The Daily Beast’s Tina Brown has announced a three-day summit entitled “Women of the World” which “will showcase the stories of outstanding women leaders”. The summit will take place in New York next March.
Attending the summit, Brown tells us, will be Queen Rania of Jordan, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Meryl Streep, Barbara Walters, Christiane Amanpour and Cherie Blair among other well-known opinion makers and NGO leaders.
Although few would dare to call Queen Rania a full-fledged member of the “liberal” set, Brown has been accused of bias by one of the article’s commenters for neglecting to invite former Republican VP candidate and now best-selling author of Going Rogue Sarah Palin.
As johnwr3 writes:
I notice that all the women featured in the cover photo are liberals. Tina, your private club is quickly becoming a small minority. Most women don’t support your agenda and the more you promote it by demeaning others the more it shrinks. Sarah Palin is the most powerful woman in the country yet she is frequently ridiculed by you and yours. Whether you agree with her or not she belongs on any list of important women.
Though the contentions made by johnwr3 are highly debatable, there is no question that Sarah Palin is a visible figure, whose activities and declarations are followed by the media on a daily basis.
Tina Brown is entitled to invite whomever she chooses to the “Women of the World” summit, and, in the end, she can always cheekily blame Palin’s plain lack of knowledge “of the world” for not asking her to participate.
Yet the slight does reveal that the larger issue of how feminists treat women who do not think “like us” remains unresolved. Has Palin’s polarizing persona led feminists to put a limit on their feminism? Tell us what you think.
