Big news item about President Trump demanding the release of certain Epstein files to counter a possibly-fabricated leak from the Wall Street Journal, authorized by the Journal’s editor – Emma Tucker.
Then there is an item about the latest budgetary grab at the EU promoted by the EU Commission Chief – Ursula Von der Leyen.
I am old enough to remember when Feminists claimed that the world would be a kinder gentler more rational place once women were installed in powerful roles. And yet it seems that many times when we see something dumb or damaging reported in the news, the protagonist is a … woman.
Well, at least we can’t blame women for the situation in the Ukraine. Oops! I forgot about the cookie lady!
Anyone who has been in business or politics knows that a change occurred, arguably starting round about three decades ago. The call went out – promote women. And as we look around today, we see the consequence – women in all kinds of senior positions.
As Hyp notes, there have always been strong capable women who climbed to the top of the greasy pole and did great things. What happened with the push to promote women was that any female would do – competence & capability be damned!
This was triply unfair. It was unfair to the capable women who would have climbed to the top anyway, because their successes became tainted by the generally disappointing performance of the undeserved. It was unfair to the undeserved women, who were put into positions in which their failures were obvious, even if the official world looks the other way. And it continues to be very unfair to the great bulk of us, who have to live with the outcomes of their under-performance.
Having been involved with this since the very beginning of the trajectory, I will venture to elaborate: the 1970s were the “I am woman, hear me roar!” stage of feminism, but, believe me, women did NOT get unmerited promotion nor any deference at all in the real world. At least not in law. Male attorneys constantly made ostentatiously “chivalrous” asides in court, and in the office made their disdain quite clear. For opposing counsel to refer to you as “This pretty young lady” was, actually disparaging, but you knew it wouldn’t elicit the same indulgent chuckles if you were to refer to him as “This handsome young man”. At one arbitration in a county where I wasn’t barred, I had to have a colleague from law school introduce me pro hac vice. She and I were the only women in the courtroom and when she departed, opposing counsel turned to his clients and said loudly, “I’m sorry she left—I woulda had TWO women to grind into the dust, instead of just one!”
Well, I mean—who cared? If he hoped to make me cry or sump’n , he failed. But I think even my own clients kinda…admired the sentiment. It was a man’s world.
So I think in law, women really had to earn their place, at least at first. Law firms may have been under pressure to hire women for “diversity”, but they weren’t gonna put up with,y’know, losing.
I would agree with you about the 1970s and earlier, when there were indeed barriers to women in various professions – as well as barriers to men in other professions (but we don’t talk about that). Then there was the initial (and positive) concept of Affirmative Action, which was intended mainly to help worthy Americans of African heritage by making sure they were not overlooked or discouraged from seeking advancement.
Somehow, over time, AA became heavily co-opted by the “Daughters of Privilege” – the well-credentialed scions of the White Upper Middle Class. It was really in the 1990s that we began to see active discrimination against males of any background in the contest for employment and promotions in government and Industry – a form of discrimination about which the “Daughters of Privilege” did not complain then, and still do not complain today.
Ah well! As a society, we made our choices … and now we are living with the consequences.
And then there was Carly Fiorina and the dashing Rajiv Gupta who were ruthless enough to spit in the face of 82% of the American public and turn silicon valley over to India.
Although not as great unaccomplishment as destroying the Western world Carly went on to rename Hewlett-Packard to HP so as to purge any memory of the settler culture in silicon valley. She also turned HP into an ink company by divesting it’s founding emphasis in instrumentation. She then built on these accomplishments to advise John McCain in his 2008 presidential campaign. Rising through the ranks of the Republicans who of course understand that the settler culture is used up and must be replaced in technology by affirmative action hires from India into the executive positions for which mid-to-late* Boomer Men had worked their entire careers to be positioned for in the 00’s, she ran for President in 2016. When that didn’t quite work out Ted Cruz took her on as VP prospect and then she endorsed Joe Biden.
All in all an exemplar for how to destroy a civilization.
