PAA: Agree with your points (though quoting Umbridge isn’t the way to gain sympathy to your argument… 🙂 ). And I got what you were saying about DY’s argument.
I didn’t get the first one either from a practical level- I just “got it” from the perspective of “a good charedi woman” thinking something like that as a justification because it jives with the general hashkafa.
I don’t think that she’s woken up to the fact that the point isn’t necessarily the Knesset- the point is also the issue of women having a say which isn’t happening in other forums either.
DY (derech PAA): As far as women focusing more on career than family- I want to be a doctor. I think that from a practical perspective that is (both practically and from an outside perspective) a pretty strong statement about the value of a career. (I wish it weren’t, but there you go…) And to be fair, the Knesset has WAY more vacation time than does the medical field :). And, like PAA said (and even the author of the AINT article), there are definitely good and valid reasons to have women in positions of impact- reasons that would be good not just for the other 50% of klal Yisrael (reason #3) but also for the entire nation (#2).
And no, I don’t think that all of the people saying this are obviously bigots, or that all of the women who want to run are doing so solely for the egalitarian aspect. (PS, as a woman, theoretically I have more sympathy for the woman’s side in this case, but that said I advocate neither of those approaches- while they are not necessarily the norm, there are people who are so motivated.)