Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

by Susan Faludi

  A similar process . . .: Reskin and Hartmann, Women’s Work/Men’s Work, pp. 89–90. In reaction to a sex discrimination lawsuit, the OFCC agreed to press federal construction contractors to hire enough women so that their work forces would be at least 6.9 percent female. But a 1981 Labor Department study found that of 2,9101 reports on file at the OFCC, only one-fifth of the contractors had even bothered to say what percentage of women they were employing on job sites—and of that small group that did report, only 5 percent met the 6.9 percent goal.

  Four female media . . .: Personal observations at “Women, Men and Media” conference, University of Southern California, Feb. 28-March 1, 1988.

  In the early ’70s . . .: In 1969, the Federal Communications Commission first added sex to its anti-discrimination rules. In 1970, NOW petitioned the FCC for affirmative action reports and challenged broadcast licenses under the Fairness Doctrine. The legal challenge failed, but in 1971, for the first time ever, the FCC began requiring broadcasters seeking licenses to file affirmative action reports on female employees. Women in journalism organized and filed sex-discrimination suits, FCC and EEOC complaints, and negotiated favorable settlements involving almost every major national news outlet in the country, including all three networks, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Newsday, The Associated Press, Time, and Reader’s Digest.

  Under his tenure, the FCC . . .: Downie, “Decade of Achievement,” p. 52; “Numbers Not There for Employment of Women, Wilson Says,” Media Report to Women, 16, no. 2 (March-April 1988): 11.

  “Eighty percent of . . .”: Janice Castro, “Women in Television: An Uphill Battle,” Channels, Jan. 1988, p. 42.

  CBS forced out . . .: Personal interview with Marlene Sanders, 1988.

  At the “MacNeil . . .”: Monica Collins, “Pioneering Black Anchor’s Role is Diminished,” TV Guide, March 10, 1990, p. 46. As usual, black women paid the worst price. Between 1984 and 1989, the proportion of black women reporting evening network news fell at all three networks. See “Women, Men and Media: Few Changes in 15 Years,” Communications Consortium, April 10, 1989. In the television news work force overall, the ranks of both black and all minority women declined steadily throughout the ’80s. See Vernon A. Stone, “Trends in the Status of Minorities and Women in Broadcast News,” Journalism Quarterly, 65, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 288.

  “60 Minutes” correspondent . . .: Edwin Diamond, “New-Girl Network,” New York, June 10, 1991, p. 20.

  By 1990, even one of the backlash’s . . .: Megan Rosenfeld, “A Pregnant Pause for Chung?” Washington Post, July 31, 1990, p. D1; James Endrst, “Home Sweet Home: Female News Personalities Are Choosing Family Over Their Jobs,” Montreal Gazette, Aug. 26, 1990, p. F2.

  The networks took . . .: A 1988 study of network anchors by the Gannett Center for Media Studies, which tracked anchors over three years, found that the men had gotten grayer and older, the women blonder and younger. See Diamond, “New- Girl Network,” p. 20.

  In 1989, at the ripe . . .: Harry F. Waters, “If It Ain’t Broke, Break It,” Newsweek, March 26, 1990, p. 58.

  “Paula’s married . . .”: Jennet Conant, “Broadcast Networking,” Working Woman, Aug. 1989, p. 58.

  “Most of the male-female . . .”: Marlene Sanders’ speech at the Women, Men and Media conference, Feb. 29, 1988.

  In the most celebrated . . .: Marlene Sanders and Marcia Rock, Waiting for Prime-Time (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989) p. 146; Christine Craft, Too Old, Too Ugly and Not Deferential to Men (Rocklin, Calif.: Prima Publishing, 1988).

  By 1983, the number . . .: Vernon A. Stone, “Newswomen’s Numbers Level Off,” RTNDA Communicator, July 1984, p. 122; Media Report to Women, May-June 1988, p. 5; Terri Schultz-Brooks, “Getting There: Women in the Newsroom,” Columbia Journalism Review, March-April 1984, p. 25.

  By 1989, only eight . . .: Judy Southworth, “Women Media Workers: No Room at the Top,” Extra!, March—April 1991, p. 6.

  And at the highest levels . . .: American Women in Radio and TV, June 1987 survey. See Downie, “Decade of Achievement,” p. 52.

  Progress in improving . . .: “The Changing Face of the Newsroom,” American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) Bulletin, May 1989, p. 28.

  At the Washington Post . . .: Statistics from the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild; “Complaint of Unlawful Discriminatory Employment Practices,” The Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild v. The Washington Post, No. 88-540-P, July 12, 1988.

  While the New York Times’s . . .: Statistics from the New York Times Women’s Caucus and the Newspaper Guild. By the end of the decade, the New York Times’s top executives apparently decided it was wiser to keep women in the dark on salary differences. When the Times’s Women’s Caucus pressed for the numbers, the paper’s management told them it wasn’t releasing the figures anymore because it was “too expensive” to collect them. See Emily Weiner, “Status of Women in the Professions: Media & the Arts,” Committee on Women Hearing, Council of the City of New York, March 16, 1989, p. 2.

  After having reached . . .: Dorothy Jurney, “Tenth Annual Survey Reports Women Editors at 12.4 Percent,” American Soceity of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) Bulletin, Nov. 1986, p. 5.

  Despite this pathetic . . .: “ASNE Panelists Poles Apart on Status of Women Journalists,” Media Report to Women, 16, no. 3 (May—June 1988): 1.

  The numbers of . . .: Data from studies by Jean Gaddy Wilson, journalism professor and research fellow of University of Missouri Journalism School; Jean Gaddy Wilson, “Taking Stock: Women in the Media,” speech, Dec. 1988; “The Changing Face of the Newsroom,” ed. by Lee Stinnett, American Society of Newspaper Editors, special report, May 1989, pp. 19, 27–28.

  While on assignment in . . .: Personal interview with Lee Serrie, 1988.

  I’ve seen them . . .”: Personal interview with a former editor at the New York Times who asked not to be identified, 1988.

  At NBC, two female . . .: Personal interview with Janice Goodman, attorney who handled the NBC suit, 1988.

  At the New York Times . . .: Personal interview with Betsy Wade, 1988.

  “There’s apparently . . .”: Betsy Wade, “From Lawsuits to Caucuses: Promoting Women in the Newsroom,” Women in American Journalism lectures, Graduate School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley, Dec. 1988, p. 16.

  “The group’s response . . .”: K. Kaufmann, “Since When Is Feminism So Unfashionable?” Mediafile, Dec.—Jan. 1987–88, p. 3.

  Soon after, in September . . .: Judy Flander, “Women in Network News,” Washington Journalism Review, March 1985, p. 39.

  After a while . . .: Ibid., p. 40.

  It had the worst record . . .: Diane Landis, “Women from ABC Air Grievances,” Washington Woman, March 1986, p. 13; Bob Brewin, “ABC’s Trouble with Women,” The Village Voice, Feb. 11, 1986, p. 46.

  In 1983, Rita Flynn . . .: Personal interview with Rita Flynn, 1989. (Subsequent Flynn quotes are from interview unless otherwise noted.)

  ABC management made only . . .: Brewin, “ABC’s Trouble,” p. 46.

  Cecily Coleman . . .: Flander, “Network News,” p. 39; Sanders and Rock, Prime- Time, pp. 150–51. (ABC officials declined to discuss this case or the other grievances raised by the women’s committee.) 387 “It was like . . .”: Flander, “Network News,” p. 39.

  Soon the committee’s spokeswoman . . .: Berwin, “ABC’s Trouble,” p. 46.

  In the first five . . .: Barrett, “Women and the Economy,” p. 113.

  While 146,000 women were . . .: “Employment and Earnings, 1990,” U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jan. 1991, Table 22, Current Population Survey. (Retail trade expanded by about about 5 million jobs in the ’80s.)

  American saleswomen suffer . . .: Bergmann, Economic Emergence, p. 72.

  The average female salesworker . . .: Ibid.

  The result: women selling apparel . . .: Barrett, “Women and the Economy,” p. 122.

  The federal agency had recei
ved . . .: Personal interview with James P. Scanlan, litigation attorney on the Sears case, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1988.

  The average commissioned . . .: Ruth Milkman, “Women’s History and the Sears Case,” Feminist Studies, 12, no. 2 (Summer 1986): 374-400.

  The agency calculated that . . .: Plaintiff’s Pretrial Brief—Commission Sales Issues, revised Nov. 19, 1984, EEOC v. Sears, p. 4; Closing Arguments, EEOC v. Sears, June 28, 1985, p. 18958.

  By the end of the ’70s . . .: Reskin and Hartman, Women’s Work, pp. 91-93.

  As soon as Sears . . .: Closing Arguments, EEOC v. Sears, June 28, 1985, p. 18958; Alice Kessler-Harris, “Academic Freedom and Expert Witnessing,” Texas Law Review, 67:429 (1988): 429-40.

  A Sears personnel manager . . .: Written Testimony of Rex Rambo, EEOC v. Sears, pp. 8433, 8439, 8437, 6.

