eNews looks at the growing gender parity in space work and exploration.

“When I first came to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 30 years ago, nearly all of the women were secretaries,” Lynn Cline, a board member of the Washington-based Women in Aerospace, tells Women’s eNews. “Now, 22 percent of NASA’s senior executives are women. America’s space industry still has a long way to go in terms of gender equity, but we are way ahead of the rest of the world in recognizing the contributions women can make.”

Did you see the Today Show this morning? No, not Ann Curry’s travels in Africa with Laura Bush — but the segment on professional women choosing to stay home with their children while their successful husbands support the family.

Excuse me while I wipe coffee off the television screen.

It was the first report in the Today Show’s week-long series, “The Changing Marriage” — a look at “how kids, lack of time together, previous marriages, and taking your vows when you’re young affects your relationship.”

The question today was, “Who is the New Wife?” Who, indeed?

The report was built around the work of Susan Shapiro Barash, a gender studies professor at Marymount Manhattan College, and her 2004 book, The New Wife. Barash’s theory — and it’s hardly a new one; see, for instance, Lisa Belkin’s 2003 New York Times Magazine cover story — is that professional women today, unsatisfied by the demands and the stress of trying to “have it all,” are no longer trying. Rather, they are turning their attention to becoming the best head-of-household they can be.

Of course, these theories often work from the assumptions that a) women, ultimately, can never find complete satisfaction with a role in the public sphere; they are always yearning for a return to the domestic b) that all women’s families have the economic means to make the stay-at-home choice possible and c) men are either naturally unable to be equal caretakers of their children or that women would never want to relinquish part of that responsibility.

The assumptions are all disturbing, but it the absence of men from these conversations that is truly stunning. It’s always presented as women’s Catch-22 — women’s inability to balance career and family. Few ponder how this wouldn’t have to be a choice at all if women didn’t carry the entire burden of childcare. And even fewer ask whether men feel the same conflict.

I never expected the softies at Today to ask any penetrating questions or bring anything new to the conversation. But I didn’t think they’d turn it all into a nostalgic celebration of simpler days.

“This morning we begin with a trend that reaches to generations past,” says Today correspondent Natalie Morales.

Cut to a scene from Leave it to Beaver and June Cleaver, the “ultimate 1950s housewife.”

“Is June Cleaver making a comeback?” asks Morales. “Author Susan Shapiro Barash says she just might be. Barash recently completed a study that defines what she calls ‘the new wife.’”

The new wife, continues Morales, is “a young, educated woman in her 20s who decides that while career is important, marriage and family come first.”

Barash: “She wants a stress-free marriage and she wants to have time with her children and her husband.”

Morales: “So they see women who have tried to have it all as having failed in some regard in their personal or professional lives?”

Barash: “I don’t know about ‘failed,’ but I think very disappointed and I think that that is a myth of having it all.” [Barash discussed the book in much more depth last summer at IndieBride.com, and it's worth a look.]

Cue Sinatra singing “Love and Marriage,” accompanied by lovely images of grooms and brides saying, “I do.”

Viewers then meet two white women, introduced as examples of “the new wife.” The first, Marlena, put herself through college before beginning a career in medical publishing. She and her husband met when she was 24 — we’re not told their age now, but they could easily pass for 30 — and they have an 8-week-old baby.

Cue Sinatra: “What a world, what a life, I’m in love …”

Charming black-and-white portraits of the couple and their new baby fill the screen. Marlena speaks directly to the camera: “Being able to take her to school and go to PTA meetings and be at every dance recital and make her lunch — I can’t even imagine not being able to do that.”

The camera captures Marlena and the baby sitting on a couch together. Her husband, kneeling by her side, brushes the hair out of his wife’s face.

Cue Sinatra: “Lucky me, can’t you see, I’m in love …”

Marlena plans to work part-time later in life, “but for now,” says Morales, “she leaves the heavy financial lifting to her husband.”

“We complement each other,” explains Marlena. “He’s more successful knowing that I can take care of our children and I’m more successful knowing that I don’t necessarily have to worry as much because he’s going to make sure our hot water doesn’t get turned off.”

Morales questions what this means for the “trailblazers” who paved the way for women who combine career and family. Barash notes that they were “not able to get rid of second shift that remains today.”

True enough, though there’s no discussion on why that is, or that a growing number of mothers are becoming politically active around issues of childcare, or that a greater percentage of younger fathers say they want to play a more active role at home. What might that mean for the next new wife?

