The gender wage gap: Do women get paid less for equal work?

HR.BLR.com | May 15, 2013

Stephanie R. Thomas explains the gender wage gap.

Both the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibit gender pay discrimination, so why does the gender wage gap persist? Surely most employers strive to ensure that men and women receive equal pay for equivalent roles. Yet it remains true that women earn an average of 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. What’s the explanation?

The story lies in understanding the root of that statistic. The statistic actually compares the average earnings of all men with the average earnings of all women. Those broad averages do result in the 23 cents/hour difference we’ve all heard of. However, differences in the jobs women and men typically hold (and their respective average pay rates), differences in the amount of time women and men spend in the workforce, and many other factors make up the average amounts paid across the board.

There are many factors that go into individual compensation decisions, such as:

• Education
• Prior experience
• Amount of time in that role
• Market rates for that job/industry/geography/etc.

So the statistic is not actually making an apples-to-apples comparison of men and women with the same experience levels in the same roles within the same geographic location. That said, it does not mean a gender wage gap does not exist. It does, it’s just not necessarily all caused by simple gender-based pay discrimination.

What causes the gender wage gap?

If the differences in the average amount women and men are paid cannot be fully explained by discrimination against women, what causes the gap to persist?

“One of the main explanatory factors is occupational category.” Stephanie R. Thomas explained in a recent BLR webinar. “Occupation plays a large role in explaining the differences in earnings between men and women. This is attributed to something called occupational segregation.”

Occupational segregation means that some jobs or job types have been dominated by a single gender. This creates a situation where women are concentrated in occupations that have lower earnings in general. When this happens on a large scale, then differences in pay between genders can result—and this happens without a difference in pay for men and women who are in the same job.

Another contributing factor is the fact that women are more likely than men to be in jobs where they work less than 40 hours a week. Couple that with the fact that men in full-time roles are more likely to work overtime hours (thus increasing total pay), even more of the gender wage gap is explained. This difference is actually quite important because it represents a situation where men and women may be paid the exact same hourly rate for the same work, yet men have a disproportionate number of hours—thus meaning the men are paid more total pay in the same job type. Since our “77 cents” statistic looks at total compensation, it will show men being paid more, but not explain why.

The factors outlined here are just a sample of the factors that influence the gender wage gap. To get more information, order the webinar recording of “Gender Pay Equity: How to Use More Than Salary Numbers to Close the Gap.” To register for a future webinar, visithttp://store.blr.com/events/webinars.

Stephanie R. Thomas, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of Thomas Econometrics Inc. She specializes in applied statistics and mathematical economics. She has extensive experience in the statistical analysis of gender, race and age discrimination claims with respect to compensation, hiring, promotion, termination and other employment practices.

False reports outpace sex assaults in the military

By Rowan Scarborough | The Washington Times | May 12, 2013

False complaints of sexual abuse in the military are rising at a faster rate than overall reports of sexual assault, a trend that could harm combat readiness, analysts say.

Virtually all media attention on a Pentagon report last week focused on an increase in service members’ claims of sexual abuse in an anonymous survey, but unmentioned were statistics showing that a significant percentage of such actually investigated cases were baseless.

From 2009 to 2012, the number of sexual abuse reports rose from 3,244 to 3,374 – a 4 percent increase.

During the same period, the number of what the Pentagon calls “unfounded allegations” based on completed investigations of those reports rose from 331 to 444 – a 35 percent increase.

In 2012, there were 2,661 completed investigations, meaning that the 444 false complaints accounted for about 17 percent of all closed cases last year. False reports accounted for about 13 percent of closed cases in 2009.

Robert Maginnis, a retired Army officer and analyst at the Family Research Council, is writing a book for Regnery Publishing Inc. about the Pentagon’s push to put women in direct ground combat in the infantry, armor and special operations.

“In the course of conducting interviews with commanders, I heard time and again complaints about female service members making sex-related allegations which proved unfounded,” Mr. Maginnis said. “Not only do some women abuse the truth, but it also robs their commanders from more important, mission-related tasks.

“Female service members told me that some women invite problems which lead men on and then result in advances the woman can’t turn off. Too often, such female culpability leads to allegations of sexual contact, assault and then the women feign innocence.”

The annual Pentagon report on sexual assault noted the numbers of false complaints but included no analysis. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.

Elaine Donnelly, who runs the Center for Military Readiness, said the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Office (SAPRO) is ignoring the problem of false reports.

“Unsubstantiated accusations remain a significant problem, but the SAPRO is doing nothing about it,” Mrs. Donnelly said. “I went through both volumes and found no evidence of concern about the significant 17 percent of ‘unfounded accusations.’ Something should be done to reduce the numbers of false accusations, the first step being an admission that the problem exists.”

The number of sex abuse reports has risen from 1,700 a decade ago to 3,374 last year.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have pushed male and female personnel into close living conditions at a sprawling network of bases.

The existence of unwanted and wanted sexual contact in the war zone is not disputed.

For example, a group of Army physicians in 2010 studied one brigade combat team deployed to Iraq in 2007.

The physicians’ study, published in the Military Medicine journal, examined the number of soldiers who sustained disease or noncombat injuries. Of 4,122 soldiers, including 325 women in support roles, 1,324 had diseases or injuries that forced them to miss time or be evacuated.

“Females, compared with males, had a significantly increased incident-rate ratio for becoming a [disease or noncombat] casualty,” the doctors found.

Of 47 female soldiers evacuated from the brigade and sent home, 35 – or 74 percent – were for “pregnancy-related issues.”

Even before the wars, the Pentagon removed barriers across the board to women and took action to mix the sexes more closely. Men and women share dorms and barracks in boot camp and at the service academies, and deploy in close quarters on ships.

The integration promises to become even more intimate in coming years as the Pentagon places women into training for direct ground combat jobs.

“The latest SAPRO report confirms that problems of sexual assault against both men and women are getting worse, not better,” Mrs. Donnelly said. “Pentagon leaders nevertheless are planning to extend these problems into the combat arms. Congress and the Pentagon first must do no harm. At a minimum, the Obama administration must not be allowed to extend complicated issues of sexual assault, which have increased by 129 percent since 2004, into direct ground combat infantry battalions.”

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last week announced several steps to eliminate assaults, including ordering commanders to conduct “visual inspections” of all workplaces to ensure they are “free from materials that create a degrading or offensive work environment.”

The Air Force completed such an inspection last year after a female service member complained of persistent harassment.

In January, the Air Force reported the “health and welfare” inspection results:

“The Air Force found 631 instances of pornography (magazines, calendars, pictures, videos that intentionally displayed nudity or depicted acts of sexual activity); 3,987 instances of unprofessional material (discrimination, professional appearance, items specific to local military history such as patches, coins, heritage rooms, log books, song books, etc.); and 27,598 instances of inappropriate or offensive items (suggestive items, magazines, posters, pictures, calendars, vulgarity, graffiti). In total, 32,216 items were reported. Identified items were documented and either removed or destroyed.”

Said Mr. Hagel: “We need cultural change where every service member is treated with dignity and respect, where all allegations of inappropriate behavior are treated with seriousness, where victims’ privacy is protected, where bystanders are motivated to intervene, and where offenders know that they will be held accountable by strong and effective systems of justice.”

 _____________________________________

 

 

“Camille Paglia: ‘Rape is an outrage…but the hysteria around rape is equally outrageous. The whole system is now designed to make you (i.e. the victim) feel you are maimed and mutilated forever.’ And now to Fay Weldon, author, who said in 1998 that ‘rape is not the worst thing that can ever happen to a woman, if you are safe, alive and unmarked afterwards.’ And finally Germaine Greer, ‘it is not women who have decided that rape is so heinous but men. The only weapon that counts in rape is the penis, which is conceptualized as devastating.’” -The Telgraph, February 15, 2013

Undermining our girls

By ANDREA PEYSER | April 27, 2013

Your daughter’s pretty little head needs an adjustment. The Girl Scouts of the USA, an organization that exists primarily to turn female children into professional pushers of Thin Mints, Samoas and Tagalongs, has joined a loud chorus of female-crushers.

The Girl Scouts Research Institute has just commissioned a suspect study that found an overwhelming number of Scouts — despite their forced entry into cookie capitalism — don’t think they have the smarts to balance checkbooks, handle credit cards or put enough pennies in a piggy bank to pay for college. And why not?

These children are as young as 8. Grow up!

It’s been a rough couple of months to be a member of the fair sex, a majority that, if you believe the hype, is made up primarily of losers, whiners and victims.

Last month, billionaire Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg published her awful book, “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,” which sent a loud message destined to undermine ladies: If you want a family, a life, you’re a disappointment to the sisterhood.

If you’re not CEO of a Fortune 500 company yet, if you can’t afford to strut in Louboutins, then you’re not trying hard enough. It’s your fault.

The bash-women fest continued on April 9, a date which will live in infamy. That’s the annual Equal Pay Day holiday, set by an outfit called the National Committee on Pay Equity. It’s a doozy.

The committee insists that the average woman earns a lot less than a man, just 77 cents on every dollar he makes. By that logic, a woman has to work just over three extra months, until April 9, before she reaches the pay her male counterparts earned for the previous year.

Lest you disagree, President Obama cynically campaigned on the warped number last year. This month, he issued a proclamation stating, “But even now, too many Americans are seeing their hard work go unrewarded because of circumstances beyond their control.”

Then — drumroll, please — “I continue to call on the Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.”

This may be the first time, ever, that new federal regulations are supposed to lead to hiring more people. Especially women.

In truth, the argument is completely bogus.

“The way I see it, there’s a lot of good news for women and girls,” said Sabrina Schaeffer, executive director of the conservative Independent Women’s Forum. “But when the president and lawmakers paint society as hostile to women, it’s really unfortunate. I guess I am offended.”

The 77-cent statistic has been repeated so often, most Americans take it as gospel. But it’s wrong.

The number compares the median salaries of all workers. If you compare, say, teachers to teachers, corporate honchos to corporate honchos, if you take into account women who chose to jump off the fast track to have families, the pay gap magically disappears.

In fact, the median income for young, single, childless urban women is higher — sometimes much higher — than that of men, concluded a study by Reach Advisors, a Boston market-research firm.

This led the notoriously anti-women New York Times to write that superior female earning power is destroying young gals’ love lives.

“It’s not uncommon to walk into the hottest new West Village bistro on a Saturday night and find five smartly dressed young women dining together — the nearest man the waiter,” said a piece titled, “The End of Courtship?”

The Scouts survey found that a staggering 88 percent of cookie-peddlers, ages 8 to 17, don’t think they can cut it financially. Really?

“Women are the No. 1 consumers, from groceries to electronics to cars,” said Schaeffer. “To me, that suggests that women are financially literate.”

I asked the Scouts whether the organization used a defeatist mind-set. Did cookie mongers enter into the survey with the assumption that girls are genetically inferior to boys in ways of money? I never found out.

In an e-mail, the Scouts’ public-relations manager promptly called me, “a) a known misogynist b) looking for a headline.” (He later apologized.)

True misogynists (and that includes feminists) refuse to see how far women have come. Surveys like the Scouts’, people like Sandberg, and holidays designed to make us look weak don’t empower girls and women. They infantilize us.

That’s not equality.

Lessons from a Feminist Paradise on Equal Pay Day

April 9, 2013

By Christina Hoff Sommers

Sweden seems to be an egalitarian, feminist utopia. So why are American women ahead of their Swedish counterparts in breaking through the glass ceiling?

On the surface, Sweden appears to be a feminist paradise. Look at any global survey of gender equity and Sweden will be near the top. Family-friendly policies are its norm — with 16 months of paid parental leave, special protections for part-time workers and state-subsidized preschools where, according to a government website, “gender-awareness education is increasingly common.” Due to an unofficial quota system, women hold 45 percent of positions in the Swedish parliament. They have enjoyed the protection of government agencies with titles like the Ministry of Integration and Gender Equality and the Secretariat of Gender Research. So, why are American women so far ahead of their Swedish counterparts in breaking through the glass ceiling?

In a 2012 report, the World Economic Forum found that when it comes to closing the gender gap in “economic participation and opportunity,” the United States is ahead of not only Sweden, but also Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland, Germany and the United Kingdom. Sweden’s rank in the report can largely be explained by its political quota system. Though the United States has fewer women in the workforce (68 percent compared to Sweden’s 77 percent), American women who choose to be employed are far more likely to work full-time and to hold high-level jobs as managers or professionals. They also own more businesses, launch more start start-ups and more often work in traditionally male fields. As for breaking the glass ceiling in business, American women are well in the lead, as this chart shows.

What explains the American advantage? How can it be that societies like Sweden, where gender equity is relentlessly pursued and enforced, have fewer female managers, executives, professionals, and business owners than the laissez-faire United States? A new study by Cornell economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn gives an explanation.

Generous parental leave policies and readily available part-time options have unintended consequences: instead of strengthening women’s attachment to the workplace, they appear to weaken it. In addition to a 16-month leave, a Swedish parent has the right to work six hours a day (for a reduced salary) until his or her child is 8 years old. Mothers are far more likely than fathers to take advantage of this law. But extended leaves and part-time employment are known to be harmful to careers — for both genders. And with women, a second factor comes into play: most seem to enjoy the flex-time arrangement (once known as the “mommy track”) and never find their way back to full-time or high-level employment. In sum: Generous family-friendly policies do keep more women in the labor market, but they also tend to diminish their careers.

According to Blau and Kahn, Swedish-style paternal leave policies and flex-time arrangements pose a second threat to women’s progress: they make employers wary of hiring women for full-time positions at all. Offering a job to a man is the safer bet. He is far less likely to take a year of parental leave and then return on a reduced work schedule for the next eight years.

