Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

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Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women Page 63

by Susan Faludi


  Newsweek says: Unwed women . . .: Eloise Salholz, “The Marriage Crunch,” Newsweek, June 2, 1986, p. 55.

  The health advice manuals . . .: See, for example, Dr. Herbert J. Freudenberger and Gail North, Women’s Burnout (New York: Viking Penguin, 1985); Marjorie Hansen Shaevitz, The Superwoman Syndrome (New York: Warner Books, 1984); Harriet Braiker, The Type E Woman (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986); Donald Morse and M. Lawrence Furst, Women Under Stress (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1982); Georgia Witkin-Lanoil, The Female Stress Syndrome (New York: Newmarket Press, 1984).

  The psychology books . . .: Dr. Stephen and Susan Price, No More Lonely Nights: Overcoming the Hidden Fears That Keep You from Getting Married (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1988) p. 19.

  Even founding feminist Betty Friedan . . .: Betty Friedan, The Second Stage (New York: Summit Books, 1981) p. 9.

  “In dispensing its spoils . . .”: Mona Charen, “The Feminist Mistake,” National Review, March 23, 1984, p. 24.

  “Our generation was the human sacrifice . . .”: Claudia Wallis, “Women Face the ’90s,” Time, Dec. 4, 1989, p. 82.

  Iin Newsweek, writer . . .: Kay Ebeling, “The Failure of Feminism,” Newsweek, Nov. 19, 1990, p. 9.

  Even the beauty magazines . . .: Marilyn Webb, “His Fault Divorce,” Harper’s Bazaar, Aug. 1988, p. 156.

  In the last decade . . .: Mary Anne Dolan, “When Feminism Failed,” The New York Times Magazine, June 26, 1988, p. 21; Erica Jong, “The Awful Truth About Women’s Liberation,” Vanity Fair, April 1986, p. 92.

  The “Today” show . . .: Jane Birnbaum, “The Dark Side of Women’s Liberation,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, May 24, 1986.

  A guest columnist . . .: Robert J. Hooper, “Slasher Movies Owe Success to Abortion” (originally printed in the Baltimore Sun), Minneapolis Star Tribune, Feb. 1, 1990, p. 17A.

  In popular novels . . .: Gail Parent, A Sign of the Eighties (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1987); Stephen King, Misery (New York: Viking, 1987).

  We “blew it by . . .”: Freda Bright, Singular Women (New York: Bantam Books, 1988). . . . p. 12.

  Even Erica Jong’s . . .: Erica Jong, Any Woman’s Blues (New York: Harper & Row, 1989). . . . pp. 2—3. A new generation of young “post-feminist” female writers, such as Mary Gaitskill and Susan Minot, also produced a bumper crop of grim-faced unwed heroines. These passive and masochistic “girls” wandered the city, zombie-like; they came alive and took action only in seeking out male abuse. For a good analysis of this genre, see James Wolcott, “The Good-Bad Girls,” Vanity Fair, Dec. 1988, p. 43.

  “Feminism, having promised her . . .”: Dr. Toni Grant, Being a Woman: Fulfilling Your Femininity and Finding Love (New York: Random House, 1988) p. 25.

  The authors of . . .: Dr. Connell Cowan and Dr. Melvyn Kinder, Smart Women/Foolish Choices (New York: New American Library, 1985) p. 16.

  Reagan spokeswoman Faith . . .: Faith Whittlesey, “Radical Feminism in Retreat,” Dec. 8, 1984, speech at the Center for the Study of the Presidency, 15th Annual Leadership Conference, St. Louis, Mo., p. 7.

  As a California sheriff . . .: Don Martinez, “More Women Ending Up in Prisons,” San Francisco Examiner, Sept. 4, 1990, p. A1. Judges have blamed women’s increasing economic independence for increasing male crime, too: “What do we do [about crowded prisons]?” Texas District Judge John McKellips asked, rhetorically. “Well, we can start in our homes. Mothers can stay home and raise their children during the formative years.” See “For the Record,” Ms., May 1988, p. 69.

  The U.S. Attorney General’s . . .: Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, Final Report, July 1986, p. 144. The commissioner’s report goes on to undermine its own logic, conceding that since women raped by acquaintances are the least likely to report the crime, it might be difficult to attribute a rise in reported rape rates to them, after all.

  On network news . . .: Sylvia Ann Hewlett, A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women’s Liberation in America (New York: William Morrow, 1986).

  Legal scholars have . . .: Mary Ann Mason, The Equality Trap (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988).

  Economists have argued . . .: James P. Smith and Michael Ward, “Women in the Labor Market and in the Family,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1989, 3, no. 1: 9—23.

  In The Cost of Loving . . .: Megan Marshall, The Cost of Loving: Women and the New Fear of Intimacy (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984) p. 218.

