America’s Hillary problem

The debate over gender issues raised by Hillary Clinton’s candidacy took a brutal turn last… The debate over gender issues raised by Hillary Clinton’s candidacy took a brutal turn last week on The New York Times’ op-ed page, fluctuating somewhere between flimsy argumentation and gross sexism. And the authors were some of America’s best-known female intellectuals.

First up came iconic feminist Gloria Steinem, whose Tuesday op-ed, “Women Are Never Front-Runners,” attempted to explain why she felt Hillary Clinton was the feminist choice for president. Beginning with a bizarre hypothetical that challenged the reader to imagine a female politician with Barack Obama’s background ever becoming president, Steinem asserted that “gender is probably the most restricting force in American life.”

Not that she wanted to portray the fight against racism and sexism as movements at odds – she wrote: “That’s why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love