Web Letters: Who's Afraid of Judy Maccabee?

Pollitt unwittingly explains an issue that has distorted feminist thinking since the '70s--the fact that women make less than men in similar jobs. She explains that men are choosing not to study for the rabbinate because there are so many more lucrative career choices. Increasingly, women are choosing to fill this void to a point where Jewish seminaries are as much as 60 percent female. Pollitt is saying that the majority of men are driven by financial gain in their career choices, while women seem to be choosing careers that give them other kinds of satisfaction.

If true, then even within the same field it seems likely men will work toward raising their income, and thus their job satisfaction, while women care more about other types of career rewards. Nothing wrong with this, except that feminists point to income disparity as proof of discrimination instead of proof that women may have a wider and more nuanced sense of career-derived self-worth and satisfaction.

Barry Fast

Bronx, NY