Flight of Fancy Footwork

Women's new equality: the right to lose their jobs, by Ellen Goodman

Let me begin by raising a glass of champagne to the official closing of the math gap. It turns out that girls do not lack the math gene. Nor are they math-phobic. Nor is there any "intrinsic" difference - thank you, Larry Summers - between the abilities of girls and boys to succeed in the numbers business. There's no reason at all for inequality. In fact, there's no longer inequality.

A new study of the math scores of 7 million students in 10 states shows that girls are now on a par with boys. How many years has it been since protesters stuck a sock in Barbie's mouth for complaining that "math class is tough"? Girls have gotten to parity the new-fashioned way. By taking more math classes.

This comes just in time for our young math whizzes to figure out a harder puzzle. There is another gender gap closing, this time in the workplace. After decades spent pursuing equality in wages and work, women have finally achieved it - ta da - in job loss.

A report shepherded through Congress by Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York shows that since the 2001 recession, women have lost jobs and withdrawn from the workplace at the same rate as men. More to the point, they've remained out for the same reasons as men: layoffs, downsizing, outsourcing and wage stagnation.

Gosh male and female brains are the same after all -- whatever made us think differently?

The rest of the article is a bunch of prattle about how women are unfairly treated by the semantics of the propagandists.

Quite amusing.