I became aware of the trials of career-focused European women a few years ago when I met a post-doctoral student from Germany who was then a visiting fellow at Johns Hopkins. She was astonished by the professional possibilities afforded to young American women. Her best hope in Germany was a government job — prospects for women in the private sector were dim. “In Germany,” she told me, “we have all the benefits, but employers don’t want to hire us.”

Swedish economists Magnus Henrekson and Mikael Stenkula addressed the following question in their 2009 study: Why are there so few female top executives in the European egalitarian welfare states? Their answer: “Broad-based welfare-state policies impede women’s representation in elite competitive positions.”

It is tempting to declare the Swedish policies regressive and hail the American system as superior. But that would be shortsighted. The Swedes can certainly take a lesson from the United States and look for ways to clear a path for their high-octane female careerists. But most women are not committed careerists. When the Pew Research Center recently asked American parents to identify their “ideal” life arrangement, 47 percent of mothers said they would prefer to work part-time and 20 percent said they would prefer not to work at all. Fathers answered differently: 75 percent preferred full-time work. Some version of the Swedish system might work well for a majority of American parents, but the United States is unlikely to fully embrace the Swedish model. Still, we can learn from their experience.

This was not the Swedes’ intention, but they have demonstrated to the world what the sexes will and will not do when offered the same opportunities. Despite its failure to shatter the glass ceiling, Sweden has one of the most powerful and innovative economies in the world. In its 2011-2012 survey, the World Economic Forum ranked Sweden as the world’s third most competitive economy; the United States came in fifth. Sweden, dubbed the “rockstar of the recovery” in the Washington Post, also leads the world in life satisfaction and happiness. It is a society well worth studying, and its efforts to conquer the gender gap impart a vital lesson — though not the lesson the Swedes had in mind.

Sweden has gone farther than any nation on earth to integrate the sexes and to offer women the same opportunities and freedoms as men. For decades, these descendants of the Vikings have been trying to show the world that the right mix of enlightened policy, consciousness raising and non-sexist child rearing would close the gender divide once and for all. Yet the divide persists.

A 2012 press release from Statistics Sweden bears the title “Gender Equality in Sweden Treading Water” and notes:

The total income from employment for all ages is lower for women than for men. One in three employed women and one in ten employed men work part-time.Women’s working time is influenced by the number and age of their children, but men’s working time is not affected by these factors.

Of all employees, only 13 percent of the women and 12 percent of the men have occupations with an even distribution of the sexes.

Confronted with such facts, some Swedish activists and legislators are demanding more extreme and far-reaching measures, such as replacing male and female pronouns with a neutral alternative and monitoring children more closely to correct them when they gravitate toward gendered play. When it came to light last year that mothers, far more than fathers, chose to stay home from work to care for their sick toddlers, Ulf Kristersson, minister of social security, quickly commissioned a study to determine the causes of and possible cures for this disturbing state of affairs. 

I have another suggestion for Kristersson and his compatriots: Acknowledge the results of your own 40-year experiment. The sexes are not interchangeable. When Catherine Hakim, a sociologist at the London School of Economics, studied the preferences of women and men in Western Europe, her results matched those of the aforementioned Pew study. Women, far more than men, give priority to domestic life. The Swedes should consider the possibility that the current division of labor is not an artifact of sexism, but the triumph of liberated preference.

In the 1940s, the American playwright, congresswoman, and conservative feminist Clare Boothe Luce made a prediction about what would happen to men and women under conditions of freedom:

It is time to leave the question of the role of women in society up to Mother Nature — a difficult lady to fool. You have only to give women the same opportunities as men, and you will soon find out what is or is not in their nature. What is in women’s nature to do they will do, and you won’t be able to stop them. But you will also find, and so will they, that what is not in their nature, even if they are given every opportunity, they will not do, and you won’t be able to make them do it.

In Luce’s day, sex-role stereotypes still powerfully limited women’s choices. More than half a century later, women in the Western democracies enjoy the equality of opportunity of which she spoke. Nowhere is this more true than Sweden. And although it was not the Swedes’ intention, they have demonstrated to the world what the sexes will and will not do when offered the same opportunities.

Today is Equal Pay Day. But as most feminists know by now, the wage gap is largely the result of women’s vocational choices and how they prefer to balance home and family. To close the gap, it won’t be enough to change society or reform the workplace — it is women’s elemental preferences that will have to change. But look to Sweden: Women’s preferences remain the same.

Not only feminists, but also liberal and conservative policymakers should pay attention. Sweden is not the “tax and spend” welfare state of old — while the rest of the world is floundering in debt, Sweden (along with its Nordic neighbors) has been downsizing, reforming entitlements and balancing its books. The budget deficit in Sweden is about 0.2 percent of its GDP; in the United States, it’s 7 percent. But Sweden’s generous family-friendly policies remain in place. The practical, problem-solving Swedes have judged them to be a good investment. They may be right.

