“If we didn’t have wombs, we’d be fine. It’s about controlling reproduction.”
–Gloria Steinem recently on MSNBC’s new The Reid Report
Ms. Steinem was on the show to talk about a new report on the status of women in the media that has just been released from the Women’s Media Center, a nonprofit founded by Steinem, Jane Fonda, and Robin Morgan–feminist icons all–in 2005.
Given the provenance of the report, you sort of know that its gist isn’t going to be, “Wow! Women are doing really well. We have such great opportunities.”
I haven’t read the report yet, but it does look like the usual mix of complaints. Cortney O'Brien says on Townhall that the premises are biased and that she is preparing an analysis, which I may wait for in lieu of reading the report. (Hey, I read The Shriver Report. The human mind can take only so much.)
Meanwhile, those of us who read newspapers or watch news shows and go to the movies know that women are doing well in the media. It’s a fact that you just can’t miss.
Nevertheless, the status report reportedly found that only 43 percent of speaking roles on TV are women and that this falls to 28 percent in films.
Obviously, Gloria & Co. aren’t tuning into Fox News in primetime, which has a 50/50 breakdown of male to female hosts!
Steinem, alas, appears to be living in the bad old past. Here’s why she thinks that women supposedly don’t succeed (as quoted by Cortney O’Brien):
“I think in way, many of the men who are in power now, were raised by women and that was the last time they saw a powerful woman. So when they see another one, they feel they’ve been regressed to eight.”
Do you really know any women who shrink before other successful women because they were “raised by women”? Garbled and outdated.
These feminist trailblazers just haven’t been able to move with the times, and, ironically, have thus not been able to savor the successes created in part by their own efforts.
Ms. O’Brien savors an irony that was lost on Steinem and her host:
Ironically, both of these women are successful media personalities. But, instead of celebrating that fact and applauding an environment that allowed them to reach television screens across America, Reid and Steinem chose to bash the "sexist" job market.
Sad.