Ann Marlowe

As human as you and I
A proposed ban on reproductive cloning demonstrates our irrational fear of the unknown, not the vagaries of science.

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By Ann Marlowe

“Images of a divided existence — of Doppelgangers and Doubles — become most compelling when family relationships are most upset.”

That line from cultural critic Hillel Schwartz comes from his 1994 book, “The Culture of the Copy,” but it speaks directly to the current controversy over human cloning. Late last month, the House of Representatives passed a bill that bans human cloning for both reproduction and stem-cell research. So irrational was the panic over cloning that an exception to the cloning bill for stem-cell research was also defeated. The bill is not likely to gather the necessary 60 Senate votes, largely because stem-cell research has many and eloquent defenders. But human reproductive cloning, currently ineligible for government funding, is likely to be banned in the near future.

This prospect, though expected, should not pass unremarked. As Schwartz implies, there is a large irrational element in our feelings about doubles and clones, and I would argue that the severity of the House bill — those who defy the ban would be liable for a fine of $1 million and up to 10 years in prison — has more to do with our fears than with public-policy objectives or science. (more…)

When you make $750,000 a year, you don’t sweat the domestic details. But the latest hit novel about a miserable working mom is too ignorant and dishonest about money to deal with that.

By Ann Marlowe

That women have broken through the glass ceiling is one of the best-kept secrets in America — even better kept than their success in combining executive life with motherhood. You wouldn’t know about either if all you had to go by was the defeatist tone of most chick lit, including the widely hyped new British import “I Don’t Know How She Does It” by Allison Pearson. In this faux diary’s alternate reality, sexist comments and attitudes dominate business culture, working life with children is a nightmarish struggle, and women are wise to throw in the towel for full-time motherhood or scaled-down ambitions.

I say “alternate reality,” because Fortune recently published its annual roundup of the 50 most powerful women in American business, and the roster of powerful corporations with female CEOs includes Kraft Foods, eBay, PepsiCo, Avon, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, Hearst Magazines, Lucent, Sanford C. Bernstein, MTV Networks Music Group, Time and Xerox.

Pseudofeminists like Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the author of “Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children,” insist that these women have paid the price for their success with childlessness. But while Hewlett claims that 49 percent of women earning more than $100,000 per year are childless after 40, 71 percent of the 187 high achievers who attended Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business Summit earlier this year have kids — an average of 2.2 per woman. According to Fortune, “Lehman Brothers’ Barbara Byrne notes that eight of 10 female managing directors in her investment-banking division have kids — ‘and most more than one.’ Byrne herself has four.” (more…)

Some argue that the convention of men paying for women is a harmless gallantry, like holding a door open. I beg to differ.

BY ANN MARLOWE

Lately, when I’m asked what I think a feminist is, I say, “someone who believes she should pay for her own dinner.” Some people think this is such a tiny matter that it cannot be a way of answering the question; others laugh and ask what is so awful about having one’s dinner paid for. To explain, I have to go back a couple of decades, to when I was 23 years old.

We were in a small Greenwich Village restaurant, my boyfriend Scott and I, and our conversation lagged as we waited for the check. You could get pasta and a salad here for under $10, and the room was pleasant enough, so the place was packed with people in their 20s. As we waited, I calculated my share of the bill, reassured that I’d still have enough for lunch tomorrow, the subway, the Wall Street Journal. Payday, I could not forget, was the day after that.

Every workday I bought the Journal because I couldn’t take enough from any one paycheck to buy a subscription. I lived very modestly and close to the financial edge. I found this poverty as surprising as my friends did, for as a financial analyst at an investment bank, I made more money than most 23-year-olds. But even in those days 20 grand did not go far in New York.

The waiter, about our age, tall, thin and actorly, smiled over our table and presented the bill squarely to Scott. (more…)