Swedish family policies, by accommodating women’s preferences so effectively, are reducing the number of women in elite competitive positions. The Swedes will find this paradoxical and try to find solutions. Let us hope these do not include banning gender pronouns, policing children’s play, implementing more gender quotas or treating women’s special attachment to home and family as a social injustice. Most mothers do not aspire to elite, competitive full-time positions: the Swedish policies have given them the freedom and opportunity to live the lives they prefer. Americans should look past the gender rhetoric and consider what these Scandinavians have achieved. On their way to creating a feminist paradise, the Swedes have inadvertently created a haven for normal mortals.

__________

See also “Nordic Countries Defund Gender Ideology.”

Title IX: the mainstream-media suppressed view

A November 2012 comment regarding Title IX by “Robber748″ in response to “Women’s athletics given stage to shine at Western:”  

Mr. Bigelow,

I would like to comment on your column “Women’s Athletics Given Stage to Shine at Western” in the November 6th Western Front. I found it very one-sided. I would like to express another side.

You seem quite concerned about women. But that concern does not seem to cross over to men. What about the men at Western who would like to play football? Or volleyball? Or baseball? Do you care about them at all? Are you being sexist? Is it chivalry? Chivalry has no place in a world with equality of the sexes.

I think we can all agree, whether we like it or not, that men are generally raised to be strong, independent, and not to complain—to be macho. Women, not so much. Women are much more likely to complain—about anything. And since the squeaky wheel gets the grease, women are much more likely to get more “grease” than men. I think this has happened regarding Title IX. Women have singled out sports for complaints of unfairness. And as a result, they have received more benefits than they deserve—resulting in unfairness to men. After all, athletics are about the only extra-curricular activities where men outnumber women. Why single out the prominent activity with more men? Most other activities have more female participants than male. No one complains about predominantly-female activities, not even men. Fairness should be the basis of Title IX, not who complains more.

Title IX is largely enforced in athletics with proportionality. For example, if a school’s student population is 55 percent female, then 55 percent of its athletes must correspondingly be female. This sounds fair, except for one fact—women, generally, are not as interested in sports as men. Schools have had trouble recruiting female athletes. As a result, schools have found that to satisfy proportionality, they must cancel men’s sports teams because of women’s lack of interest. (For example, UCLA dropped its men’s swimming and diving programs—programs responsible for 22 Olympic medals.) Can you imagine this happening to activities where women have more interest? Imagine that the Art Club, or Debate Club, or Dance Club, or Drama Club have to eliminate several girls or women because not enough boys or men join.

Women bragged about the fact that American women received more medals than the men at the London Olympics. I would argue that this indicates that Title IX has gone too far. Men’s athletics programs are suffering and Title IX is hurting the competitiveness of American men in international competition.

One proposal to minimize this problem of lack of interest of women in sports was to include cheerleading as a sport. But women’s groups rejected this proposal. This makes me wonder about the real motivation of women’s groups concerning Title IX. Perhaps they are more interested in hurting men than being fair.

Title IX is not restricted to sports or extra-curricular activities. But keeping with the theme that “women complain more,” Title IX is starting to show up, unfairly, in the academic arena. For example, the National Women’s Law Center has complained that Vocational Education is biased against women. They contend that men are steered to the higher paying occupations like plumbing, and electronics while women go to lower paying occupations like cosmetology and daycare. I would argue that this again is more a matter of interest than discrimination. Men and women are free to choose whatever vocational education they would like.

Women’s activists also complain about the lack of women in engineering, math, and science. They have encouraged programs to help girls and women in these areas. Yet, there are no corresponding programs to increase male participation in nursing, psychology, etc. Once again, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. This hypocrisy is even worse when you consider that 57 percent of college students these days are female. Oddly, I have not heard women complain about this imbalance. Well, I take that back. Some women have complained about the lack of men in colleges because it restricts their dating possibilities.

And why are there so many Women’s Studies Programs? What does Title IX say about these? Nothing, really. Even though men have very little interest in Women’s Studies classes, the programs are perfectly acceptable because men are allowed to attend, even though few do.

This points out the problem with Title IX. It seems to me there are two ways to comply: “separate but equal,” and “equal access.” Women’s Studies, vocational education, science classes, and non-athletic extra-curricular activities are “equal access”—both men and women can participate in one program. Athletics is “separate but equal”—separate programs for women and men. I believe the problems with Title IX could be solved by switching athletics to “equal access.” Just as “separate but equal” did not work for race, it also does not work for gender. So, instead of separate women’s and men’s basketball teams, schools should just have one team made up of the best players, male or female. This would end questions about proportionality, men’s competitiveness in the Olympics, and whether cheerleading is a sport. (Unfortunately, I do not think it will solve the gender imbalance in complaining.)

