Mr. President: Mind the Gender Gap

Great to open the discussion on the gender gap again. It's a difficult battle for women to be on top, enduring the criticism for appropriating traditionally male traits. America is behind much of the world when it comes to females in leadership.

Ms Chesler's article is tone-deaf to the most glaringly obvious criticism of female obsessions with "power" as such, and this paragraph sums it up brilliantly:

"In short, female CEOs make about 85% of "male total actual pay." Interestingly, on paper, the women start out with slightly higher base salaries but "add in cash bonuses, perks and stock compensation--the goodies that really get CEO pay skyrocketing-- and the differential is clear. The gap is the widest for female CEOs of the largest companies, who make less than two thirds of their male counterparts."

Has it not occurred to Ms Chesler that the grossly overcompensated CEOs of American companies are seen as an ethical failure and a political liability? How does she reconcile these figures with the golden parachutes for all the CEOs who wrecked their companies with greedy and short-sighted leadership, to say nothing of all the lay-offs they incurred? The spike in compensation ratios of CEOs to workers of greater than 400 to 1? Does Ms Chesler have the presence of mind to complain about unequal compensation in the same raw terms that these common observations I mention should help to contextualize and clarify, once considering them?

The more that women demand respect and power by emulating the worst and most dysfunctional characteristics that some male leadership styles typify, the more they will be undeserving of it - or at least deserving of the bad name that many male "leaders" have given themselves. Barack Obama won and will likely be a quite successful president because he embodied a new and better leadership style. So will the first female president. Unfortunately, her predecessors will likely just continue to be a series of female Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons - to the detriment of everyone.

Well, some of them will, at any rate.

Where were you when this site was showing Larry Flint's porno on Palin?

Spare me your sisterhood BS. Your a phony.

So?  Why didn't you encourage women to do like me, and write in Hillary, whether or not we thought she'd have made a good president?

I used to work for my US Congressman, and one thing I learned at that job was how politicians fear and loathe the vote.  The only reason that no political party takes women seriously is that we do not force them to.  If we said, in any kind of numbers: "OK, chumps: Until you show respect, screw you, I'm voting for [random person who does respect women and the work we do, paid and unpaid]", they'd be falling all over themselves to find out what women actually do, and pay respect.  The pay-parity bills would come fast and furious.  So would a lot of other measures that acknowledge the tremendous amount of unpaid work we do.   

We certainly have the numbers to do it.  The Reagan Democrats managed it with, what, a few hundred thousand?  And look how careful every single Democrat is now, 30 years on, to go bowling and do the shots-and-beer working-class thing.  I don't know that they have any idea what it's about, but they know they ought to fear those Reagan Dems.  

One more case of women refusing to take the power they can get.  I'm not surprised by it anymore.

Isaac, you're an ass.  The choice you'd leave women with is to be disrespected by a pack of badly-behaved politicians (bosses, etc.), so they can work harder for less money, and sit home at night eating virtue for supper.  There are enough miserable women out there who can go head-to-head with these guys.  I say let them go work on our behalf.

Oh no! ! I'm... "an ass!" How will I live with myself? . etc.

Actually, Amy (with the name so nice you had to say it twice), I don't see myself "leaving" women with any particular set of choices... at least none of my choosing. Perhaps it escaped your attention that I never appointed myself arbiter of what any woman should choose to do. Although this observation may admittedly come as a surprise to someone who does not distinguish between rights and choices, or for that matter, between virtue and vice.

Women have every right to be as boorish, narcissistic and short-sighted as their male counterparts. Hopefully such descriptions would and should apply only to a minority of either gender, to a smaller minority still of self-appointed "leaders" among either gender, and to an even smaller minority further of honest public servants - again, of either gender. If you disagree, that is your right. But don't expect your contention to be one that can win you or whomever you're championing any real respect for their efforts - at least not if those efforts include furthering boorishness, narcissism and short-sightedness as virtuous qualities of leadership in a democracy (whether in the name of feminism or any other cause). In reality they're anything but that. And they have nothing to do with success or real accomplishment, assuming happiness, integrity and pride in one's accomplishments is any standard.

