“PAA, excellent question. I haven’t denied, per se, the possibility that society, rather than individuals, are at fault.”
And I haven’t denied that individuals are at fault. It’s a combination of societal values plus insensitive people.
“How can we possibly agree with the anger expressed by someone who has a totally different value system regarding marriage!”
If you are talking about the secular colleague then I agree that we shouldn’t agree with her way of expressing anger, because she was disparaging the entire society. What I am doing is pointing out that there is a specific problem in that the way our society portrays women is such that if a woman is older and unmarried she may feel bad/pitied/worthless etc. Now I don’t know if there is a simple answer or even any answer at all. My suggestion is that without focusing less on marriage, we should also focus on other things which can help a woman feel good about herself regardless of what stage of life she is in. Also, I am not saying that anyone is at fault for not teaching girls Gemara. I will try to clarify my point about that: in the other thread I was simply pointing out several things which I perceive to be less than perfect in regards to women in Judaism. I suggested that if women would learn Gemara it might alleviate some of these issues. I was saying that in that thread to explain some of the possible reasons why people nowadays would be pro women learning Gemara besides for the desire for equality. When I quoted that here, it was not to say that learning gemara would help the situation here; I was simply using the same type of argument – that there is a dearth of things which women are led to feel accomplished about outside of marriage. It could be that learning gemara would help the situation here; it could be it won’t. And it could be that there are overriding reasons for girls not to learn gemara. But I was not connecting that to shidduchim.