Nope, none of that. Instead, the next specimen is introduced — a Baby Boomer accountant/mother of two who states she loved her job and didn’t want to give it up to be a stay-at-home mother. The result: “I had a lot of stress,” she says.

“That stress made daughter Rachel resolve to do things differently,” interjects Morales.

Cue The Supremes: “Baby love, my baby love …”

Viewers get more adorable images of a baby in a swing, along with footage of another wedding, and they meet the daughter whose life, we’re supposed to infer, is less stressful. Rachel married at 26 (like Marlena, her current age is not mentioned). Now she’s a stay-at-home mother, most of the time; she works four days a month as a nurse practitioner.

“I would much rather sacrifice material items — myself, I would, my husband and I would — to be able for us to have me stay home with our son,” Rachel says.

Finally Today gives another perspective — from Ms.‘ own senior editor, Michele Kort: “It would be a step backward if women blamed this choice on their hard-working mothers and didn’t look at the societal situation that creates that kind of stress.”

And that was it. One sentence. No follow-up, no mention of what those societal situations involve.

Instead, Morales delivers this insight: “The harsh reality is there is no easy answer for juggling career and family, especially for women in demanding professions.”

I think this is when I spit my coffee. Of course there is no “easy answer.” But how about spending just one minute more on the complexities before writing them off?

On to Grace, “an unmarried 37-year-old pediatric cardiologist” — her age is mentioned up front — who says it would have been difficult to do as well as she has in her profession with a family. But she has “no regrets” and sees marriage and a family in her future.

“I don’t think it’s too late,” says Grace, laughing.

Morales mercifully moves to close this painful segment and returns to Barash for the final word.

“The 21st century wife — what does she represent?” Morales asks.

“She’s probably the smartest of all because she’s willing to scrutinize the recent past and to take the best from each decade,” answers Barash.

Frankly I have no idea what we’re supposed to take from any decade post the 1950s.

Cut to a scene of Leave it to Beaver. “I appreciate you,” Ward Cleaver tells his wife. She doesn’t look so sure.

Is it meant to be ironic? One small poke at domestic perfection that’s been dangled in front of viewers for the past five minutes?

If so, it’s quickly erased.

“When we come back: Well, it’s no secret that kids can change the chemistry of your marriage. We’re going to tell you how to keep the spark in your sex life. And we’ll talk with a woman who stirred up some controversy when she said she loves her husband more than her kids. That’s right after this …”

* Sarah Vowell’s op-ed column in Saturday’s New York Times questions why the Department of Homeland Security distributed $38.31 for each Wyoming resident but only $5.50 for each person living in New York.

Vowell, who’s filling in for Maureen Dowd while the Times columnist is on book leave, wrote earlier in the week about her desire to shake the hand of Pat Robertson — now that he’s encourging the use of condoms in Africa to help stop the spread of AIDS.

* There’s been some discussion of the sexual harassment suits filed against American Apparel founder Dov Charney in the comments of this post. Sunday’s Style section of The New York Times has a story about American Apparel’s sexist work environment (thanks, Bekke, for pointing to it before the paper arrived). Business Week has a more comprehensive story that really shows Charney’s lack of charm.

* It’s only a question of when, not if, Michele Wie will make the cut on the PGA tour, writes Times sports writer David Picker. I liked what Chicago Tribune sports columnist Mike Downey wrote about why Wie deserves to play with the men, but he ticked me off a bit further down in the column:

That said, I disagree strongly with the women who demand equal prize money at Wimbledon and other tennis tournaments.”

You want equality? Fine. Go play a five-set match. Annika Sorenstam doesn’t ask to play nine holes. Danica Patrick doesn’t ask to drive an Indy 250.

Point slightly taken (though it might also be worth noting that female tennis players have brought in more money and attention than the male players in recent years). But Downey shouldn’t talk about equality and women’s sports so flippantly. The purses on the LPGA tour (which Sorenstam has won plenty of), for example, are much smaller than PGA prize money. The marginal player is the person most affected, along with women who are trying to make a decision to fight to be on the tour or not. And that goes for the WNBA — where women play on the same-size court as men — and practically every sport where competition is segregated by gender.

… and speculating when Rehnquist will announce his resignation:

* Miss America, formerly without a network to call home, has been picked up by Country Music Television and will air on the basic cable channel in January. Lisa de Moraes writes in the Washington Post:

CMT’s vice president of programming, Paul Villadolid, had this to say: “Miss America is an important institution that really appeals to heartland sensibilities.