The one thing people can't force upon others is their perception of the world. And one would only choose to do that if rational argumentation eludes him or her and if he or she has easy access to the methods of brainwashing (and no scruples against using them). Or one could do what children do and mistake temper tantrums for a device which properly belongs within the art of persuasion. Ocassionally temper tantrums achieve something tangible but over-reliance on them is really nothing more than an incredibly effective way of besmirching one's own credibility, though.

blah blah blah <checks are still small> blah blah <leaving to pick up your kid? you're fired> blah blah blah blah <he needs the raise more than you do, he has a family> blah blah blah blay blah <we just don't think you'll be tough enough> blah blah <she's a bitch (she turned me down), don't give her the promotion> blah blah blah <as a single mother, you should be destitute, blue-collar, and sacrificing all to raise your child, try it again and leave out the fieldwork in Argentina> blah blah blah blah blah <she'll get pregnant and leave> blah blah blah.

Why would I look to persuade you?  There's 100 million women out there who know what I'm talking about.  The question is whether they have the balls to do anything about it.  So far, no.  I can't help them with that.

You know, my initial comment, assuming you were able to read it, was very specific. It was in reference to the CEOs (and by extension, politicians) mentioned in the article, of which I'm assuming there are far less than 100 million. Further, the complaint I addressed had to do with their ostensible attempts to emulate dysfunctional characteristics of the same male CEOs who treated their companies, ledger books and employees so rapaciously as to merit infamy. Nothing mentioned about single parenting, pregnancy, paid leave, promotions (CEOs, by definition, can't be promoted further), or the like - at least, not so far as I can tell. So project all you want. And complain all you want about issues that have nothing to do with that turn of the discussion thread. As long as it makes you feel better - or at least more psychologically vindicated, I assume that's all that matters, no matter how far from being topical your ravings are. Because I can't help you with that, either. But a college-level course in basic logic might. 

And a college-level course in American politics might help you. The CEOs and politicians you mention exert considerable control over all the issues I mentioned, and those issues certainly do affect American women rich and poor, educated and not, and all of them with a vote.  The CEOs and politicians in question don't cede control over these things because it's a decent thing to do.  Ergo, the only way to remove that control from them and remedy these situations is to take it by force, political or otherwise.  This involves being not nice.  Is the chain of logic clearer to you now?

If this needs to be made more concrete for you before you can understand it, go read about the history of the American law permitting women to hold credit in their own name without their husbands' permission.  That's a nice tangible one.  Didn't come in until the 70s, and it didn't happen until some distinctly unpleasant women came along and made it happen.

might help you. But apparently you're too good for that, I see. 

From the president-elect, who broke previous campaign-fundraising records by collecting more small contributions from anyone else (you know, people other than just CEOs, etc.) in history, using the power of this thing here called "the internet":

"I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on the lobbyists, and I have won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not work in my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president."

But feel free to live in the seventies, if that suits you. Go back beyond even the eighties, nineties and 2000s, when special interests held sway over the political system in an even more obvious, destructive and stupid way than ever before. Go back to whichever era most feeds into your seething resentment, your wasteful (and wasted) cynicism, your self-defeating obsession with identity politics, and keeps you from figuring out a viable - or God forbid, an inclusive - way forward to the future, despite the advice of Phyllis Chesler in her final paragraph to you. Apparently those things are more important to you. And don't forget to get a shag rug while you're at it. 

Is there some reason why the formatting options are so screwy? I'd have loved to include a few bold-faced fonts, a hypertext link and some italics above, but Safari won't let me do it. When I copy onto a window in IE, it compresses the paragraphs into a one-inch thick margin. Will I have to download Firefox again, or is there a technical fix on your end? Perhaps my interlocutor might suggest I use a Commodore 64, though. 

Hey Isaac-

"From the president-elect, who broke previous campaign-fundraising records by collecting more small contributions from anyone else..."

Whoops. Maybe more as an absolute number, but as a matter of actual fact, a greater proportion of McCain contributions were of the "smaller than $200" variety. Surely the percentage of small contributions is the more interesting measure.

