Background
Hirshman, Linda R. was born on April 26, 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio, United States.
Hirshman, Linda R. was born on April 26, 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio, United States.
Bachelor in Government with Honors, Cornell Univercity, 1966; Juris Doctor, University of Chicago, 1969; Doctor of Philosophy in Philosphy, University of Illinois, Chicago, 1995.
She is a retired distinguished professor of philosophy and women"s studies at Brandeis University. She wrote her dissertation on the problem of social organizing in the work of Thomas Hobbes. She has written for a variety of periodicals, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, Salon, and The Daily Beast.
Foreign fifteen years she practiced law, representing mostly organized labor.
She participated in three cases in the United States Supreme Court, including, in 1985, the landmark case of Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, which established the line between the federal government and the states.
She then went into academia, teaching law, philosophy, and women"s studies, before she retired from Brandeis University in 2002. In 2006, Hirshman released Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World in which she developed the arguments in "Homeward Bound" in favor of women working, to use their capacities, be independent and be of benefit to the larger society, and addressed some of the criticism of her earlier work.
According to Hirshman"s own biographical byline for periodicals, she "landed spot Number.
77" on author Bernard Goldberg"s list of 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America "with almost no effort." Goldberg criticized Hirshman for comments she made in a segment produced by Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes in October 2004. In the segment, Hirshman argued that this kind of decision would only lead to a lesser life for these women: "These women are choosing lives in which they do not use their capacity for very complicated work, they"re choosing lives in which they do not use their capacity to deal with very powerful other adults in the world, which takes a lot of skill. I think there are better lives and worse lives."
Hirshman was also criticized by feminist bloggers such as Leslie Morgan Steiner and economists such as Heather Boushey for having insufficient empirical evidence for her contention that women were dropping out of the United States. labor market, a charge which Hirshman says does not change her conclusions.
Women, she says, who opt to stay at home are disproportionately among the educated elite and however many there are, their decision affects the gender composition of the people who run the society and the way that other women, in the workplace or not, think about their lives.
In June 2012, Hirshman released her new social movement study, Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution. Starting in the late nineteenth century and ending when New York State legalized same-sex marriage, Victory tells the story of this political triumph.
Member American Bar Association, American Law Institute.