You Might As Well Call It Feminism, Joanne Lipman
The blogosphere and my inbox, have been buzzing with response to former Portfolio editor Joanne Lipman’s rather bizarre piece on modern womanhood in The New York Times, “The Mismeasure of Woman,” which has spent several days floating around on the paper’s most e-mailed list. I’m going to have to echo Jezebel’s Anna N. by saying that I was actually with Lipman throughout much of her critique — until the end when she started listing a rather motley group of prescriptions for the Woman Problem.
Lipman, who climbed the ranks at The Wall Street Journal before becoming the founding editor the now-defunct Portfolio, begins her argument with the assertion that many women of her generation dismissed feminism as a big, old, shrill stereotype, and simply plowed forward in the workplace as individuals. And to a certain extent, they succeeded: Women have made strides on paper in terms of standing in major organizations and numbers in prestigious professions. But, she wrote, what’s keeping us from taking those final steps towards genuine equality is a fundamental lack of respect, a non-quantifiable sense that we still face obstacles like sexual harassment, higher expectations and the impediments of sexist critique.
Here’s where I got excited.
Sarah Seltzer is a regular contributor to The Sisterhood, which crossposts weekly with Jewesses with Attitude.
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