arts & entertainment
O
The Reluctant
Feminist
Hanna Rosin and how the post-industrial economy
favors women — for better or worse.
Eric Herschthal
New York Jewish Week
T
he opening scene in Hanna
Rosin's 2010 Atlantic essay, "The
End of Men," may one day be as
iconic as the beginning of Betty Friedan's
1963 seminal work, The Feminine
Mystique.
Friedan's book famously opened with a
scene of a typical mid-century housewife
who "made the beds, shopped for grocer
ies, matched slipcover material, ate pea-
nut butter sandwiches with her children
... [and] lay beside her husband at night."
But, Friedan went on, "she was afraid to
ask even of herself the silent question —
`Is this all?"'
Friedan — like Rosin, a Jewish feminist
— helped spark a revolution. Her book
is credited with helping to prod unprec-
edented numbers of women into the
workplace.
And while on some basic criteria, like
pay parity, women still lag behind men,
they have now crossed the mark that
Friedan probably never envisioned: In
2010, women became a majority of the
workforce.
Rosin's essay, which was released in
expanded book form on Sept. 11, started
from this basic fact. The book, The End of
Men and the Rise of Women (Riverhead),
goes on to describe how the new post-
industrial economy increasingly favors
women.
And like Friedan's book, Rosin's Atlantic
piece has already sparked a national con-
versation: Are women really better situ-
ated to lead in the new economy? And if
so, should men be worried — and should
women be worrying, too?
"It's not just that women are catching
up to men" in the new economy, Rosin
said in a recent interview at the New
York offices of Slate, where she has been
a longtime writer. "It's that in so many
ways, women have already surpassed
men."
Rosin's essay began with an anecdote
about a colorful rogue biologist named
Ronald Ericcson. In the 1970s, he pio-
neered a method for couples to improve
the odds of producing babies of their
desired gender. At the time, Ericcson
became a lightning rod in the media, with
nearly everyone believing that couples
"Its not just that women are
catching up to men" in the
new economy. "It's that in so
many ways, women have
already surpassed men."
- Hanna Rosin
still dominated by men," Rosin wrote in
would overwhelming choose to have boys.
In Rosin's essay, she caught up with
the essay and repeats in the book. "But
given the power of the forces pushing at
Ericcson, now in his 70s. And what she
found shocked her and Ericcson both: By
the economy, this setup feels like the last
gasp of a dying age rather than the per-
the late-'90s, couples using his method
were choosing girls over boys by a 2-to-1
manent establishment."
Rosin, 42, is, perhaps, surprisingly
margin; a more recent method for gender
selection had couples opting for girls 75
ambivalent about calling herself a femi-
nist. She grew up in a fairly traditional
percent of the time.
In her subsequent research, what Rosin
home: Both her parents were Israelis, and
her father was the sole breadwinner in the
found was that women seem to have a
better advantage in today's
family before Rosin left for
economy than men, mainly
Stanford University.
because they've acquired
Her parents, Sephardic
Jews from modern-day
skills, through more educa-
tion, and they have generic
Yemen, moved to Israel
traits — they're more
in the 1930s, and Rosin
was born in Israel. But she
focused and are better at
communicating — that are
moved with her family to
Queens, N.Y., when she was
critical for today's economy.
The facts bear it out: In
5. Her father, a truck driver
AND THE RISE OF WOMEN
in Israel, left for a new job
2010, for the first time in
history, women held the
as a taxi driver in New York.
majority of jobs in the
Her mother, who didn't start
United States. Men lost 75
working until Rosin was at
Stanford, became a secretary
percent of the 8 million
The gender and
jobs lost during the Great
in
the Diamond District.
economic issues Rosin
Recession — and many of
But
her mother still works
raises in her book are
those jobs, like construction, playing out in this
there — another sign that
will probably only hobble
women have so far been
year's presidential race.
back. The most robust
more flexible than men in
starting their lives over, a
long-term growth in the
economy will be in service industries such point emphasized in Rosin's book.
as healthcare and education — which are
"We were a working-class family so talk
dominated by women.
about feminism never really came up,"
Even at the highest rung of society —
Rosin said. But she grew up surrounded
in jobs like doctors, lawyers and corporate by assertive women — who, if they didn't
managers — women have been rising
work, still had more control in the family
fast, though they still are in the minority.
than the men. It wasn't really until college
Perhaps the most ominous sign of change,
that she was exposed to the intellectual
though, is the educational data: For every
side of feminism: works by Friedan and
two men who graduate from college today, Simone de Beauvoir, two lodestars for her
three women do; and women are now the
still.
majority in medical and law schools.
"I was never part of the [feminist]
"Yes, the upper reaches of society are
`movement," she said. "I didn't participate
THE END
OF MEN
HANNA ROSIN
in any 'Take Back the Night' marches, but
I was interested in feminist ideas."
When asked about the way a Jewish
background may have influenced other
Jewish feminists — the list is exhaustive,
including not only Friedan, but Gloria
Steinem, Bella Abzug, Naomi Wolf, Susan
Faludi, Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich
and Emma Goldman, to name a few —
she had to stop and think.
"I never really thought about it till you
said it, but it is significant, the role Jewish
women have played in feminism:' she
said. "Maybe there's something about the
`outsiderness' of being Jewish that makes
for a fiery feminist
e."
Perhaps that outsiderness has shaped
her work as well: a working-class Jewish
girl, born in Israel, who's pushed her way
into America's elite institutions.
After graduating from Stanford (her
thesis was on Shakespeare's The Merchant
of Venice), she began her career in jour-
nalism at the Washington Post. She's had
an impressive career ever since, with staff
jobs at the New Republic, the Atlantic and
Slate.
She's married to David Plotz, an edi-
tor at Slate who frequently writes about
Jewish topics, and they're in the same D.C.
circle (they live in Washington) with other
prominent Jewish journalists, like Jeffrey
Goldberg and Franklin Foer, who are all
in a Torah-study group together.
"Torah study isn't for me:' she said,
noting that she doesn't participate in the
study group. "But I guess you can say that
I'm active in our Conservative synagogue"
=Where her three childreh, two boys and
a girl, go or will go to Sunday school.
Jewish issues do come up in her work.
In 2010, for instance, she wrote a piece for
New York magazine about why she chose
Feminist on page 64
September 27 8 2012
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