The shards of the glass ceiling still cut

Judith Warner’s New York Times column gets it dead-on about Sarah Palin and the utterly condescending way that women politicians have been talked about lately. As she said, ”Could there be a more thoroughgoing humiliation for America’s women?... Having Sarah Palin put forth as the Republicans’ first female vice presidential candidate is just about as respectful a gesture toward women as was John McCain’s suggestion, last month, that his wife participate in a topless beauty contest.”

I think they find her acceptably 'real' because Palin’s not intimidating, and makes it clear that she’s subordinate to a great man. That’s the worst thing a woman can be in this world, isn’t it? Intimidating, which appears to be synonymous with competent. It’s the kiss of death, personally and politically.
But shouldn’t a woman who is prepared to be commander in chief be intimidating?

Warner goes wrong in only one place: ”Her presence inspires national commentary on breast-pumping and babysitting rather than health care reform and social security,” Warner writes, as if breast-pumping and babysitting were fluff with nothing to do with issues of national importance. But speaking of serious national policy issues like Social Security, who does Warner think will pay for the benefits of the next generation of retirees? The children being cared for by breast-pumpers like Palin.

The assumption that the need to breast-pump and find babysitters (or bring your kids to work with you) inherently make you an unintimidating lightweight is just the kind of sexist condescension Warner is inveighing against. Why can’t you be a highly effective worker or even a powerful, intimidating power broker and pump breast milk? (Once upon a time, millennia ago, the ability to bring forth life and nurture it at the breast was the very model of intimidating power.)

Isn’t it time we had a conversation about these assumptions? And about the need to revise our workplaces to accommodate powerful, intimidating—or ordinary and not so intimidating—people who breast-pump? And to realize that these people are not obscure exceptions to the norm, but, potentially, half the workforce?

In fairness, what Warner’s getting at is presumably not breast-pumping and childcare per se, but the stupid way they’re being discussed, as purely private matters (and thus titillating), rather than as aspects of fundamental issues—namely how we support the primary caregivers of our next generation—that our society needs to come to terms with institutionally.

The stupidity of the discussion of Palin’s family situation is a symptom of what Warner calls the “dogged allegiance to up-by-your-bootstraps individualism—an individualism exemplified by Palin, the frontierswoman who somehow has managed to 'balance' five children and her political career with no need for support.” As Warner says, this individualism “is leading to a culture-wide crack-up.” Perhaps that’s because it was always a hypocritical individualism, dependent on the unpaid, nonindividualistic caregiving of women. Here’s to its rapid demise.