Is the American woman an endangered species? Is she losing the good fight for equality in the workplace, on television and in our political hearts?
Katie Couric is out at CBS news. She was the only high-profile woman anchor of a major American evening newscast. Katie wasn’t very good at delivering a serious newscast and it wouldn’t be hard to argue she was given the job because of her gender and not because of her news credibility.
Ms. Couric isn’t even halfway through her five-year
contract with CBS, which began in June 2006 and pays an annual salary
of around $15 million. But CBS executives are under pressure to cut
costs and improve ratings for the broadcast, which trails rival
newscasts on ABC and NBC by wide margins.Her departure would cap a difficult episode for CBS,
which brought Ms. Couric to the network with considerable fanfare in a
bid to catapult “Evening News” back into first place. Excluding several
weeks of her tenure, Ms. Couric never bested the ratings of interim
anchor Bob Schieffer, who was named to host the broadcast temporarily
after “Evening News” anchor Dan Rather left the newscast in the wake of
a discredited report on George W. Bush’s National Guard service.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is stumbling and falling and — if she were a man and not a woman — she’d already be pushed out of the race by the “old boy” politico democrats:
“The Clinton campaign has run a very negative campaign,” said Raines.
“They have constantly — but in a very subtle way — had people remind
the public that [Sen. Barack Obama] is black.” Howell later said that the “best thing [Sen. Hillary Clinton]
has going for her” is the fact that Obama is consistently stigmatized
by the fact that “if you’re a black candidate, you have to apologize
for every stupid thing ever said by any black person.”
Singer Elton John, and Hillary supporter, proclaimed yesterday that the USA is a nation of woman haters:
“I never cease to be amazed at the misogynist attitude of some of the
people in this country,” he said. “I say to hell with them.”
Three examples do not necessarily make an argument that the American woman is in decline — but these indicators could point to a trend.
Are women now truly equal in America in that we are all finally able to look past gender and begin judging everyone on who they are a person and not solely on their gender identity?
Or have women come too far too fast and men are now starting to push back a bit to fairly keep them at bay?
I heard on the radio the other day that prestigious prep schools are accepting men of “lesser quality” than female applicants because women currently make up 58% of the applicant population — and to “continue parity” — more substantial women are being turned away in favor of sustaining male equity.