Feminism Is Irrelevant in the Twenty-First Century

Female Rights

Feminism Is Irrelevant in the Twenty-First Century

Feminism, 2012

"We should be directing our efforts toward the millions of women who have never had the luxury of coping with the problem that has no name."

Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. In the following viewpoint, she argues that the social and economic conditions that led feminist pioneer Betty Friedan to publish The Feminine Mystique in 1963 have changed, for the most part, to favor women's education and employment, and American women today enjoy the best health and highest level of education in the world. By contrast, according to Sommers, the social and economic situation for men in the twenty-first century has deteriorated greatly, leading men to fall far behind women in terms of health, life expectancy, and employment participation. Yet, Sommers observes, these widespread male issues have not inspired outrage or been turned into political causes the way women's issues have. Sommers agrees in general that women around the world have not as of yet achieved full equality, but she prefers efforts to champion the rights of women in developing countries rather than in the West.

Betty Friedan's 1963 classic, The Feminine Mystique, opened with these words:

It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—"Is this all?"

The problem Friedan described no longer exists. For most young American women today, the problem is not the futility and monotony of domestic life; it is choosing among the many paths open to them. Finding men as ambitious and well educated as they are is another challenge. Life for women may be difficult, but the system is no longer rigged against them.

In 1963, two-thirds of the American workforce was male. Most well-paid and prestigious jobs were off- limits to women. Women worked, of course, but it was the custom for many employers to think of their salaries as "pin money." Advertisers and psychologists sought to persuade women that the fulfillment of their femininity was their highest calling. Adlai Stevenson, the liberal politician and diplomat, condescendingly advised the Smith College graduating class of 1955 that it was their destiny to participate in politics solely through their roles as wives and mothers. "Women," he said, "especially educated women, have a unique opportunity to influence us, man and boy." One magazine ran an article titled "Do Women Have to Talk So Much?" Pop psychoanalysts even warned women that too much education couldruin their sex lives.

Humorless and Unforgiving

Friedan—a stocky, disheveled, volatile Jewish iconoclast from Peoria, Ill.—had no patience for such nonsense. She was given to wild overstatement, calling the suburban home a "comfortable concentration camp" where women suffer a "slow death of mind and spirit." (Friedan later regretted those remarks and apologized.) But the middle-class homemakers she was addressing tuned out her eccentric rhetoric and took away the parts of her message that suited them.

The late Erma Bombeck, a popular syndicated humorist and columnist, wrote about the night in 1963 when she and two other suburban housewives drove to Columbus, Ohio, to hear a lecture by Friedan. "This is a sexist society," shouted Friedan. "You are not using your God-given abilities to their potential." Bombeck was stunned by Friedan's harangue. She found her message too sweeping, too humorless, and too unforgiving of ordinary women. "I had a life going here. Maybe it needed work. But I had a husband and three kids whom I loved." But then Bombeck had a second thought: "I liked the part about using your God-given potential. I wondered if I had any." A few weeks later, she went to her local newspaper and asked whether she could write a humorous column about life in the suburbs.

Fast-forward to 2009, and you find that women are now fully half of the American workforce. They earn 57 percent of bachelor's degrees, 59 percent of master's degrees, and half the doctorates. Females have achieved parity with males in law school and medical school and left their male counterparts in the dust in fields like veterinary medicine and psychology. Women serve as presidents of Harvard, MIT, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and many other leading research universities. Today American women are among the healthiest, freest, best-educated women in the world, and they score near the top on international surveys of happiness and life satisfaction.

No Longer the Second Sex

True, the 1970s feminist vision of a fully egalitarian society has not been fulfilled. Contemporary women and men are not pursuing identical career paths. Vast numbers of women—including many with advanced degrees—cut back or drop out of the workplace when they have children. In a 2007 Pew [Research Center] study, parents of children under 18 were asked, "What working situation would be ideal for you?" Seventy-two percent of fathers, but only 20 percent of mothers, said "full-time work." (For a majority of mothers, part-time employment was the ideal.) Hard-line feminists interpret such results as more evidence of "deeply ingrained gendering," and they work ceaselessly to reset priorities. But isn't it possible that in following the venerable feminist dream of "not being at the mercy of the world, but as builder and designer of that world," women do things their own way?

In Friedan's day, women were clearly the second sex. Not so today. Yes, many women are struggling with the challenge of combining family and work. But men do not have it easy either. They are increasingly less educated than women. They are bearing the brunt of the recession. The New York Times recently reported that "a full 82 percent of the job losses have befallen men." Reuters referred to the surging male unemployment rate as a "blood bath." Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's"FastStats" show that men are less likely than women to be insured—and more likely to drink, smoke, and be overweight. They also die six years earlier than women on average.

Why are there no conferences, petitions, workshops, congressional hearings, or presidential councils to help men close the education gap, the health care gap, the insurance gap, the job-loss gap, and the death gap? Because, unlike women, men do not have hundreds of men's studies departments, research institutes, policy centers, and lobby groups working tirelessly to promote their challenges as political causes.

The struggle for women's rights is far from over, but the serious battlegrounds today are in Muslim societies and in sub-Saharan Africa. In these and other parts of the developing world, most women have not yet seen so much as a ripple of freedom, let alone two major waves of liberation. We should be directing our efforts toward the millions of women who have never had the luxury of coping with the problem that has no name.

Source Citation

Sommers, Christina Hoff. "Feminism Is Irrelevant in the Twenty-First Century." Feminism. Ed. Nancy Dziedzic. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2012. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Are Men the Second Sex Now?" American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 2009. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 4 Jan. 2014.

Women CEOs May Outearn Male Counterparts in Some Areas

Are Women Paid Fairly?, 2013

BiannaGolodryga is co-anchor of Good Morning America's weekend edition and a business correspondent for ABC News. Michael Murray is a contributing writer to this article.

An elite group of female CEOs are bucking the male-female wage gap. The public nature of CEO salaries may be one explanation. It's unclear whether these highly paid women can influence—from the top down—the pay gap that still affects the vast majority of working women.

While the average earnings for women still lag behind those of men, they're turning the tables in the most exclusive corporate club of all. A new report from Bloomberg News, the leading provider of business news worldwide, shows that women who head the nation's largest companies are earning substantially more than their male counterparts. Their average annual pay over the last few years? Just over $14 million dollars.

"That means women earned 40 percent more than men in 2009," says Alexis Leondis of Bloomberg.

[In] 2009 female CEOs got raises averaging nearly 30 percent, while male CEOs took pay cuts.

[In] 2009 female CEOs got raises averaging nearly 30 percent, while male CEOs took pay cuts.

Sixteen Women at the Top

Carol Bartz, the CEO of Yahoo! has a pay package of $47.2 million.

Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld's take-home pay is $26.3 million.

And IndraNooyi, the CEO of Pepsi Co., earns $15.8 million a year.

Despite those huge salaries, there is a huge caveat: There are still very few women who have made it to the corner office when compared to the number of men in those positions of corporate power. Only 16 companies listed in the S&P 500 are run by women.

One reason female bosses did so much better than women at lower levels is that CEO pay is transparent, being made public and available to the press. Some say no board would dare underpay a female CEO for fear of public backlash.

"There's 16 women making money and that's great," says Marie Wilson of The White House Project, a women's advocacy group. "I'm concerned about the vast majority of women who are now the majority of the workforce ... it's kind of like the 16 supercorporate women are doing well. And that's a good sign—but it's not good enough."

In fact, women workers as a whole earn just 79% as much as men, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

So Why Do Most Women Struggle?

Although these 16 women CEOs have climbed to the top rung of the corporate ladder, most women still struggle to get a solid foothold. Some studies have shown that women are far less aggressive in negotiations.

In one ABC News behavior lab experiment, volunteers were told they would be paid between $5 and $12 for their time participating in a study. Everyone was offered the minimum, but the men and women differed wildly in their reactions to the payment. More than half the men asked for more money, but only a third of the women bargained for more.

Women CEOs Earn More, But Not Their Assistants

But still, even the women who have broken through the glass ceiling say that much has to change culturally in the business for women to reach parity at all levels. The hope is that the few who have made it to the top can start that change from the highest levels.

