One Red Hot Country Mama!

I found this article by Glori Steinem in the New York Times archives today about how the barrier for women is more pervasive than the barrier for men. I have been thinking a lot about this during the Clinton vs. Obama primaries and was happy to see an article about it.

At the heart of the article, is why racial equality seems to happen quicker than gender equality:

Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race
were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions
of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with
the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).

Of course, it is important to note that we want to work towards equality for everyone, but for some reason women who are fighting for their own rights and the rights of others are greeted with more disdain than people fighting for equality among the races.

So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The
reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still
confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects
males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the
female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly
by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are
regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because
racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some
white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as
there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right”
way to be a woman in public power without being considered a
you-know-what.

The most powerful statement in the article is the first sentence below:

But what worries me is that he  is seen as unifying by his race while she  is seen as divisive by her sex.

What
worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when
citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil
rights confrontations.

Well, hopefully it will take less than a half-century to sort this one out.