Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 15, 1992 TAG: 9203150226
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by LUCY LEE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In this chilling best-seller, Pulitzer Prize-winner Susan Faludi bombards the reader with unrelenting evidence that the media, politicians and the New Right, among others, created a backlash against women's rights during the 1980s.
Faludi's chief culprit, the press, identified "the paradox that would become so central to the backlash: women have achieved so much yet feel so dissatisfied; it must be feminism's achievements, not society's resistance to these partial achievements, that is causing women all this pain."
It was the press that coined the terms "the man shortage," "biological clock," "mommy track" and "postfeminism." And it was the press that misrepresented the findings of the now famous 1986 Harvard-Yale report, proclaiming that a woman's chance of marrying decreased as her age and education level increased.
Other myths concocted by the press included an infertility epidemic, a plunge in economic status for divorced women and a great emotional depression and burnout, which attacked single women and career women. Taken together, these myths sound like one gigantic conspiracy theory, although Ms. Faludi concedes "The press didn't set out with this, or any other, intention; like any large institution, its movements aren't premeditated or programmatic, just grossly susceptible to the prevailing political currents."
She cites other barometers of popular culture which contributed to the backlash - movies, television, the fashion and beauty industries and pop psychology. Take Hollywood's portrayal of women in movies like 1980s "Fatal Attraction" (the best single woman is a dead one), "Broadcast News" (aggressive women end up alone) "Baby Boom" (women must choose between family and career) and "Working Girl" (women bosses are bitches).
Less subtle were the setbacks to women's rights under the Reagan administration. The Coalition on Women's Appointments and the Working Group on Women were discontinued, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was gutted and the Federal Women's Program was essentially disbanded. And, thanks the Reagan politics, poverty now has a gender; it has been "feminized."
Spokespersons for the New Right promoted the idea that "Women are enslaved by their own liberation. They have grabbed at the gold ring of independence, only to miss the one ring that really matters. They have gained control of their fertility, only to destroy it. They have pursued their own professional dreams - and lost out on the greatest female adventure." (The old "keep 'em barefoot and pregnant" philosophy with a new vengeful, self-righteous twist.)
Feminism became the new F-word of the 1980s and a label that many women - even those who live by Feminist principles - reject. But, as Faludi points out, "to blame feminism for women's `lesser life' is to miss the point of feminism, which is to win women a wider range of experience."
Other aspects of the book are less satisfying. The extreme "black and whiteness" in which Faludicasts some complex issues seems unrealistic. Surely the world-at-large is not out to do women in. Or is it? Despite Faludi's concession that the backlash is not a conspiracy, I feel more than a bit paranoid after reading the book.
One of the strongest sections of the book is Faludi's documentation of how a backlash has occurred throughout history whenever women as a group have achieved success. In analyzing these patterns, she presents us with a formula for resisting the backlash - "a clear agenda that is unsanitized and unapologetic, a mobilized mass that is forceful and public, and a conviction that is uncompromising and relentless."
The most frightening thing about this "undeclared war against American women" is that we have not known we were under attack. Faludi makes the war official and provides the necessary ammunition for a counterassault. The rest is up to us.
Lucy Lee is Director of the Women's Center at Hollins College.
by CNB