Columnist Ellen Goodman explains double-bind most women have experienced

Many of us have experienced the double-bind; we just didn’t know what to call it. Boston Globe and Washington Post columnist Ellen Goodman spoke to attendees this week at a fund-raising event sponsored by Women Winning, a Twin-Cities based advocacy group that supports female pro-choice candidates. See www.womenwinning.com.

She pointed out that we’ve made a lot of progress since her last visit to the Twin Cities in 2002, citing the victories of Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Still, she lamented, women are lagging farther behind in politics than in any other profession. Part of the reason for this, Goodman suggested, is that it’s easier to get into politics than it is to change it. But change it we must, because as she points out: Politics is where we change our values into policies.

She explained her perspective on what she calls “the double-bind”. Hillary had to prove she was tough enough to be commander in chief, while Obama’s feminine side helped win him votes.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor had to prove she wasn’t biased, though the groups charged with selecting U.S. supreme court justices are all seriously under-represented by women.

The double-bind often shows up at work. A woman who chooses her kids over her work is told she doesn’t make her work a high enough priority, while a man who leaves work to attend a soccer game is congratulated.

It is extremely unfortunate that we don’t respect women’s traditional styles and choices. In the land of the free, is it too much to ask to be yourself without having to apologize for it?

Think of the talent we lose when women who are sick of the double-bind get fed up and drop out of work, politics or other male-dominated environs.

Ellen Goodman is one of the last of the grand dames of the opinion pages. She has now retired; syndicated columnist and author Molly Ivins is dead; only New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd http://tinyurl.com/n2y38u is left to carry on.

We need more great women columnists to generate opinions with the feminine perspective. When I worked at the Star Tribune Opinion pages, I was struck by how helpful it is to read someone’s opinions to help form your own. Without strong women’s voices, we’re left to form our opinions based primarily on male perspectives.

Unfortunately, most men don’t know much about the double-bind or other critical issues we deal with on a daily basis. So topics we care about never make it to traditional media pages. It’s unfair to us, and it will be the death knell for traditional media that must generate more audience members or perish.