SlowpokeBlog

When Nancy Pelosi was sworn in as the first woman Speaker of the House, the general tone of the news media was a very normalizing "Wow, isn't that great?", as if it proved what an egalitarian society we've become. While I'm happy to see a sister ready to assume global domination when Bush and Cheney choke on their cream puffs, my overall reaction was that we should've been reading about this in books about 19th-century history. Had I been a producer in charge of news programming, I would have aired a two-hour long, in-depth report on what exactly took us 231 years (or 218 if you prefer the date of April 1, 1789, on which the House formally began work and first achieved a quorum).

At the same time, there's been a lot of chatter lately about new gizmos, software, etc. Our technology makes us feel like hot stuff, like we're more advanced than everyone else. Yet there are many ways in which we lag behind. Not that I'm saying women aren't horribly oppressed in other nations (I'm sure some yahoo will grossly misinterpret this cartoon and suggest I try moving to Saudi Arabia) -- but I do find it curious that a number of other countries have elected female top dogs, Jamaica apparently being the most recent. Check out this timeline.