Year of the Woman? Not for Feminists

I guess it's logical in our identity-obssessed, quota driven politics, but all this talk about "The Year of the Woman" is so yesterday. In California we've had two women senators for two decades. In 2008, Hillary Clinton nearly won the Democratic nomination and Sarah Palin was the GOP vice presidential nominee. And with Elena Kagan's likely confirmation, there'll be three women sitting on the United States Supreme Court. We have full gender equality in the United States. Women are still moving in top positions of power, and their numbers have yet to catch up with men in governmental institutions, but it's silly to deny full equality of opportunity. Indeed, Hanna Rosin at The Atlantic --- a gender extremist if there ever was one, in her demonization of breast-feeding, for example --- is jumping for joy in "The End of Men" from the July/August edition. Sure, a lot of it's over-the-top, but the larger reality of the empowerment of women is no longer in question.

So why all the attention to the string of women's victories in Tuesday's primaries? The press needs a catchy spin, for one thing. Or, more likely, journalists need to feed the cultish mavens of gender equality. For example, at Wall Street Journal, "Women Candidates Come Into Their Own." And at USA Today, "Women candidates play major role in 2010."

But wait! Everything's not so hunky dory on the feminist front. At the Los Angeles Times, "2010: the Year of the Conservative Woman?", you'll notice the stress on "conservative women," as if women on the right aren't for equality. And check the comments at Jezebel, "Meet The Political Ladies Who Triumphed Last Night." Tuesday was a big night for women candidates, but leftists can't stand it:

Republican women politicians (and just in general) are the worst. They want to take away my rights but have the right to keep theirs. Fuck all of these bishes!

I'm all for sisterhood (or whatever) but not if it includes women like these.

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Do we really want politicians, even if they are women, making decisions for our states and/or country that includes many people they don't even consider worth their time, not to mention trying to take ownership of our reproductive organs and forcing religion into politics?

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Oh hello there women of the GOP. Why don't we make a deal here. I won't try to control your uterus and you don't try to control mine.

That kind of downer on the left has Rachael Larimore asking, "Where’s the Rah-Rah Sisterhood?"

Why the schizophrenia on women's progress? Why the disconnect and disenchantment? Obviously, feminism today is an ideology that leverages victimhood and male-hatred into a regime of abortion-on-demand and gender quota set-asides. It's one of the most important currents on the contemporary radical left. And the trend isn't just isolated to extremist feminist bloggers like Amanda Marcotte or Jessica Valenti. Take a look at Barbara Kellerman's piece at yesterday's Business Week, "Don’t Drink Yet to New ‘Year of the Woman’":

There’s no doubt, obviously, that the role of women in society is changing, in some cases in important ways. Among the changes are those in education, where females are increasingly more educated, better educated and better credentialed than their male counterparts.

But so far as leadership roles are concerned, whether in government or industry, or for that matter in nonprofits and in the military, women in America still badly lag behind. Here are just a few of the figures...

What follows there is a long list of statistics on the comparative indicators of women's progress. But we'll always have differences in achievement in America. We're to the point where women are catching up and surpassing men in the everyday measurements of success such as college attendance and middle-class earnings. That's what Hanna Rosin's boasting about at The Atlantic. And until the rest of the downbeat press corps and radical feminists start picking up that meme, despite increasing female representation in politics, we'll never truly ever have a "Year of the Woman."