"If my job went out there with that kind of earning, I guess I'd want to make a real commitment to seeing every woman in my company paid fairly," says Wilson. "If I'm being paid like that I want all of you to be paid fairly."

Source Citation

Golodryga, Brianna, and Michael Murray. "Women CEOs May Outearn Male Counterparts in Some Areas." Are Women Paid Fairly? Ed. Jennifer Dorman. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. At Issue. Rpt. from "Women CEOs Beat Men in Pay in 2009." ABCNews.com. 2010. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 4 Jan. 2014.

Girls Have Fewer Rights and Opportunities than Boys

Do Children Have Rights?, 2011

The people who work for the International Labour Organization (ILO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, make up the International Labour Office. Its aims are to advance opportunities for women and men so they can obtain decent and productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security, and human dignity. Una Murray is a consultant for the IPEC (International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour) and Patrick Quinn is from the Geneva, Switzerland, office of the IPEC.

In most countries throughout the world, boys are afforded more rights and opportunities than girls, often because cultures and societies have passed down from generation to generation the belief that males are more important and valuable than females. As a result, especially in poor countries where child labor is an economic necessity for many families, girls are more likely to be denied an education and forced into labor, thus limiting any chance of their own to rise out of poverty. When governments and policy makers assess and implement strategies in response to the global economic crisis, special attention should be given to the discrimination against girls and the risks they face as a result of that discrimination.

In many countries and cultures the opportunities enjoyed by boys and girls differ, from the earliest stages of life through childhood and into adulthood. In fact, there are very few countries, societies or communities where girls have exactly the same opportunities as boys.

Access to education is a human right, and an important foundation for an individual's future prosperity and welfare. Yet in much of the world boys and girls continue to be treated differently in terms of access to education. Parents often place more value on their sons' education than on their daughters', and girls therefore are often taken out of school at an earlier age than boys. The result of these inequalities in education can be seen in global literacy statistics. Of the 16 per cent of the world's population who are unable to read or write a simple statement, almost two out of three are women.

The role of females is often viewed as being of less importance or value than that of males.

The discrimination against girls in education often stems from the view that in later life boys will have better labour market opportunities, while girls will assume domestic responsibilities, marry and move to another family. The inequalities in access to education mean that by the time girls reach the minimum age of employment many are already at a social and economic disadvantage.

Male Work Roles Are Considered More Important

Children are taught from an early age to model themselves on their parents. In most societies different gender roles mean that boys and girls engage in different activities. For example, a person is not born with the ability to do needlework or cook but acquires such skills over time. In most cultures it is more likely that girls will be taught such "female skills" than boys.

The different patterns of work of males and females may vary from society to society, However, most boys

and girls are eventually channelled into what are perceived as male or female work roles. Generally speaking, the role of females is often viewed as being of less importance or value than that of males. Girls are more likely to engage in types of work for which earnings are relatively low.

The opportunities that girls encounter early in life may well determine their chances later on. If girls lack basic education and engage in child labour at an early age they may be condemned to a future of poverty.

Much of the work undertaken by girls is less visible than that of boys. Sometimes [individuals] outside the family and close community may be altogether unaware of it. Typical examples are work on farms and in small-scale agriculture, domestic work and work in small home-based workshops.

The often hidden nature of domestic work has given rise to particular concerns. Girls engaged in domestic work are frequently reported as being treated poorly and sometimes being physically abused. Although some of these cases do become public, the fact that the work takes place within the confines of a private home means that abuse very often goes unseen and unreported.

This problem extends beyond domestic work. Girls working in many other situations also have little contact with others outside the immediate work environment, thus giving rise to concerns for their safety and welfare. Some of the worst forms of child labour may entail girls being deliberately hidden from the outside world. Girls trafficked for labour and prostitution, for instance, can sometimes be held as virtual prisoners.

All children involved in child labour are vulnerable. To begin with ... chances are that they come from poor families. They often belong to a socially excluded community, such as an ethnic or indigenous group or a group with a subordinate station in the social hierarchy. They may live in rural areas where there are few facilities. All these factors create disadvantages which have an impact on boys and girls alike, but girls face additional challenges.