French Women Reflect on Gender | Wendi Deng Murdoch

Boys Club | RedTracker

French Analysts Report Uptick of French Women’s Unconscious Memories

Too Proud to Be Jealous Newsweek

In discussing the fallout in France of the Dominique Strauss Kahn situation, Newsweek writes:

This is the war between the Marquis de Sade and Simone de Beauvoir. Denis Olivennes, the head of Paris Match, Le Journal du Dimanche, and Europe1 radio, concludes: “In France, everything ends up as a concept.”

The piece digs deeply into French gender relations in a way that most Americans — especially American women — can’t understand. We’ve already reported in depth about Sinclair’s background, career and acknowledgement that she has always known that DSK didn’t believe in marital fidelity. She is proud of using her estimated $200 million inheritance to cultivate his career.

Anne Sinclair is too powerful a person and too intelligent to be a patsy, but her impeccable behavior is a puzzle on both sides of the Atlantic. Her best friend, Elisabeth Badinter, wife of former minister of justice Robert Badinter, publicly rejects the idea that fidelity should be a mandatory part of marriage. On the other hand, one Paris society woman says: “If she wanted him to be president, she should have put him on meds.”

In what is the most remarkable statement in the entire Newsweek piece, To Proud to Be Jealous, we read that the DSK affair — whatever its ending — is causing a seismic change in the consciousnesses — and unconsciousnesses — of French women.

A Freudian analyst says that as the weeks have gone by, more and more of his patients are spontaneously remembering violent sexual episodes from their past.

Anne herself has shared details of her short-lived love affair with a French man and her exposure to many of the ideas in this story. It presently resides on another blog — because Anne doesn’t double post her writing. On this topic, she will make an exception, bringing her own French story back to AOC.

Sensual Pregnancy | French Health Ministry to Tantra AOC Health

(This article above includes exclusive AOC commentary about American author now living in Paris Elizabeth Bard and her shock and amazement over how wonderful it was having a baby in France.)

Liberté, Égalité, Fertilité NYTimes

Katrin Benhold writes about the significant benefits of being having a child in France. About to leave the country for England, Benhold lays out the penalties and lack of support for working women in England, a situation very similar to that faced by working mothers in the US.

 … for this woman at least, none of that (other French lifestyle benefits) can beat a combination of free preschools, family allowances, tax deductions for each child, a paid, four-month maternity leave and to top it all off, an extended course of gymnastics, complete with personal trainer and electric stimulation devices, to get you and your birth canal muscles back into shape, courtesy of the taxpayer. (I still remember my physiotherapist cheerfully promising me a “six-pack” in time for the bikini season after I gave birth the last time.)

Benhold references the French machismo, which we are all writing and talking about these days. The only point of her article that we take issue with is her implied suggestion that France lags seriously behind the US in the World Economic Forum’s 2010 gender equality report.  She writes:

France ranks 46th in the World Economic Forum’s 2010 gender equality report, lagging behind the United States, most of Europe, but also Kazakhstan and Jamaica. Women in France earn on average 26 percent less than men but do two-thirds of the housework.

This statement is true for 2010 but in the case of France and the US, the opposite situation existed in 2009. In writing the report, authors stated that the reason the US improved slightly was because of the number of women hired by the Obama Administration. Now that so many of those women have left and women lost ground in Congress to our lowest point in 30 years, we expect the US to decline again in the 2010 report.

Benhold’s comment is valid, comparing France to the rest of Europe, which leads the World Economic Index.

More reading from Sinclair’s best friend Elizabeth Badinter.

French Writer Elizabeth Badinter Asks “Is Motherhood a Form of Oppression? AOC Women

Serious Charges Against Rep David Wu

Congressman, Named in Sex Case, to Resign NYTimes

Democratic Rep. David Wu of Oregon in December 2010. Tim Sloan/Agence France-Presse - Getty ImagesRepresentative David Wu, Democrat of Oregon, said Tuesday that he will resign from Congress and will challenge accusations that he initiated an unwelcome sexual encounter with a young women, then 18, the daughter of a large donor to Wu’s campaign. 

The Oregonian reports that a few months later, the young woman called Mr Wu’s office, leaving a distraught message on the main phone line, saying that Representative Wu had forced himself on her. Mr Wu had previously said he would not seek reelection but Democrats insisted that he resign.

Mr. Wu has been under fire for months as he fought earlier accusations of a mental breakdown after a divorce last year. In February, several staff members quit after describing erratic behavior and unwanted e-mails that included a picture of Mr. Wu dressed in a tiger outfit. It was not clear whether the mass resignations were related to the sexual accusation.

Presently, Representative Wu says he will resign after the debt ceiling vote is finished. 

Fierce! Loyal! Wonder Wife

Deng! The True Story of Wonder Wendy Newsweek

Important Dinner for Women guests (from left): Wendi Deng, Mrs Brown, Queen Rania of Jordon, Nicole Kidman, Ethiopian model Liya Kebede and Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi gather at New York restaurant Cipriani’sAfter Wendi Deng’s pie-throwing incident, to protect husband Rupert Murdoch, she has moved from ‘gold digger’ to heroine, even in the eyes of the Wall Street Journal. AOC — being about smart, sexy women with heart — knows that Wendy Deng (Mrs Rupert Murdoch) is a substantive person.

Newsweek writes that Deng has softened Murdoch’s strongly conservative views, because she runs with a different crowd. See above. Not only does Wendi have Murdoch mixing with Bono and David Geffen, Google’s Eric Schmidt and Dasha Zhukova. Nicole Kidman is godmother to their two girls, who were christened on the banks of the river Jordan in the presence of Queen Rania.

In no way are we trying to make Rupert Murdoch a good guy. We’re only affirming the idea that Wendi Deng is her own woman and should be judged accordingly. 

Last of the moguls The Economist