We live in an age of extremes. We talk about it every day with respect to the economic divide, the political divide, the racial divide, and the gender divide.

Particularly with respect to gender, how can we explain the election of the most patriarchal President ever, in an era of me too? A President whose election was supported by the majority of white women who voted.

Today, in our politics, we devote a great deal of attention to how we can address the economic divide. Think tanks and candidates pursue it endlessly. Pundits and political scientists opine daily, almost hourly, on this socio-political divide. But what is the nexus of all of this to the gender divide? How can we reconcile the seemly successful attacks on patriarchy on the one hand, and it’s powerful persistence on the other?

It's a kind of cognitive dissonance that takes a great thinker about these subjects to try and understand and address. That's what Carol Gilligan does in her new book Why Does Patriarchy Persist?

My conversation with Carol Gilligan: