I stumbled across the story when, while planning a book, I happened to watch Sex and the City's Charlotte agonize about getting her wedding announcement in the "Sunday Styles" section of The New York Times. What better sample, I thought, than the brilliantly educated and accomplished brides of the "Sunday Styles," circa 1996?
At marriage, they included a vice president of client communication, a gastroenterologist, a lawyer, an editor, and a marketing executive. In 2003 and 2004, I tracked them down and called them.
I interviewed about 80 percent of the 41 women who announced their weddings over three Sundays in 1996. Around 40 years old, college graduates with careers: Who was more likely than they to be reaping feminism's promise of opportunity? Imagine my shock when I found almost all the brides from the first Sunday at home with their children. Statistical anomaly? Nope. Same result for the next Sunday. And the one after that.
Ninety percent of the brides I found had had babies. Of the 30 with babies, five were still working full time. Twenty-five, or 85 percent, were not working full time. Of those not working full time, 10 were working part time but often a long way from their prior career paths. And half the married women with children were not working at all.
And there is more. In 2000, Harvard Business School professor Myra Hart surveyed the women of the classes of 1981, 1986, and 1991 and found that only 38 percent of female Harvard MBAs were working full time. A 2004 survey by the Center for Work-Life Policy of 2,443 women with a graduate degree or very prestigious bachelor's degree revealed that 43 percent of those women with children had taken a time out, primarily for family reasons.
Taking a survey by sampling from the NYT Sunday Style or HBS graduate is silly. It is obviously is not a accuarate representation of the population as a whole.
These people will have lots of money, the majority of people cannot (or chose not) get by on one income.
Softball was probably dropped because most of the world either doesn't play that game or doesn't take it seriously. The same as baseball.
I think FILA has to do something to show IOC it is trying even if in reality housewives will not budge.
In N. America, S. America, the Caribean and the Far East (Japan, Taiwan, S. Korea, Phillipines) baseball is a very important sport. It shows that IOC is Euro-centric more than anything and that the US does not have a lot of pull.
Name one sport in the Olympics that is played only in Europe.
That wasn't ODH's point - softball is a sport, along with baseball, that is played pretty much everywhere but Europe. That is why it was dropped, not that it is only played in the U.S. There are permutations of nearly every sport, everywhere, so that isn't a valid question, Big, nor is it one that would prove that the IOC isn't Euro-centric.
Everyone winning a trophy is a part of FILA intentions to appease housewives who are not interested in watching people from far away evil lands win everything.
Right. Because back in the Cold War days of the 1970's, it's not like the darlings of the world were Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci, from the evil Soviet Union and Romania.
And, geez, in the winter, everyone just loved to hate skating darling Ekaterina Gordeeva, especially after her husband and skating partner died. Oh and how about Irina Slutskaya and her story in the 2006 Olympics -- her big comeback after suffering from heart problems.
Part of what makes the Olympics so popular for so many people, are the stories of the athletes, and watching the underdogs win. Non-wrestling people cheered for Rulon even if they had no clue what was going on. They saw the story of the "unbeatable" opponent, and then here comes this farm boy from nowhere who beats him.
Another example -- 1996 Olympics in gymnastics. The US women won the team gold, for the first time. Huge deal. But there were lots of features and stories about the Romanian team and the ordeals they had been through during the revolution in their country. And even though the American audience wanted the US team to win, the story of the Romanian team made you want to see them do well too. Same thing for the Russian team -- they showed the decline in their training facilities since the breakup of the Soviet Union and it made you empathetic for their athletes too.
I could go on and on but like Bluestater, I'm obsessed with the Olympics and I have about 4 big boxes of videotapes from every one going back to 1988. I always end up rooting for athletes I've never heard of, even the ones from "far away evil lands" because once you learn their stories, you realize they really aren't different from the "good guys" in the "good and perfect lands."
"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can" -- John Wesley
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