Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

by Susan Faludi

  Advertisers reversed their . . .: Maureen Honey, Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda During World War II(Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984) p. 122.

  As a survey of . . .: Harrison, On Account, p. 6; Susan M. Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982) p. 200.

  On the comics pages . . .: Hartmann, Home Front, p. 202; Pronatalism: The Myth of Mom and Apple Pie, ed. by Ellen Peck and Judith Senderowitz (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1974) p. 69.

  In 1948, Susan B. Anthony . . .: Chafe, The American Woman, p. 184.

  Margaret Hickey . . .: Ibid., p. 185.

  Soon, Hickey herself . . .: Harrison, On Account, p. ix.

  Their age at first marriage . . .: Degler, At Odds, p. 429; Jessie Bernard, “The Status of Women in Modern Patterns of Culture,” in The Other Half: Roads to Women’s Equality, ed. by Cynthia Fuchs Epstein and William J. Goode (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1971) p. 17.

  As literary scholars Sandra M. Gilbert . . .: Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, vol. 1: The War of the Words (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988) p. 47.

  These cultural images notwithstanding . . .: Degler, At Odds, p. 418; Hymowitz and Weissman, A History of Women in America, p. 314; Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, p. 301.

  While 3.25 million . . .: Harrison, On Account, p. 5.

  Two years after . . .: Ibid., p. 181; Hymowitz and Weissman, A History of Women in America, p. 314; Chafe, The American Woman, p. 181.

  By 1955 the average . . .: Married women doubled their representation in the labor force, from 15 percent in 1940 to 30 percent by 1960. Hymowitz and Weissman, A History of Women in America, p. 314; Harrison, On Account, p. 5; Sara M. Evans and Barbara J. Nelson, Wage Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989) p. 23.

  The backlash of the . . .: Chafe, The American Woman, p. 181; Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, p. 309.

  The ranks of working women . . .: O’Neill, Everyone Was Brave, p. 305; Dean D. Knudsen, “The Declining Status of Women: Popular Myths and the Failure of Functionalist Thought,” in The Other Half: Roads to Women’s Equality, ed. by Cynthia Fuchs Epstein and William J. Goode (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1971) pp. 98-108; Hymowitz and Weissman, p. 315; Bernard, “Status of Women,” p. 16; Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, p. 305. The proportion of women who were working as professionals fell from 45 percent in 1940 to 38 percent in 1966, while at the same time the proportion employed as clerical workers climbed from 53 percent in 1940 to 73 percent by 1968. M. P. Ryan, Womanhood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Franklin Watts, 1983) p. 281.

  At the turn of the century . . .: William L. O’Neill, “The Fight for Suffrage,” The Wilson Quarterly, X, no. 4 (Autumn 1986): 104; Sisterhood Is Powerful, ed. by Robin Morgan (New York: Vintage Books, 1970) p. 21.

  As a 1985 AFL-CIO report“The AFL-CIO and Civil Rights,” Report of the Executive Council to the 16th Constitutional Convention of the AFL-CIO, Anaheim, Calif., Oct. 28-31, 1985.

  As Henry Adams . . .: Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1973 ed.) p. 447.

  With the exception of . . .: Data from U.S. Bureau of Census, Fertility Statistics Branch.

  The media have circulated . . .: See Chapter 13 on women in the work force.

  They have saluted . . .: Bernice Kanner, “Themes Like Old Times,” New York, Jan. 30, 1989, p. 12.

  It maps the road . . .: Henrietta Rodman, New York Times, Jan. 24, 1915, cited in Feminist Quotations: Voices of Rebels, Reformers, and Visionaries, ed. by Carol McPhee and Ann Fitzgerald (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979) p. 239.

  Feminist-minded institutions . . .: Michael deCourcy Hinds, “Feminist Businesses See the Future,” New York Times, Nov. 12, 1988, p. 16.

  Millions of women . . .: See Chapter 12 on backlash psychology.

  In Wendy Wasserstein’s . . .: Phillip Lopate, “Christine Lahti Tries to Fashion a Spunky ‘Heidi,’” New York Times, Sept. 3, 1989, Arts and Leisure section, p. 5.

  “I’m alone,” . . .: Caroline Knapp, “Whatever Happened to Sisterhood?” The Boston Phoenix, April 7, 1989, p. 13.

  “I feel abandoned . . .”: Angela Brown, “Throwing in the Towel?” Letter to the editor, Ms., Jan. 1988, p. 10.

  “In a state of . . .”: Susan Griffin, “The Way of All Ideology,” in Feminist Theory: A Critique of Ideology, ed. by Nannerl O. Keohane, Michelle Z. Rosaldo, and Barbara C. Gelpi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) p. 279.

