Linda R. Hirshman, a lawyer, philosophy professor, and author who enraged liberals and conservatives alike with an essay attacking women who chose to stay home and raise children, died on Oct. 31, in Burlington VT. She was 79.

In 2005, she published an article in “The American Prospect,” a progressive policy journal, criticizing women who chose to drop out of the workforce to raise families as a bad choice. She argued that affluent women with elite degrees were disappearing from the halls of power in law, business and politics and that the choice was harmful to them personally and to the country because their absence meant that more than half of the American population would be underrepresented in the places where policy was made.

The articles later grew into a book, and four more books followed. At the time of her death, she was working on a book with Margaret Sullivan, the media and political columnist, about the roots of right-wing media and how its growth has destabilized democracies in several countries including the United States. The working title was “Hate, Inc.”