I imagine women’s activists will not accept “equal access” athletics. But I think it makes sense. “Separate but equal” teams were probably the way to go in the 1970s. Men and women bumping into each other and competing were not acceptable back then. Plus girls did not grow up playing sports and were just not athletic. But girls have had 40 years to play and gain expertise in sports. And boys and girls competing against each other is not so foreign now. Movies, TV, and commercials constantly show women besting men in everything. Is it all a lie? I think we are ready for “equal access” athletics.

If women complain that few women will be able to make the team, well, welcome to the club. They can do what men do that are not good enough—play intramurals. I do not understand the idea of separate teams anyway. Sure, women are generally not as athletic as men (Olympic records show men are generally about 10 percent better than women) but we do not form separate teams for other less-capable groups. We do not form separate basketball leagues for people under 5’8″. There are no baseball teams for cross-eyed players with poor depth perception. We do not have an Olympic marathon just for smokers. Or 4-man bobsled competitions for claustrophobic people. There are no sumo wrestling leagues for people under 150 pounds. We do not have boxing matches for boxers who have slow twitch muscles. Why do we make exceptions for women? It is sexist.

Though Title IX is perfectly fine legislation, its enforcement is biased.

The Feminine Mystique at 50: Pioneering, Yes. Radical, No

Cathy Young| Reason Magazine | March 9, 2013

A book both hailed and reviled for launching the modern revolution in women’s roles—Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique—recently turned 50, almost exactly seven years after its author’s passing. Today, Friedan’s feminism still has important lessons and messages to offer, including ones that the women’s movement rejects at its own peril. Whatever its flaws, her vision is one that focuses on female achievement and equal partnership between women and men, not female victimhood, male evil, and gender warfare.

Some of Friedan’s conservative detractors have portrayed her as a radical hellbent on subverting America’s foundations. (Revelations about Friedan’s background of writing for left-wing labor publications in the 1940s and early 1950s have played into this.) But, though Friedan did have a leftist background, the startling thing about The Feminine Mystique is that its radicalism is so un-radical. Friedan sought to free women from the social norms that enshrined domesticity, but her goal was to bring them into the mainstream of American society beyond the home. Indeed, her left-wing critics cavil that, in one writer’s words, Friedan’s feminism is “less a challenge to male authority than an incorporation of women more fully into a male, middle-class form of authority.”

The Feminine Mystique‘s vision of a worthy life is deeply rooted in traditional Western and American values. She celebrated the “unique human capacity . . . to live one’s life by purposes stretching into the future—to live not at the mercy of the world, but as builder and designer of that world” (a capacity that, she argued, the role of full-time wife and mother could not fulfill with its repetitive domestic tasks and its focus on emotional life rather than action). She urged women to join men in “the battle with the world.”

Imagine how heretical these passages would sound in a women’s studies class today. “Battle with the world”? A violent, militaristic, male metaphor. Unique human capacity to be a builder and designer of the world? Unbridled, earth-raping, species-centric patriarchal arrogance.

Friedan also unabashedly appealed to American patriotism in her plea for equality. Wasting women’s talents and relegating them to domesticity, she argued, could impede America’s economic growth as well as scientific and technological progress.

The Feminine Mystique was not without its excesses. Infamously, Friedan compared the housewife’s loss of independent personhood to that of concentration-camp inmates and branded the suburban home a “comfortable concentration camp.” Arguably, she also underestimated the fulfillment and the outlet for creative energies that women can find in traditional roles (though, notably, she recognized unpaid work as a worthy endeavor as long as it was a serious engagement with the world outside the family).

Friedan has also been criticized for exaggerating the stranglehold of gender-role conformity on the culture of her time. Historian Daniel Horowitz, author of the 1999 book Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique, notes that by 1963, female discontent with traditional roles was already being widely discussed—often in the same women’s magazines Friedan indicted for promoting domestic bliss as the height of feminine fulfillment. But in a way, this underscores the relevance of Friedan’s ideas: The Feminine Mystique picked up and amplified already existing winds of change, and its message resonated with millions despite its rhetorical excesses.

It is also worth noting that none of these excesses were directed at men. Friedan never pitted men against women as enemies or victimizers; indeed, she warned that women’s “wasted energy” could turn into destructive psychological aggression not only toward their children but toward their husbands as well. A woman denied her own ambitions and forced to seek status and identity through her husband, she wrote, would often treat the man as an “object of contempt” if he failed to meet her expectations. If anything, her sympathy was with the browbeaten husbands; she also suggested that men might live longer if women shared more of the burden of being the world’s “doers.”