  “It does require . . .”: Testimony of Ed Michaels, EEOC v. Sears, pp. 12071, 12085-12086.

  And Ray Graham . . .: Testimony of Ray Graham, EEOC v. Sears, Feb. 19, 1985, p. 8537.

  The company’s hiring . . .: Testimony of Ray Graham, EEOC v. Sears, Feb. 19, 1985, p. 8432.

  All applicants for . . .: “Psychological Tests—For Use in Sears Retail Stores,” Plaintiff’s Exhibit 113, EEOC v. Sears, p. 4.

  Though Sears told . . .: Closing Arguments, EEOC v. Sears, June 28, 1985, p. 18970. Sears did make some cosmetic alterations in its revised test manual in 1973, such as changing the title for the section on commission sales from “Big Ticket Salesmen” to “Big Ticket Salespeople.”

  But in Rosenberg’s testimony . . .: Barbara Winkler, “Scholars’ Conflict in Sears Sex-Bias Case Sets Off War in Women’s History,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 5, 1986, p. 8.

  “Many women choose jobs . . .”: “Offer of Proof Concerning the Testimony of Rosalind Rosenberg,” March 11, 1985, reprinted in Signs, Summer 1986, pp. 761, 762.

  But at Sears . . .: Closing Arguments, p. 18992.

  Rosenberg was initially drawn . . .: Personal interview with Rosalind Rosenberg, 1989.

  “My gut personal . . .”: Ibid. (Subsequent quotations are from interview unless otherwise specified.)

  “This is not an argument . . .”: Personal interview with Alice Kessler-Harris, 1989.

  For example, Rosenberg . . .: Testimony of Rosalind Rosenberg, EEOC v. Sears, June 22, 1985, pp. 18284-85. Nonetheless, in the press, efforts by such feminist scholars as Kessler-Harris to defend their own work from misrepresentation were presented as an attack on Rosenberg’s academic freedom. In the Washington Post, for example, columnist Jonathan Yardley complained that Rosenberg was being “maliciously vilified” by “feminist thought-control wardens.” “They may call it feminism but it sounds for all the world like totalitarianism,” he wrote. “One can only wonder how well these people sleep at night.” She Jonathan Yardley, “When Scholarship and the Cause Collide,” Washington Post, June 16, 1986, Style section, p. 2.

  With words that . . .: Memorandum of Points and Authorities in Support of Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss, EEOC v. Sears, p. 15; Memorandum in Support of Defendant’s Motion to Reconsider Order Denying Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss Or, in the Alternative, to Reopen Discovery on Conflicts of Interest Issue, EEOC v. Sears, pp. 2, 4; Closing Arguments, p. 19059; Defendant’s Interrogatories, EEOC v. Sears, pp. 17–21; Plaintiff’s Opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Reconsider Order Denying Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss, EEOC v. Sears, pp. 60, 52–54, 57–58.

  When Sears’s lawyers . . .: Plaintiff’s Opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Reconsider Order Denying Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss, EEOC v. Sears, pp. 28–30.

  The whole fishing . . .: Ibid., pp. 26–35.

  Sears even submitted . . .: Reply Brief of Cross-Appellant, Sears, Roebuck and Co., EEOC v. Sears, p. 17.

  Both the trial judge . . .: Decision of U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Harlington Wood, Jr., nos. 86–1519 and 86–1621, pp. 104–10; personal interview with Charles Morgan, Jr., 1989. In this interview and elsewhere, Morgan has said he supports the goals of the women’s movement. But his courtroom and press pronouncements suggest a less friendly view of feminism’s influence: “My heavens, what did the pill do?” he erupted at one point in closing arguments. “Said to women, you can determine when you want to have a child You don’t have to have children at all. You can devote and dedicate yourself to a career.” In the media, he expressed displeasure with efforts to apply landmark civil rights laws to women. “The government has to get its priorities straight,” he complained to the New York Times. “There’s just no equation between minorities and women Look, I know who the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were intended for.” See Closing Arguments, EEOC v. Sears, p. 19093; Milkman, “Women’s History,” p. 379.

  Far from desiring . . .: Personal interview with James P. Scanlan, 1988.

  A high-ranking . . .: Juan Williams, “Despite Class-Action Doubts, EEOC Presses Sears Bias Case,” Washington Post, July 9, 1985, p. A1.

  I’ve been trying to get out . . .”: Ibid.

  Thomas maintained that . . .: Juan Williams, “A Question of Fairness,” The Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1987, p. 70.

  Thomas was, in fact, . . .: Williams, “Despite Class-Action Doubts.”

  “It was very bizarre . . .”: Personal interview with Karen Baker, 1988.

