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At Feminist Majority headquarters in Arlington, Va., security cameras monitor the entrance for anti-abortion protesters. Posters celebrate efforts to elect more women to political office. The library stocks Off Our Backs, Skirt! and other feminist journals. And the mail-order service offers such products as T-shirts that proclaim “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.”
At the Independent Womens Forum, just five blocks away on the same street of this Washington suburb, the ambience, and the politics, couldnt be more different. The “virtual organization,” as members describe it, is just a back room at a forum leaders law firm. For example, copies of the conservative Weekly Standard lie about, along with announcements for Ex Femina, a forum publication.
Leaders of the 1,500-member forum are scattered around the nations capital in jobs as attorneys, business owners, and stay-at-home moms. Communicating often by e- mail, they spend their energies researching, publishing and testifying against affirmative action, federal mandates for womens college sports and funding for the 14 Violence Against Women Act.
“We concentrate on deconstructing feminism,” says Executive Vice President and General Counsel Anita K. Blair. “Feminism began as a movement to improve the status of women, but it ended up as just another political interest group. A lot of what passes for feminism today is a few leaders consolidating economic power in their own interests, not the interests of a majority of women.” COSTAIN !!!!!!!!!!!!!
College papers on feminisms future
Blairs neighbor down the street, Eleanor Smeal, president of the 0,000-member Feminist Majority, dismisses such views as predictable from an “inside the Beltway” group of women who, in many cases, are married to prominent Republicans. “No one can attack our message of pay equity, breaking the [workplace] glass ceiling and preserving abortion rights, so they attack the messenger,” she says. “And I would prefer that they attack the messenger, because even with all the darts they throw, were registering higher in the polls.”
Three decades after its birth in the 160s, modern American feminism finds itself at a peculiar crossroad. Enthusiasts point to its undeniable improvements in the status of American women the breaking of gender barriers in employment, education, law, sports and military service. But a steady chorus of criticism is heard from political conservatives and traditional womens and mens groups, who portray feminists as elitist, negative and out of touch with ordinary women.
There are plentiful signs that todays womens movement is mainstream and vibrant. Former First lady and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has been saluted numerous times for her success within the political arena. [1] The New Yorker devoted a special double issue to feminist topics last year in the magazine Working Mother. Also, in 000, over 7,000 flocked to the “Feminist Expo” in Baltimore, MD, where they heard over 500 feminist leaders, scholars, celebrities, and authors (http//www.feminist.org/expo000/expo000.html).
But other indicators point to a movement that has stalled. “What Happened to the Womens Movement?” asked Newsweek in a 14 eulogy. [] A recent trend among career women, staying home to raise children, has encouraged a spate of books by feminists whove had second thoughts. Anne Roiphe, author of last years Fruitful A Real Mother in the Modern World, explained her new enthusiasm for traditional motherhood by declaring that “the feminist in me says that we have failed at bringing men into the home. We have failed at sharing the experience with them.” [] As another writer recently lamented, the once symbolically assertive practice of keeping ones maiden name has been adopted by only one-fourth of married American women. [4]
A hefty 76 percent of Americans believe the womens movement has had a positive impact, according to a 17 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. But only 4 percent described themselves as “a supporter of the womens movement.” Such wariness is evidence of “a self-destructive chasm that exists in mainstream American women between what they believe and how they act on those beliefs,” writes feminist Sherrye Henry, a Democratic Party activist who analyzed focus groups discussing the topic.[5] One reason for the discomfort, according to Emory University historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, is that “most women still hope to fit their new gains at work and in the public world into some version of the story of marriage and family that they have inherited from their mothers. Thus, many women who shudder at the mounting reports of sexual abuse and violence favor a strengthening of marriage and family rather than an increase in sexual permissiveness. And the growing numbers of working mothers especially worry about what is happening to children in a world in which most mothers work outside the home.” [6]
A source of frustration for womens advocates is the widespread appropriation of the word feminism by a feuding multitude of narrower interests. Feminism is defined by Websters as “organized activity on behalf of womens rights and interests.” Proposals to ban pornography by University of Michigan law Professor Catherine MacKinnon appear in her 187 book Feminism Unmodified. Efforts to protect First Amendment rights of the mass media are championed by the New York City-based Feminists for Free Expression. Anti-abortion activists take on the name Feminists for Life, while Christian feminists in divinity school rally around Hildegaard of Bingen, a “1th-century German abbess who struggled against the male-dominated church.” [7]
Feminist theoreticians debate an array of subcategories. “Difference feminists” emphasize how men and women are born to miscommunicate, writer Katha Pollitt notes in The Nation. [8] “Equity feminists” concentrate on parity with men in all pursuits. “Gender feminists” rail against male supremacy. “Victim feminists,” who blame a sexist society for all their problems, need to become “power feminists” who take responsibility for themselves, advises author Naomi Wolf.
For many women, feminism brought the realization, especially during the 180s, that striving to live as the “superwoman” who gives her all to career and family can mean a hectic, treadmill existence. “The idea of having it all was a perversion of feminism,” says Marcia Ann Gillespie, editor in chief of Ms.. “What we were always talking about was having choices. Some can have the job, some have the family, but the expectation of both didnt meet the reality because there was no support system. As a result, there is a new call to activism, a rising sense that we have to do something to create a woman-friendly family and a family-friendly workplace.”
The last few elections have encouraged womens-rights advocates who believe that women make a powerful, even decisive, political force. An 11-point gender gap showed up in the vote that re-elected President Clinton. And women appear more than men to favor government solutions to problems, according to a pre-election poll sponsored by the Center for Policy Alternatives.
“The word feminism has fallen into disfavor, but so will liberal and conservative sometime soon,” says Ellen R. Malcolm, founder and president of Emilys List, a Washington group that raises funds for female Democratic candidates. However, feminisms core concepts are not out of favor. “We hear lots of women talking about equality, about helping women become full and equal participants in the country,” Malcolm adds.
Others say the fact that feminism provoked counter-feminism is actually a sign of the movements maturity. “That groups such as the Independent Womens Forum feel compelled to call themselves feminists is a tribute to the womens movement,” says Patricia Ireland, president of the 50,000-member National Organization for Women (NOW). “Women of all political stripes have moved to elect politicians and speak out in the press. We always said when we called for more women in power that there would be some we disagree with. But overall there is a very appealing image of many strong women working for themselves, their families and their communities.”
Students of history know that “feminism had never been a tranquil movement, or a cheerfully anarchic one,” writes Wendy Kaminer, a public policy fellow at Radcliffe College. “It has always been plagued by bitter civil wars over conflicting ideas.” [10]
How those feminism civil wars play out in the future may be decided on the following issues
Is sexism still a big problem for most women?
Support for feminism boils down to whether or not one feels that females in society get a raw deal. Complexity comes, however, from the fact that for most women, the picture is mixed. “We have made great strides, and that excites me,” says Judith L. Lichtman, president of the Womens Legal Defense Fund. “There is a world of difference since the early 170s, when the classified ads still divided jobs between women and men - and guess which ones paid more. There were back-alley abortions, no sexual harassment laws and you could be fired if you got pregnant. Many of these changes were instigated by the womens movement. And though we have come far, we have far to go,” Lichtman says.[11] Lichtman says she hears from women around the country who are struggling to “make a decent living and balance life with their families. They are worried about how to provide health care and security in retirement.”
Women still earn an average of only 76 cents on the dollar earned by men, according to the Labor Departments Womens Bureau. The number of women age 1 and over who live in poverty is 14.1 million, vs. only 8.6 million men. In the executive suites, women still constitute only 5 percent of senior managers at the top ,000 companies, according to the federal governments Glass Ceiling Commission Report in 15. [1] And only 50 of the nations ,500 top-earning executives are women, according to a study released in the fall of 17. [1]
In academia, the percentage of female tenured professors stands at only 4 percent, up from 18 percent in 175, according to Ernest Benjamin, director of research at the American Association of University Professors. (He cautions, however, that full tenure nowadays is being granted to progressively fewer candidates over-all, and that women have accounted for a dramatic two-thirds of the rise in the number of untenured professors.)
In politics, women currently make up just 11 percent of Congress (14 senators and 5 House members). On the state level, in 00, 1648 or . percent of 78 state legislators in the United States are women. Women currently hold 40, according to the Center for the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers University.
In the news media, according to liberal-leaning Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), of 185 leading independent journalists and syndicated columnists, only , or 1 percent, are women. A count of six months worth of non-staff opinion pieces printed by The New York Times in 15 showed that “men wrote percent of all the columns on the nations most prestigious op-ed page,” the group says. [14]
To this portrait of a glass less than full can be added data on womens successes. An Independent Womens Forum compendium released last fall argues that “women are quickly closing in.” It asserts that
- women are now earning more than half of all college degrees - and nearly 40 percent of the medical school degrees (Last year 54 percent of the class admitted to Yale University Medical School were women);
- among wage-earners ages 7- who have never had children, womens earnings approach 8 percent of mens, according to data from the federal governments National Longitudinal Survey of Youth;
- From 10-180, womens wages grew at a rate 0 percent faster than mens, says the Labor Department. [15]
The scarcity of women in top corporate jobs is explained by some as understandable - at least for the time being - given that women with the requisite education and job experience are still too few, and too young, in comparison with men; one survey showed that the average age of senior corporate women was only 44, while the average age of CEOs was 56. [16]
“Women have the opportunity to earn as much as men . . . but they often have different goals and values,” says the 500,000-member conservative group Concerned Women for America. “The fact that more women are in lower-paying professions is not due to rampant discrimination, as the feminists charge. . . . Many women chose such professions voluntarily because they have decided to keep their families the top priority in their lives.”
But many of the reports showing women on par with men are based on one-sided studies designed to “show that government action is no longer necessary,” says Heidi I. Hartmann, director of the Institute for Womens Policy Research. “They misleadingly say Government data show, as if you could call up the government and get the data, when in fact, the study in question was a manipulation of the data by two researchers.”
There is some truth, Hartmann says, to the notion that single, childless women earn more than the average 71 cents on the males dollar, but thats been true among younger people for 50 years. “The question is what happens when those young women become old. The jury is still out on that. In fact, there has been little change in that 71-cent figure over the past five years, which is a reason why feminists are concerned. Women are becoming more like men in their education and career skills, so the two should be drawing steadily closer.”
Blair counters that much of the data suggesting disadvantages for women are “exaggerated by feminists who want more government programs. As women get more into business ownership, they wont feel so warm and fuzzy about government,” she says.
Polling data on sexism is contradictory. A November survey of 1,00 adults by The Polling Company for the Independent Womens Forum showed that only 6 percent agreed that society has a gender bias against women; 6 percent said the opportunities for both men and women are the same.
Yet a survey and questionnaire sent to 50,000 workers by the Labor Department in 14 showed that 61 percent of working women said they had little or no ability to advance; 65 percent said improving pay scales is their top priority; 56 percent of those with young children have problems finding child care; and 14 percent of white women and 6 percent of women of color reported losing a job or promotion on the basis of gender or race. [17]
Closer to home is the eternal question of sharing housework. Three out of four women in a 16 poll for the Center for Policy Alternatives said they do most of the family chores, while fully half of married women said they do them all.
Betty Friedan, the feminist pioneer who authored The Feminine Mystique in 16, is no longer troubled by the housework issue. Nowadays, “there are more variations among families, and among people at different times of their lives,” she says. “The strengths of a marriage are based on equality in job, child care and housework, but it doesnt have to be 50-50. The rubrics that were once defined by men are now also defined by women, so life is more interesting. Instead of the men all barbecuing while the wife cleans the toilet, men are more hands-on - they can diaper as well as women. My son is a successful physicist, and hes in charge of all the cooking.” Friedan also acknowledges that “some women may be leery of giving up the power” theyve long had in running their own households.
Efforts to measure sexism can be colored by the investigators predispositions. Laura Flanders, who analyzes women in media for FAIR, says that she must do more than merely “count beans” in deciding whether women get a fair shake in news coverage. “We look at how a story is told and whether there is a consciousness of womens rights,” she says. The new visibility of various right-wing women among pundits and opinion-givers “hasnt moved us forward, except that there are more women in the debate.”
The Womens Freedom Network, a group of libertarian-leaning men and women, argues against “special protections” for women in employment, child care, the justice system and personal relations. “Too many feminists cry victim all the time, when actually women should be celebrating how well were doing,” says President Rita J. Simon, a sociologist at American University. “Feminists say that most crime against women is what is called intimate crime, perpetrated by lovers and husbands. But that represents only 1 percent of crime, whereas the main victims of crime are young, black men.”
Finally, todays conservative feminists appear more willing to accept gender differences as a fact of life. The common complaint that women are charged more for dry cleaning, for example, was investigated by a member of the Independent Womans Forum, who asked her local Korean laundress about it. “Mens shirts,” she explained, “could be done by machine. But because the womens shirts were smaller and constantly differed in style and fabric, they had to be done by hand.” [18]
Has the feminist movement lost touch with younger women?