  “If I were to overcome the conventions . . .”: Virginia Woolf, “The Pargiters,” cited in Michelle Cliff, “The Resonance of Interruption,” Chrysalis, 8 (Summer 1979), pp. 29–37.

  By 1989, almost . . .: Belkin, “Bars to Equality,” p. A16. By 1990, the Virginia Slims Poll also found that the “increasing strains, pressures, and demands” placed on ’80s women had taken its toll. While the overwhelming majority of working women still wanted a marriage where both spouses worked and equally shared familial duties, the share of working women who wanted to go back to “traditional” marital arrangements had risen by five percentage points since 1985–the first increase in decades. See Virginia Slims Opinion Poll, 1990, p. 46.

  “And when women do not . . .”: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, pp. 377–78.

  “I am sure the emancipated . . .”: Cott, Modern Feminism, p. 45.

  “There has been much . . .”: Banning, “Raise Their Hats,” p. 358.

  When author . . .: Anthony Astrachan, How Men Feel: Their Response to Women’s Demands for Equality and Power (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1986) p. 402.

  In 1988, the American . . .: Significance Inc., “The American Male Opinion Index,” I (New York: Conde Nast Publications, 1988) p. 2.

  Other studies examining . . .: Klein, Gender Politics, pp. 126, 136–38, 163; Andrew Cherlin and Pamela Barnhouse Walters, “Trends in United States Men’s and Women’s Sex Roles Attitudes: 1972 to 1978,” American Sociological Review, 46 (1981): 453–60; Richard G. Niemi, John Mueller, and Tom W. Smith, Trends in Public Opinion: A Compendium of Survey Data (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989).

  As the American Male . . .: “The American Male Opinion Index,” I, p. 26.

  At the same time that . . .: Trends in Public Opinion; The Gallup Poll; Roper Organization’s Virginia Slims Opinion Poll; Townsend and O’Neil, “American Women Get Mad,” p. 26.

  This was especially . . .: “Women and Men: Is Realignment Under Way?” Public Opinion, 5 (April—May, 1982) 2: p. 21; Karlyn H. Keene and Everett Carll Ladd, “American College Women: Educational Interests, Career Expectations, Social Outlook and Values,” unpublished paper for Women’s College Coalition, American Enterprise Institute/Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, Sept. 1990; personal interviews with Karlyn H. Keene and William Schneider, research fellows with the American Enterprise Institute, 1991.

  A national survey . . .: Craver Matthews Smith Donor Survey, 1990; personal interview with Roger Craver of Craver Matthews Smith, 1991. 75 For the first time in American . . .: Klein, Gender Politics, p. 6.

  For the first time, polls . . .: Ibid., pp. 158–59; Doris L. Walsh, “What Women Want,” American Demographics, June 1986, p. 60; 1985 Virginia Slims American Women’s Opinion Poll.

  A national poll found . . .: Trends in Public Opinion, 1986, 1988 surveys.

  The American Male Opinion . . .: Significance Inc; “Marketing to Men in the 90s: The American Male Opinion Index, II,” (New York: Condé Nast Publications, 1990) p. 5.

  By the end of the decade . . .: 1988 National Opinion Research Poll.

  In 1989, while . . .: Belkin, “Bars to Equality,” p. A1.

  “Violating sex roles . . .”: Joseph H. Pleck, The Myth of Masculinity (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981) p. 9.

  “[M]aleness in America . . .”: Margaret Mead, Male and Female (New York: William & Morrow,
1949) p. 318.

  “Men view . . .”: William J. Goode, “Why Men Resist,” in Rethinking the Family, ed. by Barrie Thorne with Marilyn Yalom (New York: Longman, 1982) p. 137.

  “Women have become so powerful . . .”: Tavris and Offir, Longest War, p. 10; Smith, Promised Land, p. 12; Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin, The Subordinated Sex, p. 74.

  In the 16th century . . .: Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin, The Subordinated Sex, p. 171.

  As Edward Bok . . .: Kinnard, Antifeminism, p. 308.

  In the late 1800s . . .: Theodore Roszak, “The Hard and the Soft: The Force of Feminism in Modern Times,” in Masculine/Feminine: Readings in Sexual Mythology and the Liberation of Women, ed. by Betty and Theodore Roszak (New York: Harper & Row, 1969) pp. 87-104; Joe L. Dubbert, “Progressivism and the Masculinity Crisis,” The American Man, ed. by Elizabeth H. and Joseph H. Pleck (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1980) pp. 303-19.

  “The whole generation is womanized . . .”: Henry James, The Bostonians (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books [1886], 1979 edition) p. 290.

  Child-rearing manuals . . .: Michael S. Kimmel, “Men’s Responses to Feminism at the Turn of the Century,” Gender & Society, 1, no. 3 (Sept. 1987): 269-70; Allen Warren, “Pop Manliness: Baden Powell, Scouting and the Development of Manly Character,” in Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940, ed. by J. A. Mangan and James Wadvin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987) pp. 200-204; Douglas, Feminization, p. 327.

  Billy Sunday . . .: Douglas, Feminization, p. 397.

  Theodore Roosevelt . . .: Kimmel, “Men’s Responses,” p. 243.

  “The period . . .”: Roszak, “Hard and the Soft,” p. 92.

  The fledgling Boy . . .: Kimmel, “Men’s Responses,” p. 272; Jeffrey P. Hantover, “The Boy Scouts and the Validation of Masculinity,” in The American Man, ed. by Elizabeth and Joseph H. Pleck (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall Inc., 1980) p. 2101.

  At home, “momism” . . .: Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1942); Philip Wylie, “Common Women,” in Women’s Liberation in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Mary C. Lynn (New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1975) p. 60.

  In what was supposed . . .: Lynn, Women’s Liberation, p. 72.

  In the business . . .: Chafe, The American Woman, p. 182.

  Look decried . . .: Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1983) p. 37.

  Harper’s editor . . .: Lewis Lapham, “La Difference,” New York Times, March 4, 1983, cited in Kimmel, “Men’s Responses,” p. 279.

  In films and television . . .: “The Female in Focus: In Whose Image? A Statistical Survey of the Status of Women in Film, Television & Commercials,” Screen Actors Guild, Aug. 1, 1990; Meryl Streep, “When Women Were in the Movies,” Screen Actor, Fall 1990, p. 15; Steenland, “Women Out of View.”

  In fiction, violent macho . . .: Elizabeth Mehren, “Macho Books: Flip Side of Romances,” Los Angeles Times, reprinted in San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 2, 1988, p. B4.

  In apparel . . .: Jennet Conant, “The High-Priced Call of the Wild,” Newsweek, Feb. 1, 1988, p. 56.

  “I’m not squishy soft . . .”: Doyle McManus and Bob Drogin, “Democrats and Foreign Policy: Test of Toughness,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 28, 1988, I, p. 1.

  George Bush, whose . . .: Margaret Garrard Warner, “Fighting the Wimp Factor,” Newsweek, Oct. 19, 1987, p. 28.

  “At Columbia . . .”: Carolyn Heilbrun, Reinventing Womanhood (New York: WW Norton, 1979) p. 203.

  At Boston University . . .: “Tenure and Loose Talk,” Washington Post, June 26, 1990, p. A20.

  Feminists have “complete control” Jerry Falwell, Listen, America! (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday-Galilee, 1980) pp. 158–59.

  A little-noted finding . . .: The Yankelovich Monitor, 1989 ed.; personal interview with Susan Hayward, senior vice president of Yankelovich Clancy Shulman, Sept. 1989. The largest share of men (37 percent) defined masculinity in the 1989 Monitor survey as the ability to be the good family breadwinner. Nearly as large a share of women (32 percent) defined masculinity in the same way, giving men all the more reason to continue to define themselves this way.

  In this period . . .: Kevin Phillips, The Politics of Rich and Poor (New York: Random House, 1990) p. 18. The 22-percent drop in median inflation-adjusted income occurred between 1976 and 1984.

  That the ruling definition . . .: For polling evidence that hostility toward feminism was most concentrated in these two groups, see Astrachan, How Men Feel, pp. 367–68, 371–75; “The American Male Opinion Index,” I, pp. 17, 19, 26.

  The ’80s was the decade . . .: Barbara Ehrenreich, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989) p. 207; Barbara Ehrenreich, “Marginal Men,” New York Woman, Sept. 1989, p. 91.

  It was a time when . . .: Phillips, Rich and Poor, pp. 19, 204; “What’s Really Squeezing the Middle Class,” The Wall Street Journal, July 26, 1989, p. A12.

  The average man under thirty . . .: Evans and Nelson, Wage Justice, p. 12; AP, “Mother’s Jobs Stem Fall in Family Income,” Baltimore Sun, May 11, 1986.

  Worst off was . . .: Louis Richman, “Are You Better Off Than in 1980?” Fortune, Oct. 10, 1988, p. 38; “The Pay-off for Educated Workers,” San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 26, 1989, p. A2; Katy Butler, “The Great Boomer Bust,” Mother Jones, June 1989, p. 36. From 1979 to 1987, the pay gap between high school—and college-educated men aged twenty-five and thirty-four nearly quadrupled; in the same time period, the same gap for women of the same age grew by half as much. See “The Worker Count: A Special Report,” The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 25, 1990, p. A1.

  Inevitably, these losses . . .: Louis Harris, Inside America (New York: Vintage Books, 1987) pp. 33–37.

  When analysts at . . .: Personal interview with Susan Hayward, 1989. In the Yankelovich surveys, “The Contenders” give substantially less support to women’s rights and express far more doubt that women can do as well as men in high-level jobs. They are also deeply unhappy with their work life: while only 30 percent of the people in the total sample say they don’t expect to get much pleasure from their work, 74 percent of the Contenders felt that way.

  “It’s these downscale men . . .”: Ibid.

  By the late ’80s . . .: “The American Male Opinion Index,” I, pp. 17, 19, 29. They are men like . . .: Fox Butterfield, “Suspicions Came Too Late in Boston,” New York Times, Jan. 21, 1990, p. 17; Richard Lingeman, “Another American Tragedy,” New York Times, Jan. 22, 1990, p. A19.

  They are young men with little . . .: Joan Didion, “New York: Sentimental Journeys,” The New York Review of Books, Jan. 17, 1991, p. 45.

  And, just across the . . .: Elizabeth Kastor, “When Shooting Stopped, Canada Had Changed,” Washington Post, Dec. 10, 1989, p. A3.

  It was a moment . . .: William B. Johnston and Arnold H. Packer, Workforce 2000: Work and Workers for the 21st Century(Indianapolis, Ind.: Hudson Institute, June 1987) p. 85; Evans and Nelson, Wage Justice, p. 23; Nancy Barrett, “Women and the Economy,” The American Woman: 1987–88, p. 107; Bernard, The Future of Marriage, pp. 298-99; Digest of Education Statistics, 1987, U.S. Department of Education.

  “Part of the unemployment . . .”: Susan Faludi, “Why Women May Be Better Off Unwed,” West Magazine, San Jose Mercury News, Aug. 10, 1986, p. 9.

  In reality . . .: Phillips, Rich and Poor, p. 202.

  If women appeared . . .: Under Eisenhower, the annual rate of job growth was 1.33 percent. The much-maligned Carter, by contrast, oversaw the highest rate of annual job growth of any president since World War II: 3.3 percent. Data from the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  About a third . . .: Lawrence Mishel and David M. Frankel, The State of Working America (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1991) pp. 83-85, 105.

  The ’80s economy . . .: Philips, Rich and Poor, p. 12.

&n
bsp; “There had to be . . .”: Mary Anne Dolan, “When Feminism Failed,” The New York Times Magazine, June 26, 1988, p. 23.

  “FATS” . . .: Steven F. Schwartz, “FATS and Happy,” Barron’s, July 6, 1987, p. 27.

  When the New York . . .: Jane Gross, “Against the Odds: A Woman’s Ascent on Wall Street,” The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 6, 1985, p. 16; Ellen Hopkins, “The Media Murder of Karen Valenstein’s Career,” Working Woman, March 1991, p. 70.

  She was dubbed . . .: Harry Waters, “Rhymes with Rich,” Newsweek, Aug. 21, 1989, p. 46; Mark Hosenball, “The Friends of Michael Milken,” The New Republic, Aug. 28, 1989, p. 23. Howard Kurtz, “Leona Helmsley Convicted of $1.2 Million Tax Evasion,” San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 31, 1989, p. A1; Scot J. Paltrow, “Helmsley Gets Four Years,” San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 13, 1989, p. A1.

  Beset by corruption . . .: Brian Mitchell, The Weak Link: The Feminization of the American Military(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1989); David Evans, “The Navy’s 5000 Pregnant Sailors,” San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 15, 1989, p. A19; Falwell, Listen, America!, pp. 158-59.

  Mayor Marion Barry . . .: Tom Shales, “The Year of Roseanne, Saddam, Bart and PBS’ Civil War,” Washington Post, Dec. 30, 1990, p. G3; Scott Rosenberg, “No Soothing for this ‘Savage’ Beast,” San Francisco Examiner, August 28, 1990, p. D1.

  Joel Steinberg’s . . .: Erika Munk, “Short Eyes: The Joel Steinberg We Never Saw,” The Village Voice, Feb. 21, 1989, p. 20.

  And even errant . . .: Rich Jaroslovsky, “Washington Wire,” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2, 1990, p. A1.

  She is Laura Palmer . . .: “Women We Love,” Esquire, August 1990, p. 108.

  Bush promised “empowerment” . . .: Alan Murray and David Wessel, “Modest Proposals: Faced with Gulf War, Bush’s Budget Avoids Bold Moves at Home,” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 5, 1991, p. A1.

  Even Playboy Alan Carter, “Transformer,” TV Guide, Aug. 27, 1988, p. 20.

  Criticized for targeting . . .: Peter Waldman, “Tobacco Firms Try Soft, Feminine Sell,” The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 19, 1989, p. B1.