Former Chicagoan Linda Hirshman ruffled feathers with a 2005 article that argued that women, particularly highly educated women, who left the workforce to stay home and raise kids were harming society.
Such women, she argued, should make money and wield power. Anything less would be a failure to feminism, not a triumph of female agency.
“The real glass ceiling is at home,” she wrote.
Her article was published in 2005 by The American Prospect as the “mommy wars” raged, pitting mothers of opposing viewpoints on such issues against each other.
Ms. Hirshman, alarmed by the large number of women subscribing to the opt-out phenomenon, as it was known, offered several rules women could follow, including: Focus on a well-paying job that would allow a woman to avoid solving job problems with marriage. Also: Consider “marrying down” — to a less financially well-set partner — to have the upper hand in the relationship.
“Don’t think of this as brutally strategic,” she wrote. “If you are devoted to your career goals and would like a man who will support that, you’re just doing what men throughout the ages have done: placing a safe bet.”
Women, she said, should avoid taking on the lion’s share of housework, even if that would mean having a dirtier house.
“Either the other adult in the family will take a hand or the children will grow up with robust immune systems,” she wrote.
She also urged women to simplify their lives by having just one child.
“The opt-out revolution is really a downward spiral,” she wrote. “We care because what they do is bad for them, is certainly bad for society, and is widely imitated.”
Ms. Hirshman, 79, died Oct. 31 in Vermont. The cause was cancer.
As part of her research, she spoke with brides whose names she got from wedding announcements in The New York Times to find out what happened to them 10 years later — 85% in her sampling had left the workplace or were working part-time.
The article stirred rage among conservatives and liberals and led to appearances on “60 Minutes” and “Good Morning America.”
“She was never short on opinions,” her daughter Sarah Hirshman. ”And she said, ‘Look, political revolutions that bring societal change have a structure, and I am going to write less about feminism and more about that framework and what makes an effective social revolution and who makes that change.’ ”
Ms. Hirshman met her first husband Harold Hirshman at Cornell University. They got married in 1966, and both went to law school at the University of Chicago, where Ms. Hirshman was one of three women in the class of 1969, her daughter said.
Linda Hirshman with future husband Harold Hirshman at their graduation from Cornell University in 1966.
Provided
“It was incredibly hostile, the whole institution and everyone she encountered told her that she wasn’t supposed to be there and wasn’t deserving or equal,” her daughter said.
She got her degree, began representing unions and argued cases before the Supreme Court. She stepped away from labor law after actions taken under former President Ronald Reagan limited union power.
“She said, ‘I’m not going to keep throwing myself at this because it’s not going to change in the near future,’ ” her daughter said.
Ms. Hirshman became a law professor at what was then Chicago-Kent College of Law, where she brought a feminist perspective to the legal and philosophical relationship between men and women. She got her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Illinois Chicago and moved to Massachusetts to teach philosophy at Brandeis University.
“Under no circumstances did she stay home and take care of kids,” her daughter said.
Ms. Hirshman was born April 6, 1944, outside Cleveland to Charles Redlick, who ran a floor-coverings store, and Sylvia Bogart Redlick, who took care of the kids and helped at the store.
She wrote her first op-ed piece when she was just 11 years old and sent it to Cleveland’s major newspaper, The Plain Dealer.
The American Prospect article was the basis for her 2006 book “Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World.”
Ms. Hirshman went on to publish four more books: “Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution,” “Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World,” “Reckoning: The Epic Battle Against Sexual Abuse and Harassment” and “The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation.”
At the time of her death, she was working on a book about right-wing media’s destabilization of democracy with media columnist and friend Margaret Sullivan.
Ms. Hirshman lived in Chicago from 1966 to 1997, mostly in Lincoln Park. Her first marriage ended in divorce. David Forkosh, her second husband, died in 2012.
Services have been held. A memorial is being planned in New York City in the spring.
Ms. Hirshman is also survived by stepdaughters Margot Ettlinger and Elyse Cutler and seven grandchildren.
