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Sidebar:
Backlash Against Intelligent Women?
March 8, 2001
The
president of Wellesley College said the Rolling Stone article
was “another example of the backlash against successful female
students…”
We
hear that so often – that men are afraid of intelligent women
and women can make it on their own.
If
that’s true, why don’t they just do it, instead of talking about
it?
We
heard that back in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed and
women were added to the Act as a joke by Southern Congressmen
who thought it would scuttle the entire piece of legislation.
The Act was passed without any of the public realizing that women
had been added to it.
Within
a few months, however, the activists at NOW were badgering President
Johnson to become serious about “protecting” women. He buckled
under and the blacks have been wondering ever since who stole
their bill, because many more women have used it than blacks.
Wellesley
also doesn’t tell its students that the women of America have
always been treated as equals in this country – not the same,
but equal. In the 1930s, many women were accepted in the academic
community.
Betty
Friedan wrote in The Feminine
Mystique, "The suburban housewife [in the 1950s] - was
the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was
said, of women all over the world....[T]he chains that bind her
in her trap are chains to her own mind and spirit." The professors
at Smith, Mt. Holyoke and other schools were desperate in their
attempt to get women to stay in school, according to Friedan.
If
women have the ability – and many of them do – why don’t they
just do it instead of suing every company in sight. Any business
must hire the most qualified people available. If they don’t,
some other company will and move ahead.
Men
aren’t afraid of intelligent women except for the fact that a
company can be sued today if a man merely looks at them sideways.
When
the Civil Rights Act was debated, the women said they did not
want any special favors. They could compete with men on any ground.
We’re seen many of them do it successfully. When are the others
going to follow suit and stop suing everyone in sight?
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