Girls Gone Wild

Some good discussions happening on the Feminista front this week. I love Alan Shimel’s blog post re: booth babes at the RSA conference. I didn’t go to the RSA conference, but my jaw dropped when I heard that they still have that! Sounds like RSA marketing is trying to be some bad combo between Nascar, Vegas, and a Dungeons and Dragons convention.

But the real feminista front has been in a world far far away from technology conferences: In the past couple of weeks both Sandra Day O’Connor (retired from Supreme Court) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (currently only woman on Supreme Court) gave interviews that have tickled the ears of feminists (and, as Dahlia Lithwick notes, parodists) – O’Connor shed a little more light on her "choice" to retire and her regret that she was not replaced by another woman, Ginsburg discussed her loneliness and isolation in the Supreme Court as the only woman.

You can read the interview Ginsburg gave to USA Today here, and O’Connor’s interview with Newsweek here. You can also ready a great article by Dahlia Lithwick of Slate, “The female justices begin to reflect on feminism.” (By the way: O’Connor’s interview occurs in an edition of Newsweek that features Paris Hilton and Britney Spears on the cover with the headline “The Girls Gone Wild Effect”. Quite fitting, eh?)

I’m both heartened and awed that they, particularly Ginsburg, are talking out. In general, it is (unfortunately) atypical for women in leadership positions to draw attention to their own gender. But for Ginsburg, I find it especially significant because she is currently a Supreme Court Justice. While O’Connor is trying to continue her career outside of the Supreme Court, Ginsburg will have to deal with any potential backlash while she is still a Supreme Court Justice. The guts necessary for this public moment of what seems like plain ole honestly is apparent if we contrast it with other women in high leadership positions.

Last month for example, I referenced a NYTimes article, “How Suite It Isn’t: A Dearth of Female Bosses.” One salient point mentioned in the article that I did not broach was that the vast majority of the Fortune 500 female chief executives who were contacted for the article “did not want to participate in an article about female C.E.O.’s.” Instead, they preferred to be “acknowledged for their accomplishments, rather than for being women.”

While I can understand where they are coming from –if being a successful woman leader is tantamount in many ways to that woman’s overcoming her “otherness”, calling attention to that “otherness” would be counterproductive– I personally find this mindset itself counterproductive. (In case you couldn’t tell!) If we don't discuss, bring attention, and argue about these points, then the status quo can be accepted and perpetuated all too easily.

One might speculate that it is precisely for this reason that O’Connor and Ginsburg are speaking out. What message are we sending to women entering law school or aspiring to be clerks for the Supreme Court when having a woman on the Supreme Court in in the process of being token-ized, and the best Bush could do in his effort nominate a woman to replace O’Connor was to nominate someone who fit a/[his?] comfortable stereotype of a non-threatening-thank-you-card-writing-“comforter”? I'll echo Lithwick's "Shwaaaa?" with my own "Bleh!!" here.

By the same token, what message are we sending when women working at technology companies (or "checking out" technology companies!) have to see booth babes in skimpy outfits peddling their bodies as a means to peddling the technology company's wares?