“We share their core values and reflect their lifestyles,” he said, which includes “celebrating small-town sensibilities,” rooting for the underdog and “remaining very positive and optimistic.”

No word on whether those core values include increasingly skimpy swimsuits; last year the show raised eyebrows for aggressive conservation of fabric in the suits the contestants were made to wear.

* “I think that the Miss America pageant has run its course,” Lisa Ades, director of Miss America, a PBS American Experience documentary, tells the Washington Post in a separate story. “I wish I could say that the audience has waned because there are so many opportunities for women and we don’t need beauty pageants as a way to get ahead. But the truth is that interest has waned because it’s simply not sexy enough.”

* “Whether they call it a victory for porcelain proportionality, squatters’ rights or potty parity, wait-weary women — and their impatient male companions — are greeting a new [New York City] restroom-equity law here with a deep sigh of relief,” writes Lisa Anderson in the Chicago Tribune. “New York City is the latest in a lineup of several municipalities, including Chicago, and more than 20 states where problems with public privies have prompted politicians to provide facilities for women that still may be separate but, finally, are more equal. In this case, equality means making access to toilets as timely for women as it is for men.”

Don’t miss page 2 of the article, where there’s some good historical discussion of the bathroom as battleground.

* These tots are preparing early for public privies: meet the kids of the diaper-free movement.

* “While its frustrating that the burgeoning third-wave feminism of the early ’90s underground gave way to poetaster acts like Jewel and Sarah MacLachlan, and while it pains me that I have to discount everything Morissette has since said and done to maintain this belief, I still hold that Jagged Little Pill is pure feminist punk rock,” writes Jodie Janella Horn. Just don’t expect her to buy the acoustic version exclusive to Starbucks.

* Add to that “Breaking Up Is Not BreakingAway: The Pseudo-Empowerment of Kelly Clarkson” from PopPolitics.

* Did you know Pink proposed to her boyfriend? He said yes. Mazel Tov!

* Women are hot. When they grill, of course.

The New York Times today gives a good overview of the scarcity of female federal judges when Justice O’Connor was selected to fill a Supreme Court vacancy and how much has changed over the last quarter-century. Adam Liptak writes:

In 1981, Mr. Reagan’s first year in office, there were almost 700 active federal judges, and 48 were women, some of them semiretired. Today, according to the Federal Judicial Center, there are 201 women and 622 men among active federal judges. As late as the beginning of the administration of Jimmy Carter in 1977, there were fewer than 10 women on the federal bench, according to the administrative office of the federal courts.

Roberta C. Ramo, who became the first woman to be president of the American Bar Association in 1995, recalls what a breakthrough the O’Connor nomination was in 1981.

“It makes me tear up right now just to think about it,” Ms. Ramo said. “She was a woman who had led a life that included having children, stopped practicing for a while, suffered discrimination, was a legislator, was a judge. That was terribly meaningful.”

Justice O’Connor, who had served as a trial judge for five years in Phoenix and then for less than two years on the state court of appeals, one step down from the Arizona Supreme Court, made her way at a time when women who were lawyers were often lucky to get job offers, much less judicial appointments.

Since 1981, the percentage of female law school students has grown from 36 to 48 percent. But only about 16 percent of law firm partners are women, and women are still underrepresented on law school faculties. “Women’s representation in status, income and security have increased, but they’re still overrepresented at the bottom and underrepresented at the top,” Deborah Rhode, a law professor at Stanford, told the Times.

Don’t look to women to necessarily be more sympathetic to women’s issues. Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said, “In sex discrimination and sexual harassment cases, women judges are no more sympathetic to female plaintiffs than men judges. But Democratic appointees are more sympathetic to female plaintiffs than Republican appointees.”

As for the gender of President Bush’s future nominee, Liptak notes that O’Connor’s resignation has opened up a discussion that earlier didn’t exist:

There had been much talk of racial and ethnic diversity and almost none concerning the implications of candidates’ gender. That has changed.

“Until the middle of last week, when the White House started hearing rumors that Justice O’Connor would resign,” said Thomas C. Goldstein, who argues frequently before the court and is an authority on it, “every name on the short list was a boy. Every name on the long list was a boy.”

Many political analysts still don’t think Bush will nominiate a woman this time around. But even if he did, there’s still an issue of balance:

Ms. Smeal, now the president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, a women’s rights group, said the question should not be whether Justice O’Connor’s seat ought to be filled by a woman but why half of the nine justices are not women. The other woman on the court is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was appointed by Bill Clinton. “We’re asking for another woman,” Ms. Smeal said. “We should have at least four. We should not be allowed to go back to one. The era of tokenism is over.”