  If women weren’t working in . . .: Decision of Judge John Nordberg, Jan. 31, 1986, EEOC v. Sears, 628 F. Supp. 1264 (N.D. Ill. 1986), p. 1306.

  I was after commission . . .”: Personal interview with Lura Lee Nader, 1988. (Subsequent quotations are from interview unless otherwise noted.)

  “I needed to get out . . .”: Trial transcript, p. 16466.

  Alice Howland, the other woman . . .: Personal interview with Alice Howland, 1988. (Subsequent quotations are from interview unless otherwise noted.)

  In an admittedly . . .: Personal interviews conducted in Sears store, San Francisco, 1988. (All of these women have since lost their jobs. By the end of the decade, with profits plunging, the retailer scaled back its work force and shut down a handful of stores, including the San Francisco outlet.) In the backlash decade, as . . .: “Employment and Earnings,” U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Annual averages, 1983-1988. And in a cruelly ironic development, many of the major retailers, from Sears to Nordstrom, began requiring their mostly female clerks to work on commission in the small-ticket “ladies’” departments—where commission pay yielded less than straight wages because of the low price tags on the merchandise handled in these departments. See Susan Faludi, “Sales Job: At Nordstrom Stores, Service Comes First—But at a Big Price,” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 20, 1990, p. A1.

  Women are far more . . .”: Personal interview with Mary Ellen Boyd, executive director of Non-Traditional Employment for Women, 1987.

  Diane Joyce arrived . . .: Personal interview with Diane Joyce, 1987. (Subsequent Joyce quotations from interview unless otherwise noted.) See also Susan Faludi, “What Women Are Up Against in the Fight for Equal Pay,” West Magazine, San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 27, 1987, p. 18.

  One day, the stockroom storekeeper . . .: Personal interview with Tony Laramie, 1987; personal interview with Diane Joyce, 1987.

  At a construction site . . .: Mary Ellen Boyd and Elizabeth Edman, “Women in Non-Traditional Employment,” unpublished 1987 paper, p. 20; personal interview with Mary Ellen Boyd, 1987.

  “It’s pervasive . . .”: Personal interview with John Longabaugh, 1987.

  A maintenance worker . . .: Faludi, “What Women Are Up Against,” pp. 20-21.

  Another new woman . . .: Ibid.

  They both got similarly . . .: The county’s “Rule of Seven” hiring policy mandates that the applicants with the top seven scores be treated as equally qualified for the job, because the differences in the top scores are typically minimal. Later in the press, Johnson would nonetheless make much of the two-point difference between his and Joyce’s scores—citing it as proof that he was “better qualified
.” What Johnson failed to mention when he made this claim, however, was that when Joyce had applied for a county foreman’s job in 1985, she ranked first on the orals test—yet lost out to the man who scored fifth. See Faludi, “What Women Are Up Against.”

  The three interviewers, one of whom . . .: Trial Transcript, Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County, pp. 153, 161-62.

  “What’s wrong with . . .”: Personal interview with James Graebner, 1987.

  “I just said . . .”: Personal interview with Ron Shields, 1987.

  “I felt like tearing . . .”: Personal interview with Paul Johnson, 1987.

  “Something like this . . .”: Personal interview with Gerald Pourroy, 1987.

  Several months after . . .: Personal observation, 1987.

  She thinks she is . . .”: Personal interviews, 1987.

  Women’s numbers in the . . .: Faludi, “What Women Are Up Against,” p. 26; personal interviews with Santa Clara County Equal Employment officers and union officials, 1987, 1991.

  The court ruled . . .: Lorance v. AT&T Technologies, June 12, 1989.

  The court made this ruling . . .: Personal interview with Bridget Arimond, plaintiff’s attorney in the Lorance v. AT&T Technologies case, 1989.

  And ironically enough . . .: Martin v. Wilks, June 12, 1989.

  As long as anyone . . .: Personal interviews with employees at the plant, 1989.

  She had been working since . . .: Personal interview with Pat Lorance, 1989. (Subsequent Lorance quotations from interview unless otherwise noted.)

  As several women . . .: Personal interviews with Pat Lorance, Jan King, and three women who were called in to the personnel office, 1989. The three women, who still work there, asked that their names not be used.

  “We have found no . . .”: Personal interview with Charles Jackson, April 1991.

  Some of the men began . . .: Personal interviews with workers in the testing division, 1989.

  “I looked around . . .”: Personal interview with Jan King, 1989. (Subsequent King quotations from interview.)

  “The ladies hadn’t . . .”: Personal interview with Charles Jackson, April 1991.