In the years after the book’s publication, Friedan—a co-founder of the National Organization for Women—fought to keep the women’s movement from sliding into a gender-based version of “obsolete ideologies of class warfare.” She was appalled by activists who attacked marriage and motherhood, and deplored the radical feminist obsession with pornography and rape. Initially, she was also hostile to lesbian rights; her railings against “the lavender menace” earned her accusations of homophobia (particularly in conjunction with a passage in The Feminine Mystique that blamed the rise in male homosexuality on frustrated housewives smothering their sons). Friedan clearly shared some of her era’s casual prejudices, from which she later distanced herself. But her anti-lesbian polemics must also be seen in the context of the 1970s’ advocacy of lesbian separatism as an anti-male revolt.

The biggest flaw of The Feminine Mystique was Friedan’s scant attention to the question of who would keep the home and raise the children when both women and men were out in the world doing things. She seemed to assume that the problem could be easily resolved with better time management and day care; yet it turned out to be far more complex. Friedan made up for this omission in the final 25 years of her life, starting with the 1981 book The Second Stage, in which she championed the work-family balance as the central feminist issue and urged more flexible roles for men as well as women.

Friedan didn’t necessarily have the right answers—she was, for instance, a strong advocate of institutional, government-subsidized day care—but she raised the right questions, both in the 1960s and in the 1980s. While highly critical of Freud’s views on women, she shared his belief that love and work are the two basic elements of a full life, and passionately believed that women’s lives, like men’s, should include both. In that, she was right — just as she was right that feminism has no future if it pits women against men. Perhaps, after all the battles between the gender warriors and the traditionalists still pining for the old “feminine mystique,” Friedan’s vision of true equality is the one that will endure.

Is America A “Rape Culture”?

By Cathy Young - March 28, 2013

This claim, advanced by a cadre of feminist activists and bloggers, has been gaining mainstream currency—particularly in the wake of the nationally publicized Steubenville, Ohio rape case which exposed some very ugly attitudes and behaviors.  While no one would deny that sexual violence is a grave problem, the crusade against “the rape culture” is a dubious cure: it distorts truth, fosters anger and divisiveness instead of respect and equality, and ultimately endangers justice for all.

There is, of course, some truth to the feminist argument that traditional sexual norms have often led to tolerance toward sexual coercion in certain situations (especially when the woman’s conduct is seen as “loose” or seductive).  Even now, such sentiments are echoed in vile Internet comments bashing the 16-year-old Steubenville victim as a drunken slut—very much a minority view, but voiced frequently enough to be troubling.

But it’s quite a leap from acknowledging these attitudes to depicting modern Western—and especially American—culture as a misogynist cesspit in which rape is routinely condoned and validated. Indeed, indictments of the “rape culture” typically rely on falsified or out-of-context “facts.”

Thus, according to Nation magazine blogger Jessica Valenti, “we live in a country where politicians call rape a ‘gift from God’”—a reference to Indiana U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock.  But what Mourdock actually said, in explaining his anti-abortion stance with no rape exception, was quite different: that “life is [a] gift from God … even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape.”  What’s more, the comment was roundly condemned, and the outrage over it helped ensure Mourdock’s defeat in a traditionally Republican district.

Equally misleading is Valenti’s assertion that “a rape victim may see her case fall flat because she isn’t married.”  This example comes from a bizarre California case in which a woman was assaulted in her sleep by a fellow houseguest at a relative’s house; prosecutors argued both non-consent due to her being unconscious and deception due to the defendant impersonating her boyfriend (who had been sleeping next to her earlier).  The conviction was reversed on appeal because, under a 19^thCentury state law, rape by deception requires impersonating a spouse.  However, the appellate panel sent the case back for retrial—with the charges based on non-consent alone—and urged the legislature to revise the antiquated law.

Or take the claim that thirty-one states allow rapists who impregnate their victims to seek child custody or visitation rights.  In fact, these states simply don’t have laws explicitly barring such suits—not due to concern for the rights of rapist fathers but mainly, says activist and attorney Shauna Prewitt, because the issue is assumed to be non-existent.  While recourse may indeed be needed, no one has cited a single known instance of a rapist (or accused rapist) actually getting parental rights; Prewitt appears to be the only woman on record as stating that she had to fight a custody suit from her assailant.

Is the Steubenville case, as the crusaders claim, prime evidence of “the rape culture”?  The incident in which a severely intoxicated, unconscious or barely conscious girl was stripped, penetrated with fingers, and otherwise molested by two boys during a party—and several other boys took photos and made videos of these acts—certainly shows something rotten in large swaths of adolescent culture.  No decent person could fail to be sickened by the text messages in which one of the perpetrators, Trent Mays, flippantly discussed the girl’s abuse and shared her nude photo, or by the YouTube video in which an ex-classmate delivered a drunken monologue about “the dead girl” along with a string of rape jokes.  The story also offers real evidence of the seamy side of the “football culture” that caused many locals to rally around the boys—star players on the Steubenville High School football team—and, in some cases, malign the girl.