As for as the preposterous quote from Obama goes, how can you take such rubbish seriously? He received far more money from the finance/insurance sector than did McCain, and he has already surrounded himself with the most horrifying collection of business-as-usual Clinton retreads imaginable.

Very sorry that you too appear to have quaffed so deeply from the same cup o' delusions as has the bulk of the American Liberal community.

Obama is a con man of Olympian proportions. 

 

Ismail, I'm not sure where you're going for your stats on McCain's contributions (perhaps you could quote or cite them). But I'm not sure I see what you find to be the more interesting measure as the more relevant one. Assuming no legal limits on absolute revenue generated, previous records of which Obama broke according to all accounts I could find, then the public at large and small donors in particular become a critical constituency for Obama, as he intended.

Now, you might find his candidacy to be a farce, but if money still matters (and no one's suggesting it doesn't), and if credibility matters to an Obama seeking re-election in 2012 - as it would to any politician - then the fact that so many people (average Joe "six packs", perhaps?) own a piece of him, so to speak, or, to put it less crudely for the sake of edifying our second-wave feminist audience member, the fact that they own a piece of his administration, does matter.    

Perhaps you might want to be more specific on which of the business-as-usual Clinton retreads he's appointed, so that we might debate the specifics regarding which of them are more of the mold of the narcissistic devotees of the self and of mammon of yore and which might be independent-minded enough to say, govern in a competent, enlightened and less self-destructive manner than Obama's predecessors. Note that I use the plural on that last word. I'll admit that some of the picks <ahem> may be more politically motivated than others, but I don't think that makes him a con man. Just because you deny Obama's idealism doesn't mean that any sense of realism he holds to precludes his idealist aspirations. However, it might mean that he cares for doing a more competent job of realizing those aspirations.  

Myself, I'm more of a classical liberal who distinguishes equality of rights from equality of outcome. Perhaps many self-defined "social-progressives" who are mislabeled as "liberals" would disagree, but much of their excesses are what Obama thanked Bill Clinton for distancing himself from in the 1990s. The best thing for the Democrats was leadership that has successfully coupled an appropriation of the more legitimate sentiments and rhetoric of the 1930s and 1960s with the acknowledgment that we are no longer living in those times. Thank the deity for that. 

Oh, dear God.  You don't honestly believe that there are differences in politics from one decade to the next, do you?

Well, stick around, you'll find out.

There don't have to be differences in politics, but there are usually historical changes that make the real world different from one era to the next. And intelligent politicians account for those new realities and address or make use of them, even if others don't. 

It seems I've stuck around long enough to see shag carpets go out of style. Hopefully I'll stick around long enough to witness the re-emergence of a society in which intelligent discourse is more prized than it was in the days of tee vee, with the emphasis that placed on image and the mere appearances of things.

I also hope to see the disappearance of the Nintendo Wii, the marginalization of People Magazine, the end of shows like Crossfire (check), and the replacement of massive audiences for self-help gurus with an even greater share of readership for people like Malcolm Gladwell and the guys who wrote Freakonomics. 

Ha!  Well, I'll join you in waiting for the disappearance of the Wii and consignment of _People_ to the bin.

The historical circumstances change, sure.  But politics don't, because people are, from one time to another, people.   In every historical era you'll find periods where the politics are open brawls, and other periods where things are more tightly controlled, but no less ferocious behind closed doors.  

It's no business for nice guys.  Or slow guys.  Or people who are highly intelligent but not canny about people.  It takes a special kind of intelligence to do that work well, and it shouldn't be discounted.  I've worked in two nations' legislatures, and come away impressed.  It's not the kind of intelligence that's going to cure cancer, but it's something.  

One of my favorite legislators is Arlen Specter, whose very presence has come to mean effectiveness, civility, sober intelligence, and a wide view.  However, Arlen can be a real brass-knuckles SOB, and were that not so he would not have climbed to the position he holds now.     

Don't get dreamy about what it takes to get.  Because that's what politics is about.  Even if you're getting on behalf of the most downtrodden and deserving -- you are still fighting to get.