The Nation
Subject to Debate
By Katha Pollitt
This article appeared in the January 25, 2010 edition of The Nation.
January 7, 2010
How have American women fared in what seems to be everyone's least favorite decade since the Fall of Rome, which at least was fun for the Vandals? (Well, to be fair, today's investment bankers have plenty to chortle over.) Herewith some feminist highs and lows of the era that began with the Supreme Court choosing the president and ended with hope hangovers and tempests in teabags.
Government. Sonia Sotomayor joined the Supreme Court. Before that, Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin showed how far we've come--and how far we haven't. Between them they normalized forever the idea of a woman running for president and withstood a ridiculous amount of sexist garbage, from nasty cracks (from both sexes) about Clinton's legs, clothes, voice and laugh to tinfoil-hat accusations that Palin's baby was actually her daughter's.
In 2000 women were 13 percent of the House and Senate; in 2009 they were 17 percent. The right direction, but too slow: if women have to make up about 30 percent of leadership before they can move a feminist agenda, we're looking at thirty more years of political marginality.
Full Story: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100125/pollitt
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