Life

(Yet) Another Op-Ed Takes On Sheryl Sandberg and Lena Dunham’s Feminism. Meanwhile, in Ohio…

Amy Schumer Image by Getty Images

By Phoebe Maltz Bovy December 9, 2016

We have, on the one hand, an Ohio legislator, active in getting an anti-abortion “heartbeat” bill approved, offering the following response, in 2012, to a reporter who’d asked him why he imagines women opt to get abortions: “It’s a question I’ve never even thought about.”

(More context tells you that he gestured first at “economics,” which suggests maybe he had thought about it for a moment or two… but also that he chuckled and referred to himself as not being a woman, implication being, why should he be expected to know about such lady-matters? So there’s that.)

Ah, but on the other hand, there’s a brand-new Guardian op-ed making new and urgent point that Sheryl Sandberg, Lena Dunham, and Amy Schumer are not representative of the average woman’s concerns and, from this, concluding that “liberal feminism” (aka a certain former presidential candidate who I hear bravely goes without makeup these days) is effectively the same as conservative not-feminism.

Why am I juxtaposing these two items? Because I think it’s really, really important to address the limitations of glass-ceiling feminism in ways that don’t involve dismissing the need for women in positions of authority. Can this be our goal? Please? Just a suggestion.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. Her book, The Perils of “Privilege”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a former editor of the Sisterhood blog at the Forward. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including The New Republic and The Atlantic. Her book, “The Perils of ‘Privilege,’” was published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017. She has a PhD in French and French Studies from New York University, and has read a lot of 19th century French Jewish newspapers for a 21st century American.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO