Monthly Archives: November 2000

Liberal Columnists Judge Women by Their Looks

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With all of the controversy in Florida over who go more votes than who, it was a sign of how far the United States has come toward sexual equality that it was a woman, Katherine Harris, who was at the storm of the controversy with her decision on whether or not to certify the election. The amazing (or not so-amazing, depending your point of view) thing was that the same liberal female columnists who advise us to treat women and men as moral equals, immediately degenerated into comments about Harris’ looks.

Some examples,

  • Washington Post writer Robin Givhan described a Harris press conference by writing that, “Her [Harris's] skin had been plastered and powdered to the texture of pre-war walls in need of a skim coat. And her eyesl, rimmed in liner and frosted with blue shadow, bore the tell-tale homgeneous spikes of false eyelashes. Caterpillars seemd to rise and fall with every bat of her eyelid…” How, Givhan asked, will a “woman, who can’t use restraint when she’s wielding a mascara wand, … manage to use it and make sound decisions in this game of partisan one-upsmanship.”
  • Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan argued that, “Most likely… [Harris] will be remembered for looking just ghastly Tuesday night. … Much as one would like to blame such nasty lookism on The Evil Patriarchy, I must admit it occurred to me instantly how old and hard she appeared. (Is she really just 43?)”
  • Time‘s Margaret Carlson wrote that Harris “is often compared to Cruella de Vil, snatching ballots rather than puppies…”
  • The Boston Globe‘s Joan Venocchi compared Harris to Lady MacBeth

I guess it turns out that looks do matter — at least for conservative women.

Source:

Venom directed at Harris aggravates national split. James P. Pinkerton, Los Angeles Times, November 27, 2000.

Sisterhood isn’t just powerful, it’s mean. Danielle Crittenden, The Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2000.

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Whither Wage Inequality?

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A recent report by British researchers examining earnings inequalities between men and women in the United Kingdom comes to much the same conclusion that similar studies of the U.S. wage gap have arrived at — women make significantly less than men, but the difference is better explained by choices women make rather than sexual discrimination.

In 1998, the average full-time pay of women in the United Kingdom was 80 percent of the average full-time pay of men. As researchers J.R. Shackleton and Peter Urwin of the Westminster Business School argue, however, “Only a part of the labour market advantage enjoyed by men can be attributed to discrimination in any sense that can be addressed by public policy.”

Specifically, a major cause of the wage inequality in the UK and US is the way men and women deal differently with marriage. Single men tend to learn less than married men and tend to work fewer hours. The reverse is true for women — single women tend to earn more than married women and work more hours. A very large proportion of the difference in men’s and women’s wages is due to the fact that for a variety of reasons, women are far more likely than men to switch to part-time work or exit the work force altogether after they are married.

In fact when you hold hours worked, experience and other factors constant, the UK researchers found that women’s wages averages about 90 percent of men’s wages. In the United States similar results have been found, and in fact there are some professions where women earn higher wages on average than men.

Short of using paternalistic tax policies to force married women to work more, it is hard to see, as the report puts it, “that [wage inequality] can be addressed by public policy.”

Source:

Work inequality questioned as women catch up. Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph (UK), November 27, 2000.

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Dowry Murderers Sentenced to Death in Bangladesh

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The BBC reported yesterday that Bangladesh court sentenced three people to death for the murder of a pregnant woman who was unable to pay her dowry. The woman’s husband, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law all face capital punishment, though they are planning to appeal their sentence.

Bridal dowries were outlawed in Bangladesh to avoid precisely this sort of crime, but nonetheless women’s rights organizations in Bangladesh claim that more than 200 women are killed annually because they can’t afford to pay their husbands’ families a dowry.

Source:

Bangladesh dowry killers sentenced. The BBC, November 26, 2000.

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Steinem: Nader Was Wrong to Have a Woman on His Ticket

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Gloria Steinem was just one of several prominent feminists who went out of their way to criticize Green Party candidate Ralph Nader for daring to run for president. Steinem and others, including the National Organization for Women, argued that the main effect of Nader’s candidacy would be to elect the pro-life George W. Bush who would appoint people in the mould of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court (ignoring, conveniently, that a Democratic Senate voted to confirm Thomas).

Steinem certainly has the right to share her views, but toward the end of the presidential campaign she penned a “Top Ten Reasons Why I’m not Voting for Nader” letter that was widely distributed via e-mail. Among the ten reasons Steinem wasn’t voting for Nader, number four was bizarre,

4) Nader asked Winona LaDuke, an important Native American leader, to support and run with him, despite his likely contribution to the victory of George W. Bush, a man who has stated that “state law is supreme when to comes to Indians.”

This is a bit bizarre. She’s not going to vote for Nader specifically because he was able to convince a woman to run as his vice-president? As Ellen Johnson noted in a reply to Steinem, she appears to be questioning LaDuke’s agency, as if the Native American activist had no choice in the matter.

I think LaDuke was a bad choice because, like Nader, she’s pretty much wrong about everything, but to argue that feminists should vote against Nader because he had the temerity to ask a woman to run as his vice-president is absurd.

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Cathy Young on Women’s Studies Program

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Cathy Young wrote an excellent summary of the problem with women’s studies departments, Propaganda discredits value of women’s studies.

The bottom line: studies of sex and gender are indeed important, but are undermined by the explicit political agenda of many women’s studies departments. By limiting discourse to only one predtermined outcome — typically radical feminist in nature — women’s studies dpeartments today do as much to hid the reality of women’s lives as academia’s male-centered focus did for the first half of the 20th century.

“What’s wrong with women’s stuedies?” Young asks,

The courses, critics say, tend to stress political indoctrination and personal experiences rather than scholarship; dubioius tehories and facts are presetned as gospel; male villainy is endlessly preached; and young women are trained to regard themselves as perpetual victims.

Source:

Propaganda discredits value of women’s studies. Cathy Young, The Detroit News, November 10, 2000.

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The Feminist/Postmodernist Assault on Academic Freedom

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Jared Sakren is a successful theater professor who in stints at Yale University, Julliard Theatre Center and Arizona State University taught actors such as Annette Benning, Val Kilmer and Kelly McGillis. But at Arizona State University Sakren was fired in part because his performance reviews said that he was creating a climate of sexism in the classroom — the dean of the college of fine arts at ASU told CBS News that Sakren was guilty of sexual harassment.

What did Sakren do to earn such enmity? He refused to teach Shakespeare from a “postmodern feminist/ethic canon.” Translation: Sakren wanted to teach Shakespeare’s plays as having timeless insights into human nature. ASU wanted him to teach Shakespeare as an artifact of patriarchal culture that is oppressive precisely because it asserts there is something like a universal human nature (that’s a right wing myth according to the postmodernists.)

As Thor Halvorssen of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education summed up the case to the Washington Times,

ASU hired an international superstar teacher, promised him academic freedom, and then expected him to follow the politically correct orthodoxy of radical feminism and watered-down academic standards.

The irony of the case is that universities usually cite academic freedom whenever conservatives criticize their curriculum or class offerings, but quickly discard the notion whenever they need to appease leftist academics. In the ASU case, the university actually argued in court that although Sakren’s contract included a promise of academic freedom, that the clause was meaningless and legally unenforceable.

Source:

Professor fired for teaching Shakespeare gets new trial. Andrea Billups, The Washington Times.

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Are You Ready for Some (Women’s) Football?

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It did not make much of a splash, but in mid-October the Women’s Professional Football League (WPFL) began play with 11 teams around the country. Believe it or not the WPFL isn’t the first attempt to kick off a women’s football league — in 1965 a professional women’s league was formed in the Ohio area, and in 1974 the National Women’s Football League formed and managed to hang out until the early 1980s.

Will women’s football ever catch on? Yes and no.

No it will never be even close the men’s version, if only because the market is already saturated with college and professional football. While there are some women who are talented enough to play positions such as kicker for men’s teams, I seriously doubt anyone could put together a women’s professional team that was on par with even a Division I football team.

On the other hand yes. Football diehards just can’t get enough and there are semi-professional football leagues and teams throughout the nation. These are people who are typically college players who weren’t good enough to play professionally but love the game and play it in a very organized setting for the enjoyment and pride they take in it.