  Other diaries of . . .: Hilary Cosell, Woman on a Seesaw: The Ups and Downs of Making It (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1985); Deborah Fallows, A Mother’s Work (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985); Carol Orsborn, Enough Is Enough (New York Pocket Books, 1986); Susan Bakos, This Wasn’t Supposed to Happen (New York Continuum, 1985). Even when the women aren’t really renouncing their liberation, their publishers promote the texts as if they were. Mary Kay Blakely’s Wake Me When It’s Over (New York: Random House, 1989), an account of the author’s diabetes-induced coma, is billed on the dust jacket as “a chilling memoir in which a working supermom exceeds her limit and discovers the thin line between sanity and lunacy and between life and death.”

  If American women are so equal . . .: “Money, Income and Poverty Status in the U.S.,” 1989, Current Population Reports, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce, Series P-60, 168.

  Why are nearly 75 percent . . .: Margaret W. Newton, “Women and Pension Coverage,” The American Woman 1988–89: A Status Report, ed. by Sara E. Rix (New York: WW Norton & Co., 1989) p. 268.

  Why are they still . . .: Cushing N. Dolbeare and Anne J. Stone, “Women and Affordable Housing,” The American Woman 1990–91: A Status Report, ed. by Sara E. Rix (W.W. Norton & Co., 1990) p. 106; Newton, “Pension Coverage,” p. 268; “1990 Profile,” 9 to 5/National Association of Working Women; Salaried and Professional Women’s Commission Report, 1989, p. 2.

  Why does the average . . .: “Briefing Paper on the Wage Gap,” National Committee on Pay Equity, p. 3; “Average Earnings of Year-Round, Full-Time Workers by Sex and Educational Attainment,” 1987, U.S. Bureau of the Census, February 1989, cited in The American Woman 1990–91, p. 392.

  If women have “made it,” then . . .: Susanna Downie, “Decade of Achievement, 1977-1987,” The National Women’s Conference Center, May 1988, p. 35; statistics from 9 to 5/National Association of Working Women.

  And, conversely, . . .: Statistics from Women’s Research & Education Institute, U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Catalyst, Center for the American Woman and Politics. See also The American Woman 1990–91, p. 359; Deborah L. Rhode, “Perspectives on Professional Women,” Stanford Law Review, 40, no. 5 (May 1988): 1178-79; Anne Jardim and Margaret Hennig, “The Last Barrier,” Working Woman, Nov. 1990, p. 130; Jaclyn Fierman, “Why Women Still Don’t Hit the Top,” Fortune, July 30, 1990, p. 40.

  Unlike virtually . . .: “1990 Profile,” 9 to 5/National Association of Working Women; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1987 survey of nation’s employers. See also “Who Gives and Who Gets,” American Demographics, May 1988, p. 16; “Children and Families: Public Policies and Outcomes, A Fact Sheet of International Comparisons,” U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families.

  In a 1990 national poll . . .: “Women in Corporate Management,” national poll of Fortune 1010 companies by Catalyst, 1990.

  Why do women who want . . .: Data from Alan Guttmacher Institute. Nor is women’s struggle for equal education . . .: The American Woman 1990–91, p. 63; “Feminization of Power Campaign Extends to the Campus,” Eleanor Smeal Report, 6, no. 1, Aug. 31, 1988; Project on Equal Education Rights, National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, 1987.

  Nor do women . . .: Rhode, “Professional Women,” p. 1183; Mark Clements Research Inc.’s Annual Study of Women’s Attitudes, 1987; Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home (New York: Viking, 1989) p. 227. In fact, Hochschild’s twelve-year survey, from 1976 to 198
8, found that the men who said they were helping tended to be the ones who did the least.

  Furthermore, in thirty states . . .: Statistics from National Center on Women and Family Law, 1987; National Woman Abuse Prevention Project; Cynthia Diehm and Margo Ross, “Battered Women,” The American Woman 1988–89, p. 292.

  Federal funding . . .: “Unlocking the Door: An Action Program for Meeting the Housing Needs of Women,” Women and Housing Task Force, 1988, National Low-Income Housing Coalition, pp. 6, 8.

  In the ’80s, almost half of all homeless . . .: Katha Pollitt, “Georgie Porgie Is a Bully,” Time, Fall 1990, Special Issue, p. 24. A survey in New York City found as many as 40 percent of all homeless people are battered women: “Understanding Domestic Violence Fact Sheets,” National Woman Abuse Prevention Project.

  Nearly 70 percent . . .: E. J. Dionne, Jr., “Struggle for Work and Family Fueling Women’s Movement,” New York Times, Aug. 22, 1989, p. A1. The Yankelovich Clancy Shulman poll (Oct. 23–25, 1989, for Time/CNN) and the 1990 Virginia Slims Opinion Poll (The Roper Organization Inc., 1990) found similarly large majorities of women who said that they needed a strong women’s movement to keep pushing for change.

  Most women in the . . .: The 1990 Virginia Slims Opinion Poll, The Roper Organization Inc., pp. 8, 18.

  In poll after . . .: The Louis Harris poll, 1984, found 64 percent of women wanted the Equal Rights Amendment and 65 percent favored affirmative action. Similar results emerged from the national Woman’s Day poll (Feb. 17, 1984) by Woman’s Day and Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, which emphasized middle-American conventional women (80 percent were mothers and 30 percent were full-time homemakers). The Woman’s Day poll found a majority of women, from all economic classes, seeking a wide range of women’s rights. For instance, 68 percent of the women said they wanted the ERA, 79 percent supported a woman’s right to choose an abortion, and 61 percent favored a federally subsidized national child-care program. Mark Clements Research Inc.’s Annual Study of Women’s Attitudes found in 1987 that 87 percent of women wanted a federal law guaranteeing maternity leave and about 101 percent said that more child care should be available. (In addition, 86 percent wanted a federal law enforcing the payment of child support.) The Louis Harris Poll found 80 percent of women calling for the creation of more day-care centers. See The Eleanor Smeal Report, June 28, 1984, p. 3; Warren T. Brookes, “Day Care: Is It a Real Crisis or a War Over Political Turf?” San Francisco Chronicle, April 27, 1988, p. 6; Louis Harris, Inside America (New York: Vintage Books, 1987) p. 96.

  To the contrary . . .: In the 1989 Time/CNN poll, 101 percent of women polled said the movement made them more independent; 82 percent said it is still improving women’s lives. Only 8 percent said it may have made their lives worse. A 1986 Newsweek Gallup poll found that 56 percent of women identified themselves as “feminists,” and only 4 percent described themselves as “anti-feminists.”

  In public opinion . . .: In the Annual Study of Women’s Attitudes (1988, Mark Clements Research), when women were asked, “What makes you angry?” they picked three items as their top concerns: poverty, crime, and their own inequality. In the 1989 New York Times Poll, when women were asked what was the most important problem facing women today, job inequality ranked first.

  The Roper Organization’s . . .: Bickley Townsend and Kathleen O’Neil, “American Women Get Mad,” American Demographics, Aug. 1990, p. 26.

  When the New York Times Dionne, “Struggle for Work and Family,” p. A14.

  In the 1990 . . .: 1990 Virginia Slims Opinion Poll, pp. 29–30, 32.

  In national polls . . .: Data from Roper Organization and Louis Harris polls. The 1990 Roper survey found most women reporting that things had “gotten worse” in the home and that men were more eager “to keep women down”: See 1990 Virginia Slims Opinion Poll, pp. 18, 21, 54. The Gallup Organization polls charted an 8 percent increase in job discrimination complaints from women between 1975 and 1982. Mark Clements Research’s 1987 Women’s Views Survey (commissioned by Glamour magazine) found that on the matter of women’s inequality, “more women feel there is a problem today.” Reports of wage discrimination, the survey noted, had jumped from 76 percent in 1982 to 85 percent in 1988. (See “How Women’s Minds Have Changed in the Last Five Years,” Glamour, Jan. 1987, p. 168.) The annual surveys by Mark Clements Research also find huge and increasing majorities of women complaining of unequal treatment in hiring, advancement, and opportunities in both corporate and political life. (In 1987, only 30 percent of women believed they got equal treatment with men when being considered for financial credit.) A Time 1989 poll found 101 percent of women complaining of unequal pay, 82 percent of job discrimination.

  Sex discrimination charges . . .: Statistics from U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “National Database: Charge Receipt Listing,” 1982-88; “Sexual Harassment,” 1981-89.

  At home, a much increased . . .: Townsend and O’Neil, “American Women Get Mad,” p. 28.

  And outside their . . .: 1990 Virginia Slims Opinion Poll, p. 38.

  Government and private surveys . . .: Economic trends from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Office of Federal Contract Compliance, National Committee on Pay Equity, National Commission on Working Women. See Chapter 13 for closer look at the deteriorating status of women in the work force.

  The status of women . . .: In the first six years of the Reagan administration, $50 billion was cut from these social programs, while at the same time defense spending rose $142 billion. See “Inequality of Sacrifice: The Impact of the Reagan Budget on Women,” Coalition on Women and the Budget, Washington, D.C., 1986, pp. 5, 7; Sara E. Rix and Anne J. Stone, “Reductions and Realities: How the Federal Budget Affects Women,” Women’s Research and Education Institute, Washington, D.C., 1983, pp. 4-5.

  In national politics . . .: Data from Center for the American Woman and Politics, Eagleton Institute of Politics. See Chapter 9 on women in politics.

  In private life, the average . . .: Philip Robins, “Why Are Child Support Award Amounts Declining?” June 1989, Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Paper No. 885-89, pp. 6-7.

  Domestic-violence shelters . . .: “Unlocking the Door,” p. 8.

  Reported rapes more than . . .: Statistics are from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics; the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 1984, p. 380; Uniform Crime Reports, FBI, “Crime in the United States,” 1986; “Sexual Assault: An Overview,” National Victims Resource Center, Nov. 1987, p. 1. While rape rates between 1960 and 1970 rose 95 percent, this increase–unlike that of the ’80s–was part of a 126 percent increase in violent crime in that era. (Crime statisticians have widely rejected the argument that the increase in the ’80s might simply be the result of an increasing tendency for women to report sexual assaults. The National Crime Survey found no significant change in the percentage of rapes reported to police in the periods between 1973-77 and 1978-82.) Scattered indicators suggest a sharp rise in the rate of rapes committed by young men, too. Between 1983 and 1987, rape arrests of boys under 18 years old rose 15 percent. In New York City between 1987 and 1989, according to data from the district attorney’s office, rape arrests of boys under the age of 13 rose 200 percent. In Alaska, according to the state Division of Youth and Family Services, sexual abuse and assaults from young men increased ninefold in the course of the ’80s, the fastest growing juvenile problem in the state. See Larry Campbell, “Sexually Abusive Juveniles,” Anchorage Daily News, Jan. 9, 1981, p. 1.

  They believed they were facing . . .: 1990 Virginia Slims Opinion Poll, p. 16.

  In the 1989 New York Times . . .: Lisa Belkin, “Bars to Equality of Sexes Seen as Eroding, Slowly,” New York Times, Aug. 20, 1989, p. 16.

  Just when women . . .: “Inequality of Sacrifice,” p. 23.

  Just when record numbers . . .: A 1986 Gallup poll conducted for Newsweek found a majority of women described themsel
ves as feminists and only 4 percent said they were “antifeminists.” While large majorities of women throughout the ’80s kept on favoring the full feminist agenda (from the ERA to legal abortion), the proportion of women who were willing publicly to call themselves feminists dropped off suddenly in the late ’80s, after the mass media declared feminism the “F-word.” By 1989, only one in three women were calling themselves feminists in the polls. Nonetheless, the pattern of younger women espousing the most pro-feminist sentiments continued throughout the decade. In the 1989 Yankelovich poll for Time/CNN, for example, 76 percent of women in their teens and 71 percent of women in their twenties said they believed feminists spoke for the average American woman, compared with 59 percent of women in their thirties. Asked the same question about the National Organization for Women, the gap appeared again: 83 percent of women in their teens and 72 percent of women in their twenties said NOW was in touch with the average woman, compared with 65 percent of women in their thirties. See Downie, “Decade of Achievement,” p. 1; 1986 Gallup/Newsweek poll; 1989 Yankelovich/Time/CNN poll.

  “A backlash may be an indication that . . .”: Dr. Jean Baker Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976) pp. xv–xvi.

  Some women now . . .: Kate Michelman, “20 Years Defending Choice, 1969–1988,” National Abortion Rights Action League, p. 4.

  Some women can now . . .: “Employment and Earnings,” Current Population Survey, Table 22, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor.

  (Contrary to popular myth . . .): Cheryl Russell, 101 Predictions for the Baby Boom (New York: Plenum Press, 1987) p. 64.

  While a very few “A New Kind of Love Match,” Newsweek, Sept. 4, 1989, p. 73; Barbara Hetzer, “Superwoman Goes Home,” Fortune, Aug. 18, 1986, p. 20; “Facts on Working Women,” Aug. 1989, Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, no. 89–2; and data from the Coalition of Labor Union Women and Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. The surge of women joining unions in the late ’80s was so great that it single-handedly halted the ten-year decline in union membership. Black women joined unions at the greatest rate. Women led strikes around the country, from the Yale University administrative staff to the Daughters of Mother Jones in Virginia (who were instrumental in the Pittston coal labor battle) to the Delta Pride catfish plant processors in Mississippi (where women organized the largest strike by black workers ever in the state, lodging a protest against a plant that paid its mostly female employees poverty wages, punished them if they skinned less than 24,000 fish a day, and limited them to six timed bathroom breaks a week). See Tony Freemantle, “Weary Strikers Hold Out in Battle of Pay Principle,” Houston Chronicle, Dec. 2, 1990, p. 1A; Peter T. Kilborn, “Labor Fight on a Catfish ‘Plantation,’” The News and Observer, Dec. 16, 1990, p. J2.

 

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