Yet the sordid details also rebut a key premise of the “rape culture” argument: that our society generally does not view non-consensual sex as rape.  The Steubenville boys used the term repeatedly and seemed well aware that intercourse with the unconscious girl would have been rape—though apparently not that Ohio’s legal definition of the crime includes digital penetration.  Judging by the text messages, they also knew early on that they might be in trouble with the law if the girl and her parents found out what had happened.

To blogger Amanda Marcotte, the mere fact that the attackers were initially eager to broadcast their deeds shows that they expected social support and even approval.  But maybe it shows simply that they weren’t very bright; Mays and his friends actually discussed deleting incriminating messages in case their cell phones were seized by the police, but never followed up.  There is nothing new about adolescents flaunting socially unacceptable behavior.  Consider girls making videos of beating up other girls to post them on the Internet; or a recent incident in Homer, Alaska in which an unconscious 16-year-old boy at an alcohol-soaked football team party was sodomized with a beer bottle while other teens, boys and girls, looked on and some took pictures. The case got virtually no national media attention, perhaps because it does not fit the “rape culture” paradigm: no sane person would argue that our culture views male rape with beer bottles as normal boyish hijinks.

The Steubenville story is a cautionary tale not only about attitudes that facilitate sexual assault, but also about the dangers of the war against “the rape culture.”  The Internet warriors who championed the victim, including the “hacktivist” group Anonymous, have been praised for bringing the case into the national spotlight and exposing social media items that documented vile conduct by the attackers and their friends; but their crusade also had a darker side.

The activists have disseminated wild rumors about the victim being drugged, kidnapped, repeatedly gang-raped, urinated on, and dumped on her parents’ lawn; about a (named) female accomplice luring her into a trap; about a “rape crew” of Steubenville football players that systematically assaulted young women while an adult fan of the team mentored them and collected photos of the attacks.  (“Proof” of the latter was that one of the man’s hacked emails contained a photo supposedly resembling Savannah Dietrich, a high school student who went public last year about being sexually assaulted by two lacrosse players at a party—in Louisville, Kentucky, some 350 miles from Steubenville, and not Louisville, Ohio as Anonymous claimed.)  Even respected feminist academics joined the rumor mill: on the Ms. Magazine blog, State University of New York sociologist Michael Kimmel averred that the girl had “an iron rod shoved inside her.” Many of these stories still circulate, despite being completely unsupported and often directly disproved by trial evidence.

In Steubenville, at least, the activists were on the right side (which does not excuse their methods).  But their brand of righteous zealotry could easily raise a virtual lynch mob against the falsely accused, as the Duke University rape hoax from a few years ago should remind us.

To the zealots, any talk of false rape allegations is itself a part of the rape culture.  But, while it is hard to get reliable statistics on false accusations, there is plenty of research to show that the problem is not negligible. There are real-life stories, too: last May, another former high school football star, Brian Banks, was cleared a decade after a rape charge sent him to prison for six years and destroyed his hopes for a professional athlete’s career.  Banks’s “victim,” Wanetta Gibson—who had received a settlement from the school district for failing to ensure her safety—contacted Banks to apologize for her lie but still refused to come forward; a secret recording of her confession allowed him to be exonerated.

The women’s movement has made invaluable progress in lifting the stigma of rape and reforming sexist laws—ones that, as recently as the 1970s, required women to fight back to prove rape and instructed juries that an accuser’s unchaste morals could detract from her credibility.  The fact that today, a rape case can be successfully prosecuted even when the victim was drunk and flirtatious, or engaged in consensual intimacies before the attack, is a victory for justice as well as women’s rights.  Yet the fact remains that charges of sexual assault involving people who knows each other in a “he said/she said” situation are very difficult to prove in court—not because of “rape culture,” but because of the presumption of innocence.  Gender equality requires equal concern for the rights of accused men.

Let us, by all means, confront ugly, sexist, victim-blaming attitudes when we see them.  But this can be done without promoting sexist attitudes in feminist clothing: that a woman’s word automatically deserves more weight than a man’s; that all men bear responsibility for rape and “normal” men need to be taught not to rape; or that a woman who is inebriated but fully conscious is not responsible for her actions while an equally inebriated man is.

These ideological shibboleths will do little to help real victims of sexual violence, and may even hurt them by inviting an inevitable backlash.

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Cathy Young writes a weekly column for RealClearPolitics and is also a contributing editor at Reason magazine. She blogs at http://cathyyoung.wordpress.com/. She can be reached at cyoung@realclearpolitics.com