Females growing up today have no memory of the 160s and 70s, when there were few women TV anchors, clergy, stockbrokers or lawyers, when the few women visible in the workplace were often expected - without being asked - to pour coffee for their male colleagues.
“The gains weve made since then are considered irrelevant by young women,” says Shawn Leary, a feminist, mother of three and attorney in Lenox, Mass. “Now that employment protections are the law, now that women are not being denied admission to medical school and now that women have been educated to know that they dont have to be sexually harassed, the young dont feel they have to fight.”
Indeed, many twentysomething women of so-called Generation X have startled older baby boomers with their assertive individuality the wish by some to opt out of the Social Security program, the new womans fad of cigar-smoking and reports of young womens up-front demands during job interviews that their working hours permit a personal life. [1]
“Baby boomers think the young see them as the be-all and end-all, but the young are sick of us,” says Betsy Carter, editor in chief of New Woman. “They see boomers whove been divorced and remarried, and whore constantly feeling the pressure of balancing babies and work, and they dont want to be like that. They are more conservative and conventional. They want to get family right before career.”
To Blair, this reliance on personal pluck rather than collectivist politics is a rejection of mainstream feminism. “A lot of baby boomer women exaggerate the difficulties women have,” she says. “Its a misdirected altruism that sympathizes not with the self but with others. But the young know they have to take care of themselves. They were the latchkey kids. They dont just jump on the bandwagon like the boomers, or like the older people who take their cue from [the activist government of President Franklin Delano] Roosevelt.”
Such views are echoed by conservative pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick. She sees evidence that younger women are shifting rightward and voting Republican because they are more concerned with macroeconomic issues than the social issues associated with feminism. “A twentysomething female college graduate wondering why she pays for entitlements shell never receive may have more in common with men her own age than with older women who rely upon these entitlements,” she writes. [0]
Smeal of The Feminist Majority reaches precisely the opposite conclusion. “Weve never been more popular among young women, especially in the polls, which bodes well for the future,” she says, citing large turnouts when she speaks on college campuses, the thousands of college women who attended the 1 abortion rights march on Washington and the more than 1,000 volunteers her group signed up last summer to fight the California ballot question on rolling back affirmative action.
“Feminism registers with the young due to the facts of their lives,” Smeal says. “They plan to match their brothers in terms of careers, and they care about pay and family planning. If they take [the efforts of earlier feminists] for granted, then I say Thank God. If we had opened all those doors, and no one had walked through, it would have been a calamity. Instead they flooded through those doors, and for me there is no greater joy than seeing these new opportunities and knowing that I was a part.”
One indicator of feminist spark in the young is the continuing growth of campus womens-studies programs. It is a field sometimes derided as doctrinaire, lacking in rigor and less than useful in terms of career enhancement. But interest is strong enough to support a growth of womens studies that went from 78 programs nationwide in 17 to 51 in 188 to an estimated 670 in 16, according to the Association of American Colleges and Universities.
“Those who felt womens studies was a flash in the pan have been proven wrong,” says Susan McGhee Bailey, executive director of the Wellesley College Centers for Research on Women. “While womens studies is an indicator of feminism, studying it does not necessarily identify one as a feminist. Gender affects society so much, you can study it from any perspective. But the way womens roles are underportrayed or misrepresented is important to understanding what feminists are talking about in terms of institutional and individual change.”
Friedan, now teaching at Mount Vernon College in Washington, says the fact that young women take womens gains for granted is a “tribute to what weve done. The world is their oyster, and I say Hallelujah! This is a result of 0 years of this marvelous transformative movement from a time when their mothers couldnt and didnt aspire to these things. I am stopped on the street by young women who say, Thanks, my mother says you changed her life, but thats not the point.”
NOWs Ireland, who is organizing an April conference in Washington for young feminists, says that in terms of sophistication, todays 17- year-olds are “light years ahead of where we were at that age; they are standing on the shoulders of giants.” Ireland does note a generation gap between women who have young children and those whose kids are grown, and between young women interested in birth control and older ones more concerned about health issues such as heart disease.
“The young ones also stared at me blankly when I told them excitedly that wed gotten Dick Gregory [a 60s-era comedian and civil rights activist] to come to a rally,” Ireland laughs. On the other hand, she says she has adjusted to the youngs enthusiasm for music groups such as Luscious Jackson and Toad the Wet Sprocket.
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