Estrich and her sisters have long assumed that most women are similar to men in their eagerness to scale the ladders of career success. But the hordes never materialized, and many of the women who did charge through turned around and charged right out again, dashing the feminist dream of numerical parity in the law firms, on the corporate boards, and in the halls of Congress. This, to her, is a disaster that demands drastic action. She urges women to research the companies that do not have enough women and boycott their products. As critics of this idea have pointed out, some professions tilt to one sex or the other for reasons wholly unrelated to discrimination.
Few men choose to teach preschool, while few women want to be lumberjacks.
The small number of women at the top of large companies is due far less to discrimination than to the fact that few women qualify for such positions. To Estrich, however, the women who have opened businesses of their own are nothing but victims, forced out of her world by systemic bigotry. But diminish she does, over and over again. There seems, however, to be no end to what Estrich wants women to do for her cause, including, when it comes to the issue of sexual harassment, throwing all principle to the winds. But no matter.