Plus: Another look at whether O’Connor’s replacement should be a woman, from the Washington Post.

* The Washington Post’s Ann Gerhart on Terry McMillan’s much publicized break-up with husband Jonathan Plummer, the inspiration for How Stella Got Her Groove Back, who is gay:

This is more than another celebrity fairy tale fizzling, deeper than a dishy hot summertime story. This particular rupture in this particular marriage has cultural explosiveness because McMillan writes with such authenticity and intimacy about the lives of middle-class black women — their rages, loves and hurts, their aspirations and defeats, their sisterhood and isolation in the wider world.

* “Susan Glaspell was the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama. She was a founder of the Provincetown Players and is credited with discovering Eugene O’Neill. Her novels were best sellers. So why is she practically unknown in 2005?” asks Dinitia Smith in The New York Times.

Sheila Hickey Garvey, professor of theater at Southern Connecticut State University, provides the obvious answer: “Because usually, the academics who put together anthologies of playwrights are men … That whole Provincetown group, the writings of women have been cut out of history.”

Glaspell is likely to gain a bit more footing now thanks to a new book — Susan Glaspell: Her Life and Times — written by Linda Ben-Zvi, an American-born theater professor at Tel Aviv University.

“I was angry,” Ben-Zvi tells the Times. “For years I taught the story of American drama, and it was a story of males. Then I discovered Susan Glaspell, and I knew nothing about her.” From the Times:

[Glaspell] fell in love with the charismatic, radical - and married - George Cram Cook. After he divorced his wife, they married and, like so many crucial figures in American modernism - O’Neill, Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Reed, Max Eastman - found refuge in Greenwich Village.

There, Glaspell was a charter member of Heterodoxy, a group of prominent women who forged an early feminist ideology. Professor Ben-Zvi argues that she was “one the first important female writers to tackle women’s problems.”

In Glaspell’s 1916 one-act play, “Trifles,” for example, which was based on a crime she covered for The Des Moines Daily News, a farmer’s wife is accused of murdering her husband while he slept. The men investigating the murder are accompanied by two women, who discern evidence the men don’t. The women assume the farmer’s wife is guilty, but believe her act is justified because of her husband’s violence. They become a jury of her peers, hiding evidence that would convict her of a crime they can understand.

“It’s queer,” one woman says to the other. “We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things - it’s all just a different kind of the same thing.” [...]

“Trifles” remains Glaspell’s signature work, studied today in colleges and law schools as an example of gender bias. One reason perhaps, that Glaspell is not famous today is that her most accomplished play was not a full-length work.

Still, she was an innovator. “She was one of the first American playwrights to use silence,” to portray “virtually inarticulate women, women who were moving into new experiences and had not yet found the language to express their situations,” Ms. Ben-Zvi said. “Unlike O’Neill, whose characteristic punctuation point was the exclamation mark, Glaspell’s is the dash, denoting the silence and the silencing of her women characters. The language breaks down along with the character.”

The NYT piece is fascinating — Susan Glaspell is going on my wish list immediately.

* Forget notions of lasting permanence. Shelley Jackson’s Skin is a story told in 2,000-plus words, one tattoo at a time. “Most centrally, I wanted to think of the story as a living text, an embodied text. I wanted it to be a text that eventually died, that had a lifespan like a living organism, a text that eventually erased itself from the world,” Jackson tells L.A. Weekly. “I’m keenly aware of each word in isolation. As a writer, I can tend to excess, but here, I’ve tightened things up considerably, to make every word count.”

* Writer Rachel Kramer Bussel doesn’t ever hold back. “I wrote my first dirty words because I wanted to finally be able to share with others what my sexual psyche looks like, without fear or embarrassment,” she writes in her Village Voice column. “Turning people on is a social good …”

* What was going on in Mr. March’s head all those years he was separated from his wife and daughters of Little Women fame? Geraldine Brooks’ new novel, March, fills in the blanks. David Kipeon of the San Francisco Chronicle approves:

As March’s shadow story emerges from behind the veil where Alcott left it, alternately braiding up with hints in the original version and striking out on a path of pure invention, Brooks reimagines “Little Women” afresh. It’s a sterling example of a brazen genre — the novel that burrows inside another novel, borrowing some of its characters and situations but, in this uncommon case, returning to the host book a liveliness that age and fashion had sapped.

