Career-minded women and family-minded women

A friend once wrote that the only solution for women is to climb up the cor=
porate ladder.

No, that is wrong.

Different women will want different things. For some the solution is to hav=
e a career; for others the solution is to raise a family. Most women will p=
robably want both.

One problem is the hostility between the career-minded women and the family=
-minded women. The first see the second as =E2=80=9Cbreeders=E2=80=9D and t=
he second see the first as sinners. Of course there is a need both for rais=
ing families and for work.

So these women should be doing a better job of getting along with one anoth=
er. Neither speaks for all women; they speak for some women. There is very =
little in common between Catherine McKinnon and Phyllis Schaffly. Both of t=
hese are women who claim that they are speaking for women. Yet they advocat=
e for completely different things.

Is climbing up the corporate ladder the solution for women? Clearly it woul=
d be a conclusion for some. However so would raising a family. However I wo=
uld like to warn the women who take the career path that they will be deali=
ng with all sorts of bad people, and that in many cases their lives would b=
e worse than even if they were to find themselves in an abusive relationshi=
p.

Can love go bad? Of course it can. So can anything, including the corporate=
 world. I will want my daughter to understand the dangers in either situati=
on. I expect that she will want both a professional life and a family life.=
  Which means that she needs to know what she will be dealing with in both =
family and career.

I had a girlfriend, raised by a single aunt, who told me that she prefers m=
ale authority over female authority because in case of male authority there=
 is often erotic attraction, whereas with female authority it is =E2=80=9Cw=
hat do you cow know about.=E2=80=9D Not all of Eminem=E2=80=99s audience we=
re violent men; it included a lot of women. These women preferred violence =
by mean but sexy young men over emotional bullying by mean unattractive old=
er women.  And there are plenty of the latter in the world.

The main conclusion to be drawn from recent feminism is that neither men no=
r women are good or bad. Both are capable of both. And it can be quite dema=
nding to figure out who is good and who is not. Clearly Eminem is not a goo=
d person. But neither is Catherine McKinnon.

I anticipate different women choosing different things. Some will want care=
ers; others will want relationships. Most would probably want both. There i=
s no inherent antagonism between family and feminism. There are many femini=
sm-influenced women who raise families; and they don=E2=80=99t do it out of=
 servility to men but as living beings that, like most living beings, simpl=
y want to have children.

There are things to be said for there to be a greater mix between career-mi=
nded women and family-minded women. Both have useful things to offer one an=
other. The career-minded women may be useful in helping the family-minded w=
omen to stand up to abusive men, and the family-minded women may teach the =
career-minded women how to be kinder. Supporting feminism-influenced women =
in having a family life will make it possible for these women to pass on th=
eir values. And that is probably the best thing that can be done for women=
=E2=80=99s rights.