JPod- hear, hear. I think many of the egghead blogs have embarrassed themselves taking Hirshman as seriously as they do. Tapped has an excuse because Hirshman wrote the article which launched the book for The American Prospect. Still, every single thing I’ve seen written by Hirshman or about her, makes it difficult not to just roll my eyes and move on (Though I did note that Hirshman wrote a gawdawful op-ed for the Washington Post the other week).

She says that unless women work, they aren’t fully human beings. We’re supposed to take this seriously? I thought feminists were supposed to be champions of personal choice, self-empowerment, constructing their own inner-narratives, defining “me” on my terms, not seeking standards in the “male paradigms” of the partiarchal eurocentric capitalistic system yada yada yada yada, blah, blah, blah. And now we’re told that working for the system defines meaning and that not just social equality but female humanity itself depends on women acting like men. Worse, she doesn’t understand why men work, as JPod notes. Men work for a number of reasons, egoism and ambition high among them and “for society” very low among them. But — as studies show — men work harder when they get married and have kids because they want to be good providers. In other words the important ingredient is familial obligation. For many women, familial obligation involves staying home and nurturing young children. In a perfect world, more men would stay home if they could and perhaps more women would work than do now (though I’m not too sure). But Hirshman’s reactionary leftism says the collective and the movement come before families and there’s really only one way for women to meet her definition of humanity. It’s all so tired and cliched.