The landmark women's right to vote victory is nearly a century behind us. Since then we have witnessed the 1960s feminist movement, Roe v. Wade, Title IX, and finally, a serious female contender for a U.S. presidential bid. It is easy to think that the struggle and strife of the past have paid off. American women can rest easy knowing our job to push the so-called feminist agenda is obsolete. Welcome to the 'post-feminist' era.
Not so fast ...
There is no denying that women have made substantial progress on many fronts. Thirty years ago, the ratio of men to women at undergraduate college campuses was three-to-two, and today the situation is reversed, according to an October 2009 article in TIME magazine. According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research, women working full time throughout the year now make 77 percent of what men make annually, compared to 59 percent forty years ago.
In 2008, we had two women running for the highest elected offices in the United States in the same election year--something unimaginable fifty years ago. Furthermore, a recent survey by TIME magazine revealed that 89 percent of both men and women are comfortable with a woman earning more than her male counterpart.
While these relative gains should not be dismissed, there is still a long way to go. Stark statistics reveal areas where women continue to lag behind men. Women still lack equal work for equal pay, and American women make up only two percent of CEOs among Fortune 500 companies, according to a December 2009 article in the Economist. Despite the fact that more women have entered the workforce, the amount of time women spend on housework is still much higher than that of men, on average two times as much, according to sociologists Constance Gager and Scott T. Yabiku in a recent Journal of Family Issues study. Women also pay disproportionately more for health care than men. A recent Service Employees International Union report estimates that, all else equal, a twenty-two-year-old woman will pay up to one-and-a-half times more than her male counterpart for health insurance. Rates of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and harassment as well as legal impediments for proper resolution are still high. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, 232,960 women in the United States were raped or sexually assaulted in 2006, averaging to more than 600 women every day.
Treatment of women in the media is disheartening, at best. We are immersed in a society where sexist jokes are commonplace, where the word 'bitch' is used without flinching, where radio is rife with lyrics derogatory toward women, and where many television shows and advertisements still portray women as sex objects. Furthermore, images of women in the media can be very misleading, often displaying unattainable standards of beauty. Twenty-five years ago, the average model weighed 8 percent less than the average woman, while models today weigh 23 percent less, according to a February 2008 Newsweek article. According to psychologists Helga Dittmar and Sarah Howard, actors and models in the popular media are approximately 20 percent below the ideal body weight, a level that meets the diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa.
The effects of exposure to such images may also be reflected in the changing trends and rising profits within the beauty industry. In her essay in the New Atlantis, Christine Rosen warns of the 'age dropping' phenomenon in America--the obsession with youth and its increasing association with beauty, which most negatively impacts women. In particular, she discusses the dangers of the rising prevalence and acceptance of cosmetic surgery. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2006 around 11.5 million cosmetic surgical and nonsurgical procedures were performed, with women accounting for almost 92 percent of these procedures.
The negative treatment of women in the media was evident in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. In her new book Gender and Elections, a collection of essays outlining the role of gender in American politics, Susan Carroll describes the similarities of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sarah Palin, not on issues, but on the treatment both received during the 2008 election on the basis of their gender. The striking observation that Carroll points out is that the personality and demeanor of each woman was caricatured in terms of a particular gender stereotype. Hillary Clinton was embodied by pantsuits, short hair, and a tendency to emote stiffly--a generally masculine characterization. Conversely, Sarah Palin was pegged as the hypersexualized female with her more stylish attire, designer glasses, and high heels, as evidenced by the infamous photoshopped image of her standing in front of the American flag clutching a rifle in a bikini.
And, to make things worse, six major studies of happiness revealed that over the past three decades women have become increasingly unhappy. This is in contrast to men's happiness levels, which are found to have increased over time and age.
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These disturbing trends should not be acceptable to anyone--man or woman. And, sadly, they will continue unless there is acknowledgement by society at large that they exist and need to be addressed. A widespread feminist movement aimed at achieving equality could be the key to achieving mutual respect within and amongst the sexes. This is in contrast to the recent 'feminist backlash' in which women seek to disassociate with a feminist movement and the 'girls gone wild feminism' that causes women to grotesquely exploit their sexuality under the guise of empowerment. Instead, an all-inclusive contemporary feminist movement could reconnect women with the aspiration of equality that previous generations have worked so hard to achieve.
In a November 2009 op-ed in the New York Times, journalist Judith Warner observed that the inclusion of the Stupak-Pitts amendment in the U.S. House of Representatives version of the health care bill 'passed not just because a group of Catholic bishops bore down on Democratic lawmakers. It passed because it could'--because it could. The realities that women are facing today--unequal pay for equal work, disparaging treatment in the media, discrimination in society at large, and increasing unhappiness--all exist because they can.
Women, let's not forget all our achievements, for we should be proud of what we along with our sisters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers before us did to get us here. But let's not disappoint them and let's not stop there. We are in need of a resurgence of the feminist movement, led by women but joined by men. An open dialogue between and within the two sexes is necessary to create not only an understanding of the problem but a solution devised by men and women together. In the words of singer Helen Reddy, 'I'm still an embryo with a long, long way to go until I make my brother understand.' Women, be strong and invincible--you are women, let's hear you roar!
Heather Milkiewicz is a first-year Master in Public Administration in international development candidate at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University with a particular interest in gender issues.
