Women's Rights Employment Law Blog

Pregnancy Pause continues to mark the beginning of this century as one of the most crucial question in women’s rights movement. Essentially also because many women activists themselves are opposed to equating the pause with sexual discrimination consequence. Indeed, at the helm are concepts such as “good family”, “responsibility” “motherhood”, which sound too harmless to pose direct human rights violations.

In focus recently is Elizabeth Vargas, co-anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight" whose announcement that she was taking an extended maternity leave (basically implying that she was replaced by a male anchor), has led to feminists' organizations claiming Miss Vargas' announcement was a cover-up of a demotion based on sexual discrimination.

Chenoa McKnight, the assistant to the president at the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute makes a conservative argument against feminists today in the Washington Times.

Although that is not very unusual, what strikes one are the manners in which mainstream media provides scope for publication of some views that, one thought had been answered at least a decade or two back in this country.

Let us revisit the classic right-wing arguments that McKnight proudly showcases, in her own words, in the article published today:

What do feminist leaders have against being a "stay-at-home" mom?

How many of these feminists are mothers?

It is a personal choice for each woman (and her husband) how she juggles family and a career.

Feminist leaders really are not pro-family and in more ways than one are not pro-women either.

What kind of role models for women are feminists seeking to support?

Barbara Bush said, "Your success as a family, our success as a society, depends not on what happens at the White House but on what happens inside your house."

In the words of my wise father, the greatest legacy you can leave in this life is with your children.

If such deeply reactionary thoughts (affirming the colonial legacies of ‘stay-at-home’, husband’s choice, pro-family, role models, ‘inside your house’, and children concepts) reflect the acute intellectual vacuum of the neo-cons, their publications for wide dissemination surely indicate the slavery of the so-called fourth estate to the first three branches of phony religiously conservative democracies.