The failures of feminism.

In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan argued that American women suffered from a malaise she called "the problem that had no name." Her critique of domestic ennui helped launch the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s, leading to many of the advances women now take for granted. But not everything has changed. So we asked women to answer this question: If you had to pinpoint today's problem that had no name, what would it be? Read the other responses here.

The goals of feminism were always brilliant in their clarity: Convince women that they were an oppressed class that should agitate for political change. Hold out the promise that political change would yield a world of greater freedom that would eventually bring them greater happiness.

This project has failed. In a recent presentation at a meeting of the American Law and Economics Association, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania outlined what they called the new paradox of declining female happiness. After noting that by most objective measures, “the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years,” they showed that, nonetheless, “measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men.”

Instead, the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s gave us a steady stream of women’s complaints disguised as manifestos; institutionalization in the form of women’s studies on college campuses; and a brand of female sexual power so promiscuous that it celebrates everything from prostitution to nipple piercing as a feminist act—in other words, whine, womyn, and thongs.

It is not a surprise that the feminist movement of the late 20th century morphed into vanity and voyeurism rather than sustained political action. Its notions of women as a class were never inclusive. It had little room for women who couldn’t or wouldn’t embrace the Manichean worldview of organized feminism, and no place at all for women whose views rested on the more conservative end of the political spectrum.

Today’s feminism—a kind of Facebook feminism that elevates personal experience and personal performance above all else—allows everyone from Madonna to Martha Stewart to serve as icons of female empowerment, and is a label largely devoid of meaning. It also allows women living in the prosperous West to avoid confronting the challenges and ambiguities of women’s condition in other parts of the world. (Has there ever been an international conference on women that didn’t include at least one moment of exasperation on the part of non-Western women who are forced to endure tiresome lectures on the evils of patriarchy from American feminists who take literacy, access to clean water, and democracy for granted?)

Betty Friedan’s problem that has no name, based on the idea that women are an oppressed class, has no real constituency today. Instead we hear about the “mommy wars,” that tiresome trope that has women bickering over the choices of other women like so many pecking hens, or we read about “work-life balance,” which usually includes calls for government-funded daycare. In fact, for women today, the challenge is not a problem with no name that can be solved with a few simple changes in public policy. It is a paradox: the paradox of choice. The more options we have, the more anxiety we experience about the choices we eventually make, as economists who study choice theory have shown but as the feminist movement never acknowledged.

Christine Rosen is a writer and senior editor of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society.

Comments

we women are whining because

By: brohealth02 | Mon, 01/11/2010 - 04:52

we women are whining because more choices simply mean more responsibilities. YES, we can have both perfect homes and perfect jobs, if we can survive the double upkeep. But why isn't anyone directing questions to MEN--the other half of the marriage partnership--as to what they're doing to step up to the plate in this new order?
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strong women

By: cardcounter | Sat, 11/21/2009 - 05:28

Just yesterday I watched a TV show where many men were talking about the fact that women are more strong than men because they have to grew up children. I am quite agree with that.

Where are the MEN in this equation?

By: bethpowell | Thu, 11/19/2009 - 17:23

YES, we women are whining because more choices simply mean more responsibilities. YES, we can have both perfect homes and perfect jobs, if we can survive the double upkeep. But why isn't anyone directing questions to MEN--the other half of the marriage partnership--as to what they're doing to step up to the plate in this new order?

Where is the sharing? Women are now expected to do it all--not just their half. Why are the same expectations not dished at men?

I think womens lives have

By: sandra13 | Wed, 09/30/2009 - 11:46

I think womens lives have definitely changed for the better in the last 35 years. Don't get more wrong, there are still some issues which need to be addressed, but generally I think things are heading in the right direction. I also agree that the more options we have, the more anxiety we experience about the choices we eventually make.
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In the first two "Whine,

By: alexdenipaul | Mon, 09/28/2009 - 23:48

In the first two "Whine, Women And Song" segments I made mention of an Oprah episode to which I was subjected. Well, it happened again. While I was busy working--writing--someone changed the channel to Oprah health insurance. I have to admit I have nothing against Oprah as a person I just still don't get why she is so popular.

It isn't a racial thing. After my divorce--worthy of an entirely separate piece--I got crazy and dated as many diffferent kinds of nonny-nonny as possible. I was like Captain Kirk. (Okay, there was no green "down-there" but every other color. There was this one black girl who worked as a peepshow stripper and a phone fanatsy booth girl . . .but I digress. . . real estate)

The concept of feminism as a movement seems to be taking a particularly rough thrashing, with articles such as ‘Whine, Womyn and Thongs: How Feminism Has Failed’ and ‘How I Got Bored With Feminism.’ The real prizewinner in the Fail Bowl, however, is Linda Hirshman’s hatchet job on Jezebel, dissected by her target here. Hirshman posits that the gals who write for Jezebel should probably turn in their feminist membership cards, because despite rape being a pressing issue for women, they talk about getting drunk a lot and occasionally engaging in casual sex. After all insurance, any real feminist worth her salt would know to avoid any behavior or situation that could lead to getting raped, because men shouldn’t be expected to control themselves. Granted, this “I’m not saying anyone deserves to get raped, but…” attitude is hardly new, if not particularly distasteful coming from a woman, but Hirshman ratchets the female misogyny up a few more notches by suggesting that because one of the writers was sexually assaulted as a teenager but didn’t report it to police, any opinion she might have on rape and its effect on women and society is unreliable at best business cards.