The deck is stacked against them.

Women get prosecuted for things that men do routinely and get away with all the in the corporate world. If women don't do these things, they don't get promoted, and if they do, they ultimately take the fall.

Men who had the most power had the most children. It's called natural selection. Value systems are embedded in our genes, we do not select our value systems. Women who can compete with men and win probably have high testosterone. It would be interesting to compare brain scans of women winners with those of the more placid non-competitive types.

Dunn's big mistake was not to treat her fellow board members as people of power who must be respected. Despite her skills and competence she took the weasels way, and now she should pay for it. Who will ever trust her again?

My oldest son and I had this discussion years ago when this feminist Mother told him that things would change for the better when women were in positions of power in every segment of society. His reply: The gender doesn't matter--women will be no better than men when they are in power. As it turns out he was right and women are indeed no better than men because they have bought into the male value system which is based on getting power. What we need is a different value system.

Some plants are carnivorous. Daisies are plants. Ergo some daisies are carnivorous? Hmm. I don't think so. Pretty amusing though.

Viewing women as a "side" is an appalling way to look at society. The only real sides are people who believe in equal rights and opportunities for everyone, and those who don't.

There is no evidence that women in our culture are still oppressed, or that the glass ceiling is in any way real. So there is no reason to admire a successful woman and more than a successful man. Women's advocates will always point to the disparity in the number of women in higher positions as evidence of discrimination. When that is simply not-- logical.

It's curious that the gender wars usually boil down to a dispute between passion and reason. Women's groups are certainly well meaning and very passionate about their cause. But it continually escapes them that they are not actually right.

As long as we're talking about women in positions of power who are not exactly role models, let's spare a moment to remember Helen Chenoweth, she of the black-helicopter theories and environment-trashing and pro-militia philosophies.

The former congressman, as she insisted on being called, died the way she lived -- defying government regulation. She was killed a few days ago in a car crash. She was not wearing her seat belt, and was thrown from the vehicle. At the time of the crash, she was holding her 5-month-old grandson in her lap (no car seat, of course); somehow, he escaped injury.

Patrician Dunn, former Chair of the HP BOD, messed up because she is a poor decision maker. She didn't mess up because she's a woman, and she didn't let down other women, any more than Ken Lay and Andy Fastow let down the brotherhood.

Not one man slapped his forehead and said "How could Ken Lay do this to all of us guys?!"

Blaming Patrician Dunn for 'letting down the side' is whining. It places a responsibility on her shoulders that doesn't belone there - in fact the responsibility to do women proud doesn't rest on any one woman's shoulders, and nor does it rest on women's collective shoulders. All of us, men and women, have an obligation to behave in an ethical way. To succeed or fail at this is simply human, no male or female.

Of course, women ruthless enough to survive at those altitudes are not likely to be politically sophisticated enough to get this, but they do owe it to the rest of us not to wind up a headline on CourtTV. Their success has in some measure been fought for by feminists, whether they acknowledge that or not. And while in the current cases, all women don't seem to be getting a rap for thei bad behavior, that's the exception, not the rule.

Real equality is going to come not when a female Einstein is recognized as quickly as a male Einstein, but when a female schlemiel is promoted as quickly as a male schlemiel.

- Bella Abzug

It never was.

Forget about breaking laws for the moment...

Success is partly based on hard work, but always involves even larger doses of "knowing the right people" and "being in the right place at the right time." This last part is also called "dumb luck."

Women *really* need to understand this and stop elevating accomplished women onto some kind of "pedestal" of impossible expectation. They are not better people than you, and Patricia Dunn is not some kind of post-modern prometheus.

Take ownership of your own destiny, for pete's sake. I don't see anybody forcing you to wear a burqa. Don't wait for some other woman to "prove that it can be done." Work hard. Network. Get out there and roll the dice. And don't think that men won't cheer you on. The vast majority of us will.

The good ones, anyway.

(Just take us out for a few drinks if you "make it." :-))

From an essay on AbuGhraib by Barbara Ehrenreich:

"A certain kind of feminism, or perhaps I should say a certain kind of feminist naiveté, died in Abu Ghraib. It was a feminism that saw men as the perpetual perpetrators, women as the perpetual victims and male sexual violence against women as the root of all injustice. Rape has repeatedly been an instrument of war and, to some feminists, it was beginning to look as if war was an extension of rape. There seemed to be at least some evidence that male sexual sadism was connected to our species' tragic propensity for violence. That was before we had seen female sexual sadism in action.

But it's not just the theory of this naive feminism that was wrong. So was its strategy and vision for change. That strategy and vision rested on the assumption, implicit or stated outright, that women were morally superior to men. We had a lot of debates over whether it was biology or conditioning that gave women the moral edge -- or simply the experience of being a woman in a sexist culture. But the assumption of superiority, or at least a lesser inclination toward cruelty and violence, was more or less beyond debate. After all, women do most of the caring work in our culture, and in polls are consistently less inclined toward war than men.

I'm not the only one wrestling with that assumption today. Mary Jo Melone, a columnist for the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, wrote on May 7: "I can't get that picture of England [pointing at a hooded Iraqi man's genitals] out of my head because this is not how women are expected to behave. Feminism taught me 30 years ago that not only had women gotten a raw deal from men, we were morally superior to them."

If that assumption had been accurate, then all we would have had to do to make the world a better place -- kinder, less violent, more just -- would have been to assimilate into what had been, for so many centuries, the world of men. We would fight so that women could become the generals, CEOs, senators, professors and opinion-makers -- and that was really the only fight we had to undertake. Because once they gained power and authority, once they had achieved a critical mass within the institutions of society, women would naturally work for change. That's what we thought, even if we thought it unconsciously -- and it's just not true. Women can do the unthinkable. "