What Happened to Equality for All?

The troubling sexual politics of Obama's Council on Women and Girls

Cathy Young | March 26, 2009

Amidst troubling reports of our nation's economic woes and pressing national security issues, one news story earlier this month received fairly little attention: President Obama's March 11 executive order establishing a White House Council on Women and Girls. While the Council's role is likely to be more symbolic than practical, its creation, and the accompanying rhetoric, suggests that the Obama White House is bringing a blinkered, outdated approach to gender issues—one that, far from transcending ideological divisions, takes us back to a narrow and dogmatic feminist ideology.

According to the White House press release, the purpose of the Council is to "ensure that agencies across the federal government...take into account the particular needs and concerns of women and girls." Specifically, it will focus on "improving women's economic security," promoting policies that help balance work and family, preventing violence against women, and furthering women's health care.

In his remarks at the signing, Barack Obama noted that women have made great strides since the days when his grandmother encountered a glass ceiling after reaching the level of bank vice president. Yet, despite the broken barriers, he argued that "inequalities stubbornly persist": "women still earn just 78 cents for every dollar men make"; "one in four women still experiences domestic violence in their lifetimes"; and, despite being close to half the workforce, women make up only 17 percent of members of Congress and 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.

But are these inequalities rooted in discrimination and fixable by the government? Numerous studies show that when differences in training, work hours, and continuity of employment are taken into account, the pay gap all but disappears. Most economists, including liberal feminists such as Harvard's Claudia Goldin, agree that while sex discrimination exists, male-female disparities in earnings and achievement are due primarily to personal choices and priorities. Women are far more likely than men to avoid jobs with 60-hour workweeks and to scale down their careers while raising children. They are also more likely to choose less lucrative but more fulfilling jobs.

There is an ongoing debate on whether these differences are biological or cultural. Many scientists argue that men in general are innately more competitive and aggressive, while women are more risk-averse, more interested in interpersonal connections, and more intensely bonded to small children. (There are, of course, numerous exceptions to these tendencies.) Others stress the role of socialization, pointing out that people's choices and preferences are influenced by gender stereotypes and cultural expectations from early childhood.

The jury is still out on the nature-vs.-nurture debate; most likely, differences between the sexes are shaped by a mix of biology and culture. Certainly, cultural pressures and double standards persist. A woman is far more likely to encounter societal disapproval if she works long hours and leaves her children in someone else's care—even if that someone else is the children's father. A man is far more likely to encounter disapproval if he is not the family breadwinner.

Yet focusing on job discrimination will not help us address these deep-seated prejudices. Indeed, making work-family policy a part of the agenda of the Council on Women and Girls seems to reinforce the stereotype that family issues are a female domain. (Why not a Council on Families instead?)

As for combating violence against women, it is, of course, a worthy goal. But plenty of men and boys are victims of family violence as well. The same federal study which found that one in four women in the United States have been assaulted by a partner at least once also found that nearly 40 percent of domestic assault victims every year are men. Women face higher risk of injury due to disparities in size and strength; but the problem of abused men, though largely neglected, is hardly negligible.

Nor is it clear why women's health care deserves special focus, given that in many areas of health men are doing worse than women. As a result of women's health activism, medical issues specific to women have already been receiving disproportionate attention and funding since the 1990s.

Indeed, one might ask why the only gender-specific issues that seem to deserve federal attention are ones that affect women. Why not look at the fact that men account for 80 percent of suicides and 90 percent of workplace fatalities (as well as 70 percent of nonfatal on-the-job injuries)? What about the troubling trend of boys and young men lagging substantially behind their female peers in education, with women earning nearly 60 percent of college degrees at a time when a college diploma is increasingly essential in the job market? Why not talk about the marginalization of fatherhood and the fact that many men who want to be involved in their children's lives are denied that chance?

This is not a call for a new federal bureaucracy for "men's issues." However, the discussion of gender equality in our culture needs to include these issues. For the White House to exclude them while calling for a new effort to combat inequality is at best myopic.

The Bush White House was often assailed for building its policies on ideological myths rather than facts and "reality-based" thinking. So far, the Obama administration's initiatives on women are not exactly reality-based.

Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine. This article originally appeared at RealClearPolitics.

Comments

|3.26.09 @ 12:04PM|#

Are there no copy editors in this place at all? Redundancies should get the red pencil. ;-p

takes us back to a narrow and dogmatic feminist ideology.

Warty|3.26.09 @ 12:15PM|#

For some reason, I just got a mental image of President Lexington Steele. God, how awesome would that be?

ed|3.26.09 @ 12:23PM|#

the particular needs and concerns of women and girls

Feminine hygiene? I'm all for it.
This "council" is nothing more than a tossed bone, a campaign quid pro quo.

|3.26.09 @ 12:27PM|#

Indeed, one might ask why the only gender-specific issues that seem to deserve federal attention are ones that affect women. Why not look at the fact that men account for 80 percent of suicides and 90 percent of workplace fatalities (as well as 70 percent of nonfatal on-the-job injuries)? What about the troubling trend of boys and young men lagging substantially behind their female peers in education, with women earning nearly 60 percent of college degrees at a time when a college diploma is increasingly essential in the job market? Why not talk about the marginalization of fatherhood and the fact that many men who want to be involved in their children's lives are denied that chance?

And let's not discuss sentencing disparities either.

|3.26.09 @ 12:31PM|#

Or the on-going habit of weighting child custody disputes heavily toward the mother. Or the rise in uncontestable-after-30-days paternity summary judgments.

Other Matt|3.26.09 @ 12:50PM|#

Are there no copy editors in this place at all? Redundancies should get the red pencil. ;-p

takes us back to a narrow and dogmatic feminist ideology.

Damn, SF, are you so focused on a threadwinner that you just crush the opposition right out of the gate? You could, you know, toy with them a bit, make them think they have a chance.

Dave Krueger|3.26.09 @ 12:50PM|#

The more laws and policies there are to address the inequalities of the sexes, the more people will believe they are, in fact, unequal.

Other Matt|3.26.09 @ 12:50PM|#

(don't know why it removed your strikeout on the c&p, sorry)

|3.26.09 @ 12:54PM|#

So far, the Obama administration's initiatives on women are not exactly reality-based.

Don't see why he would make an exception for women's initiatives.

|3.26.09 @ 1:00PM|#

You could, you know, toy with them a bit, make them think they have a chance.

I wouldn't want to appear cruel, Other Matt.

Barry Loberfeld|3.26.09 @ 1:00PM|#

Feminism: Selected Contentions
by Barry Loberfeld




From What's Really Reactionary?




The shift from liberal individualism to Leftist collectivism is ... what has largely defined contemporary "feminism." Early feminism was so opposed to any sexual "stereotypes" that many worried the movement was committed to complete androgyny. (Remember the controversy over pink-or-blue for babies?) Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique was a clarion repudiation of gender collectivism, a call for sex, like race, to yield to content of character as the new standard of judgment. Appreciating this, Edith Efron, in her review, noted that Friedan "asks why the Nazi view of women [Kinder-Küche-Kirche] received such unanimous support from the 'thinkers' of America -- why it was so readily integrated into modern American culture." Efron answered: "Doctrines which deny mind, independence and individuality are magnetically attractive to Statist 'intellectuals' in all societies; [misogynistic sexism] was totally harmonious with the anti-reason, anti-individualism of modern American [Leftists]." (This history of the Left's fascistic sexism has been understandably expunged from the Left's history of itself.)
Efron presented this as analysis, not prophecy, but the irony is very obvious in light of what was to come. In the 80s, the women's corps of the Left's "Statist 'intellectuals'" seized the term feminism (like civil rights) to label their own doctrines, which did indeed "deny mind, independence and individuality." "Feminism," in the hands of collectivists (who, again, need collectives), was deformed into an ideology that assigns gender the same function that class and race serve in Marxism and Hitlerism, respectively. Very consciously aping the former, these "Second Wave" (AKA "gender" or "difference") feminists posited sexual identity as the "structure" that "engenders" (a jeu de mots that they evidently found endlessly delightful) all "superstructures." But the most strikingly reactionary aspect of all this was not the resurgence of sexism per se, but the resurgence of traditional sexism, e.g., the exact same connection of gender to "rationality" and "emotionalism." The superficially "new" feature -- the factor that makes something Leftist (and "revolutionary" and "progressive") -- was that while the old misogynists considered the former a "masculine" virtue and the latter a "feminine" vice, these misandrists valuated the former as a "phallocentric" evil and the latter as a "feminist" good. This polylogism of feminist sexism is one of the many commonalities with Marxist classism and Nazi racism. Too obviously, no one need fear even a trace of androgyny from these apostles of sexual Manichaeism. (The only gender differences these feminists denied were those that could actually be verified by science, a rival -- and predictably "androcratic" -- authority.)
What made such outrageous bigotry acceptable again was the gender feminists' focus on sex. That is, when male sexuality became "sexism," feminist gender bias ceased to be. This brazen act of legerdemain began with the anti-pornography campaign and tumefied into a state of hostilities where every expression of male sexuality was attacked by some feminists somewhere -- with, true, one exception: nocturnal emission. Feminists were the Sexual Revolution's reactionaries (who, tellingly, dubbed their villains "sexual liberals"). The nostalgic Sheila Jeffreys, for example, applauded Victorian Era writers who "felt sexual intercourse" -- a phenomenon common to pretty much every life form above Hydra -- "to be a humiliating practice because it showed men's dominance more than anything else." Sex, not sexism, oppressed women.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE

ChrisO|3.26.09 @ 1:03PM|#

I'm sure Bill Clinton wishes he'd thought of this idea first.

Tipp|3.26.09 @ 1:20PM|#

From a PiPress Letter to the Editor:

Inclusiveness for men and boys

Thank you for publishing Kathleen Parker's column on the new office of the White House Council on Women and Girls ("Where's the White House Council on Men and Boys?" on March 22).

Men and boys apparently aren't worth the trouble or likely to provide needed votes for the Obama administration. We already have such an office in Minnesota with the Office on the Economic Status of Women. This office, funded with nearly $200,000 each year by the Minnesota Legislature, lobbies for more funding for programs for women and girls.

Like most politically driven measures, continued funding of the OESW does not rely on facts. If there were an office on the status of men, it would point out that most of the homeless are males, and that - according to a New York Times report in February - the latest recession has been a mostly male phenomenon, with the vast majority of recent job losses being suffered by men, who dominate such hard-hit industries as manufacturing and construction.

I would also point out that the percentage of men in college is rapidly approaching 40 percent. Yet most colleges continue to have women's centers and women's studies programs to increase the rates of female attendance.

I voted for President Barack Obama because he seemed to be about change, based on inclusiveness. Apparently, I made a mistake.

Charlie Hurd, Mankato

|3.26.09 @ 1:21PM|#

wow Barry - I think you might have set a record for density of quotation marks.

Susan|3.26.09 @ 1:56PM|#

This agency is needed as long as wommyn earn 78 cents on the dollar of men. We need comparitive worth legislation.

Ward S. Denker|3.26.09 @ 3:31PM|#

I think it casts a really poor light on our society that it takes a female columnist's criticism of this kind of government policy to gain any legitimacy.

If the column were written by a male, there would be instant calls of misogyny. Sadly, Cathy Young will probably still hear similar complaints (almost unanimously from the political left).

The "Council on Women and Girls" seems like just another pointless government bureaucracy which will do absolutely no good and likely do harm to women through willful neglect of the law of unintended consequences before long. It's another waste of money meant to score political points with special interests and nothing more.

Scott66|3.26.09 @ 3:45PM|#

"This agency is needed as long as wommyn earn 78 cents on the dollar of men. We need comparitive worth legislation."

That is one of the most pernicious lies of the feminists. Women make more money than men per hour given all other factors being equal.

|3.26.09 @ 3:52PM|#

катя,

мы следим за тобой.

Joel|3.26.09 @ 4:28PM|#

Well, since none of you sexists are going to do the right thing, I guess it's up to me.

SEXIST!!

wingnutx|3.26.09 @ 6:41PM|#

I wonder when they will get around to a bill of attainder aimed at Joss Whedon for crimes against wymyn.

Sosnowski|3.26.09 @ 10:21PM|#

Wingnutx,
Let's not get carried away. The constitution specifically forbids bills of attainder, so... Yeah, some time this summer, probably.

|3.26.09 @ 11:10PM|#

According to the White House press release, the purpose of the Council is to "ensure that agencies across the federal government...take into account the particular needs and concerns of women and girls." Specifically, it will focus on "improving women's economic security," promoting policies that help balance work and family, preventing violence against women, and furthering women's health care.>>

The real thing that is going on with this agenda is Racism plain and simple.

It is designed to help women working in the federal government. The majority of women that work for the Federal government are black.

This is another one of Hussein's racist policies like redistribution of wealth that is being couched under some other reason.

Hussein is a racist. America needs to wake up and smell the roses on this one. He is a racist Indonesian national Mac Daddy sitting illegally as POTUS.

LarryA|3.27.09 @ 12:03AM|#

President Obama's March 11 executive order establishing a White House Council on Women and Girls.

I wonder what chance there is that they'll invite Sarah Palin to participate?

|3.27.09 @ 9:54AM|#

As a mom of a boy and two girls, I will have to say I fear more for my son than my daughters in this climate of white male hatred.

Susan|3.27.09 @ 11:14AM|#

As a mom of a boy and two girls, I will have to say I fear more for my son than my daughters in this climate of white male hatred.

White males are collectively responsible for the 78 cents on the dollar. Your son is part of this group.

|3.29.09 @ 8:55PM|#

"The more laws and policies there are to address the inequalities of the sexes, the more people will believe they are, in fact, unequal."

Thank you thank you Dave Krueger! You hit the nail right on the head!

If Obama was truly serious about equal-treatment of individuals, he should start with the government first. Get rid of these affirmative-action policies and replace them with policies focused on credentials and results, rather than one's race or sex. It's hypocritical to disparage discrimination yet make it mandatory for government operations.

Of course when the government, like any business, has no fear of losing revenue due to a forcibly-taxed population like ourselves, it's free to flex these biased policies anyway now doesn't it.

If we really want to squish prejudice once and for all market, we should choose competition over coercion and let prosperity speak for itself. Enough said.

|3.30.09 @ 3:07PM|#

"This agency is needed as long as wommyn earn 78 cents on the dollar of men."

So the council is going to make get up off their lazy asses and earn that other 22 cents?

"White males are collectively responsible for the 78 cents on the dollar. Your son is part of this group."

Nice example of totalitarian collectivism. The waman is talking about her CHILDREN, and you lump them in as oppresors. So I suppose that makes you, and adult, a victim of these children?

In fact white males really are responsible for the 78 cents on the dollar - for making it that much. It would probably be possible to bully a lot of women into working for a lot less.

|3.31.09 @ 11:55AM|#

Susan, I could use a woman like you. See I need a vicious woman who only seems concerned with money to be my secretary. Extra points for you if you're attractive or blonde.