* Veronica E. Velarde Tiller, a member of the Jicarilla Apache Nation of New Mexico, is author of Tiller’s Guide to Indian Country — a resource for information about Indian lands, including treaty status and tribally owned lands, used mainly by federal agencies and academic institutions. Tiller tells Indian Country Today that she’d like to turn her attention to writing a series of books on American Indian women. “We need to create our own histories, our own literature. We need to define the issues we want to talk about,” she said.

* Meant to add this last week — from the Interational Tribune, “The Gender Equation and Artistic Recognition.” Alan Riding writes:

Until the 1970s, in most cultural fields, men created and women consumed. Today, across the West, women are well represented in art, architecture, music and film schools and they account for a majority of students attending literature and creative writing courses at college.

Yet, while women no longer regard the creative arts as a male province, when it comes to winning or even making the shortlist of prizes in fiction, poetry, art, architecture and music, they still fare poorly. Why? Are professional women artists less talented than their male colleagues or are women simply being denied equal opportunity?

Unsurprisingly, those who favor women’s arts prizes believe women are not treated fairly in a world dominated by male artists and managers. The prizes therefore spotlight talent that might otherwise be overlooked. As evidence, they point to the popularity of the Orange Prize, which is worth £30,000, or about $55,000, and now ranks alongside the long-established Whitbread and Man Booker prizes.

This year’s winner was “We Need To Talk About Kevin,” a novel about a woman who cannot love her son, by the British-based American writer Lionel Shriver.

The performing arts are of course also largely ruled by men, but at least Hollywood’s Oscars and Broadway’s Tonys and similar movie and theater awards in Europe treat actresses and actors equally. But in the lonely ritual of artistic creation, there is no intrinsic difference between the sexes - except in how their work is received.

* In Iran, women dominate the fiction bestseller lists. “There was a time when women writers were constantly at odds with society, but now being a woman novelist is valued,” Majid Eslami, a critic and editor of the literary and art magazine Haft (Seven), tells The New York Times.

But as their novels venture more into areas of sex and personal relationships, writers must contend with government censors and family members who feel that intimacies are being betrayed. The Times’ Nazila Fathi writes:

Censors at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which must approve every book before it can be published, ban any explicit mention of sex. They ask for the removal of words like “nudity” and “bosom,” even if these appear in metaphors and do not refer to the human body.

“Two figures were moving under the sheet,” is how Ms. Haj Seyed Javadi informs readers that two characters in “Drunkard Morning” have a sexual relationship. The readers of Ms. Pirzad’s “We Get Used to It” learns that Arezou and Sohrab have kissed when Arezou asks Sohrab if he prefers the taste of the toothpaste to lipstick. “All three,” he says, meaning both and her lips, which are never directly mentioned.

Another constraint for writers is the potential reaction of relatives. Until recently, it was unusual for women to write about themselves, their experiences or their feelings. Now they often pattern their characters on people around them.

Which makes me think of Susan Glaspell again — and how telling women’s stories can still be considered a radical act.

Standing on Halsted Street during Chicago’s 36th annual Pride Parade makes it possible — if just for a little while — to believe that the fight for gay rights is a thing of the past.

Hundreds of thousands of people lined the parade route Sunday afternoon, toasting and cheering the almost 250 floats and organizations that passed by.

Some marchers were political, advocating issues like health care, equal rights and peace and justice, but most were simply celebratory. Street revelers shouted for beads and drank cocktails in the hot sun.

The face of Gay America is white and male, but the Pride Parade is a highly diverse event, and the diversity extended to the crowd as well. Of any progressive rally or protest I’ve attended, nothing comes close to the mix of ethnicities, ages and genders.

Businesses recognize the marketing potential. From the local Lee Lumber (”for your next erection”) to the multinational energy company BP (whose initials also stood for “beyond pride,” at least on the back of the float), all were courting the power of the progressive purse. Employees from the Jewel-Osco supermarket chain danced in a giant raised-up shopping cart. I was envious; dancing in shopping carts was fun until the carts got too small.

When I eyed a float with a better-than-backyard-sized log cabin and an American flag waving in front, I thought the Log Cabin Republicans might be approaching.

“It’s hard to picture them not wearing suits,” said a friend, craning his head for a look.

The float passed in front of us, and we realized our mistake.

The buff boys were from Campit Campground, a gay and lesbian resort in Michigan, not Washington. But we saluted.