Palin’s Run For President Is Huge Setback For Women’s Rights
I read the other day in the New York Times that Sarah Palin is considering a run for President – and I have been trying to figure out why it makes me so angry — other than the fact that I have to listen to her most irritating voice and garbled grammar for the many campaign months ahead.
I know it’s because she’s a woman and because she embodies a major setback to so much I have worked for over the past 30 plus years, but I’m struggling with what really makes me feel this visceral negativity. And I’m not the only one.
Is it simply because of where she stands on the issues — her harmful views on a woman’s right to choose that would take us back to the dark and dangerous days before Roe v Wade?
Is it because she was against theLily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and thought it was ok for a woman with no knowledge that she was a victim of wage discrimination to be barred from bringing a lawsuit when she first learned about it?
Is it because she touts equal pay for women but takes positions against the Paycheck Fairness Act which would help ensure that women really do get the equal pay they deserve?
Is it because she’s against government programs to help women with issues like affordable child care – concerns which deeply affect working women and for which the US is light years behind other countries?
Is it because she thought it was ok to promote a sexual harasser to her cabinet?
Or is it because she is simply unqualified?
What everyone knows but barely anyone talks about is that Sarah Palin is where she is because she is pretty. As Todd Purdham noted in his Vanity Fair article about Palin, her beauty queen looks have
captivated people who would never have given someone with Palin’s record a second glance if Palin had looked like Susan Boyle.
Susan Reimer , from the Baltimore Sun put it this way:
Put red high heels and red lipstick on a woman with a cute figure and run her out there and we promise, nobody will notice her mangled syntax or her poor sense of geography.
Unqualified women who get ahead simply because of their looks make it that much harder for intelligent, capable women to get a fair shake. Is it possible that beneath all of the chatter, it’s this harsh reality that makes feminists so upset?
There is no doubt, that for those of us who have long championed equal rights for women, Sarah Palin represents a gigantic step backwards — and going backwards after the many hard fought struggles to get ahead is always rough. She got where she did simply because of her looks and she rejects policies which would improve the lives of women.
Simply put, for so many women, this major league anti-feminist is just really hard to take.
image: turbo.inquisitr.com
