Sexism in the 21st century under the banner of Scrutiny

While we certainly learned a lot from Hillary's campaign run, with new positions to be filled by women, especially one of the most powerful positions in the United States empty, women have a lot to gain, or lose, not just by the position being filled, but by what questions we ask and how we ask them as we look for our next representative. This article is a good beginning to that discussion.

In this article, they show concrete examples of her work and attitude. If you listen to the audio of this story, you will hear her asking good questions and interrogating the attorneys, which is her job. The arguments against her have now switched from her being too empathetic to being she is too tough. Quite a change there. I highly suggest this article and reading the comments that follow it. NPR commentors are so much better then other commentors, it seems they are much much better at having a grown-up discussion rather then just complaining...see my ISJ blog (upcoming) about this.

clipped from www.npr.org Is Sonia Sotomayor Mean? Morning Edition, June 15, 2009 · The Almanac of the Federal Judiciary publishes lawyers' evaluations of each federal judge, and updates those evaluations every few years. In Sonia Sotomayor's years on the bench, lawyers have often raved about her, calling her brilliant, tireless — just the absolute best. They have also called her tough and unwilling to put up with guff. But in the most recent evaluation, interviews with eight to 10 unnamed lawyers also produced some less flattering comments: "a terror on the bench," "nasty," "overly aggressive," "a bit of a bully." when Sotomayor first joined the Court of Appeals, he [Judge Guido Calabresi, former Yale Law School dean and Sotomayor's mentor] began hearing rumors that she was overly aggressive, and he started keeping track. "And I must say I found no difference at all. So I concluded that all that was going on was that there were some male lawyers who couldn't stand being questioned toughly by a woman," Calabresi says. "It was sexism in its most obvious form."