Young, Successful, Well Paid: Are They Killing Feminism?

Posted on Mar 29, 2006

From amazon.com

This new crop of high-earning female professionals marks an “end to the millennia during which women of all classes shared the same major life experiences to a far greater degree than men,” says an expert.

Today’s crop of ambitious businesswomen will earn just as much as their male counterparts but will also kill female solidarity in the process, concludes a controversial UK academic report.

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The Guardian:

Chiara Cargnel wants to have it all: a high-flying career and a successful marriage. So far she is halfway there. At 26, she is an investment banker in London working over 70 hours a week and earning more than 80,000 a year. Cargnel, like many other young women, is excelling in a world many thought governed not by their rules, but by rules set and enforced by men.

For the first time in history these ‘elite women’ can succeed in any career they want. According to a remarkable thesis that has blown open the debate around feminism, sexism and the future role of women, a new generation of bright, rich professionals have broken through the glass ceiling and have nothing to fear from the men around them. They will be just as successful.

The thesis was expounded in a highly controversial article for Prospect magazine by Alison Wolf, a professor at Kings College London and author of Does Education Matter? She argues that the meteoric rise of this new generation of ‘go-getting women’ who want high-powered, well-paid jobs has dire consequences for society. Wolf says it has diverted the most talented away from the caring professions such as teaching, stopped them volunteering, is in danger of ending the notion of ‘female altruism’, has turned many women off having children - and has effectively killed off feminism.

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