The Moral Liberal

by Phyl­lis Schlafly

The fem­i­nists are going through one of their peri­odic soul-searching psy­cho­log­i­cal exam­i­na­tions of what the women’s lib­er­a­tion move­ment did or did not do for them, and why they are not happy with the result. Fem­i­nist dom­i­nance in news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, book pub­lish­ers, tele­vi­sion and acad­e­mia makes it easy to com­mand a full media roll­out for their agonizing.

The media are glad to divert pub­lic atten­tion from the fail­ure of Barack Obama’s Stim­u­lus to cre­ate jobs. So, we have pon­der­ous dis­cus­sions: Maria Shriver’s report (with help from a lib­eral think tank) called “A Woman’s Nation Changes Every­thing,” a Time Mag­a­zine cover story head­lined with the dou­ble enten­dre “The State of the Amer­i­can Woman,” Gail Collins’ book “When Every­thing Changed,” and arti­cles from all the fem­i­nist columnists.

We won­der if it’s just a coin­ci­dence that this tor­rent of words imme­di­ately pre­cedes Hal­loween. The writ­ers are scared of their own research because it con­tra­dicts much of their gender-neutral ideology.

These well-educated writ­ers long ago iden­ti­fied the major goal of the women’s lib­er­a­tion move­ment as get­ting more wives out of the home and into the labor force. They’ve been strik­ingly suc­cess­ful with this goal; women are now half the labor force, and 40 per­cent of women are essen­tial fam­ily breadwinners.

In the cur­rent reces­sion, the major­ity of work­ers laid off have been men (espe­cially from con­struc­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing). Jobs where women pre­dom­i­nate have not been much affected.

Even so, the fem­i­nists demanded that the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion give half the Stim­u­lus jobs to women rather than to the shovel-ready work that was the rea­son for pass­ing the Stim­u­lus funds. What­ever the fem­i­nists demand from the Democ­rats they get, and the Stim­u­lus money was directed to jobs in edu­ca­tion, health care, and social services.

So what are the fem­i­nists com­plain­ing about? They want the tax­pay­ers to pro­vide high-quality day­care and paid fam­ily leave, to pass laws to pro­hibit employ­ers from order­ing women to work over­time (as men are often required to do), and prob­a­bly to force men to assume half the house­hold and baby-care duties.

The fem­i­nists are still cry­ing about Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon veto­ing a fed­eral pro­gram to make day­care a middle-class enti­tle­ment. But Nixon’s action was pop­u­lar then and still is, because the major­ity of Amer­i­cans don’t want their tax dol­lars to pay for babysit­ters for other people’s children.

No doubt this will come as a shock to the fem­i­nists, but Time Mag­a­zine reports that “a major­ity of both men and women still say it is best for chil­dren to have a father work­ing and a mother at home.”

Women’s per­cent­age in the labor force keeps ris­ing because of who is going to col­lege. Thirty years ago, the ratio of males to females on col­lege cam­puses was 60–40; now it’s 40–60, and women receive the major­ity of col­lege degrees.

But the fem­i­nists are grip­ing because women stu­dents choose human­i­ties majors that lead to lesser paid jobs than male stu­dents, who in larger num­bers choose math and sci­ence. The fem­i­nists want gov­ern­ment to rem­edy this gen­der dif­fer­ence by brib­ing women with tax­pay­ers’ money to make other choices.

Joanne Lip­man, who has held sev­eral of the biggest jobs in pub­lish­ing but still whines that “progress for women has stalled,” nev­er­the­less makes a cou­ple of sen­si­ble com­ments. She writes that fem­i­nists defined “progress for women too nar­rowly; we’ve focused pri­mar­ily on num­bers at the expense of attitudes.”

She’s right about that. Atti­tude is the prob­lem with fem­i­nists; as long as they believe they are vic­tims of an oppres­sive patri­archy, they will never be successful.

Women won’t be happy as long as they believe the false slo­gan (repeated in most of these cur­rent arti­cles) that women make only 77 cents on the dol­lar com­pared to men. The Equal Pay Law was passed in 1963, but it requires only equal pay FOR EQUAL WORK, and women in the labor force don’t work nearly as many hours per week as men do.

Lip­man also urges fem­i­nists to “have a sense of humor,” a very con­struc­tive pro­posal. When I tell a joke dur­ing my col­lege lec­tures, I can iden­tify the fem­i­nists by the stu­dents who are not laughing.

Only one sen­tence in all these fem­i­nist arti­cles con­fronts the fun­da­men­tal rea­son that today’s women are not as happy as women were in 1972. Time Mag­a­zine wrote: “Among the most dra­matic changes in the past gen­er­a­tion is the detach­ment of mar­riage and motherhood.”

That’s what the fem­i­nist move­ment did to Amer­ica. All those impres­sive sta­tis­tics about women hold­ing well-paying jobs and receiv­ing col­lege degrees will not pro­duce happy women as long as 39 per­cent of chil­dren are born to unmar­ried moth­ers who lack a lov­ing hus­band and look to Big Brother Gov­ern­ment as provider.

And one more glar­ing point: the lack of grand­chil­dren isn’t men­tioned in these exposes of women’s unhap­pi­ness. In reject­ing mar­riage, most fem­i­nists also rejected the grand­chil­dren who could have pro­vided a sig­nif­i­cant mea­sure of women’s happiness.

Cen­ter for Moral Lib­er­al­ism con­tribut­ing edi­tor Phyl­lis Schlafly is the founder and pres­i­dent of Eagle Forum, a syn­di­cated writer, best­selling author, and radio show host.

Used with the per­mis­sion of Phyl­lis Schlafly and Eagle Forum.