I think a women’s semiprofessional league could certainly take off; I know I’d go to watch it just like I turn out for the men’s semiprofessional teams in the area. There’s just something about people putting on pads and hitting each other that is uplifting to the human spirit.

Source:

A League of Their Own. Dan Harris, ABCNews.Com, October 15, 2000.

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Columbia’s Star Chamber

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Columbia University recently decided it had a problem. All of the red tape that Americans come to expect when accused of serious crimes, such as the right to have a lawyer present, the right to cross-examine witnesses, and the right to confront one’s accuser were getting in the way of the university dealing with alleged rapists and sexual harassers. Fortunately Columbia found a solution — get rid of all the mumbo jumbo about the rights of the accused and simply throw the book at the bastards.

Columbia’s new guidelines for dealing with sexual harassment and assault charges leave those accused of such transgressions almost no ability to defend themselves. Under its old policies, accused students had to be given at least 48 hours notice of any hearing along with a list of witnesses who would testify. Now their is no requirement that they notify students in advance, and are not required to inform the accused of the charge or the witnesses until immediately prior to the accused testifying. It goes without saying that contrary to long-established principles of Western jurisprudence, accused students are not allowed to attend their trial — they aren’t even allowed to be in the room when other witnesses testify. Instead they are forced to rely on “summaries” of any testimony made by the three personal panel administering the case.

Even that wasn’t enough for the feminists on Columbia’s campus who complained that red tape was letting too many sexual harassers and others off. Only students or faculty who have undergone “special training” in sexual harassment and sexual assault will be allowed to preside over such cases. Columbia claims that this will make their panels more objective, but of course it will do just the opposite. As The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education noted, whether it be the witchcraft trials in the 16th century or the special drug courts in America today, “judges and jurors in such ‘special’ courts assume that it is their mission to eliminate a widespread and specific social problem rather than to achieve justice for individuals.”

Columbia even went so far as to completely eliminate any standard of proof for charges of sexual harassment and/or assault. Under its old policy an allegation had to be proven by “clear and convincing evidence” and specified that the burden as on those making the accusation to prove their cases. The new policy simply omits any mention of standards of proof and who has the burden. As FIRE notes, “it is an invitation to trial by hysteria in a politically charged atmosphere.”

And Columbia certainly has a politically charged atmosphere. Law professor George Fletcher was warned by Law School Dean David Leebron that because one of his law exams included a question about case law that involves victims of violence who believe the net result of the violence against them benefited them that his exam was illegal and possibly constituted sexual harassment.

Columbia defended its policies in a letter saying that it was mandated by law to deal with sexual harassment, but if Columbia were a public university its sexual harassment police would be blatantly unconstitutional. Because it is a private institution, it is free to simply throw out even minimal safeguards for students accused of sexual harassment or assault.

Sources:

Columbia public relations official makes false claims to defend a fatally flawed policy. Press release, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, October 25, 2000.

Back to the Middle Ages on campus. John Silber, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, November 3, 2000.

Higher ed. Norah Vincent, The Village Voice, October 25-31, 2000.

Hail Columbia?. Edwin Feulner, The Heritage Foundation, October 27, 2000.

Academic freedom under assault at Columbia Law School. Press release, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, September 29, 2000.

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Are High Marginal Taxe Rates a Feminist Issue?

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Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore has railed against a proposal by Republican candidate George W. Bush to reduce taxes saying it would benefit only the top one percent of income earners. Writing in the New York Times, however, Virginia Postrel points out that high marginal tax rates at higher income levels encourage married professional women to reduce the number of hours they work, which has strong affects their future promotion potential, or to quit the workforce altogether.

Feminists typically complain that there aren’t enough women at the upper echelons of corporations. While women are more and more represented at mid-level management, they claim, there are not enough women breaking through the “glass ceiling” into executive level positions. As Postrel points out, though, married professional women get screwed by the high marginal taxes if they get promoted too high. Since women are more likely than men to consider not working outside the home, if a woman’s income pushes her family’s income into a higher tax break, there is an economic incentive there not to work.

But does this actually make a difference in the real world? Yes. Postrel cites a 1995 study by University of California at Berkeley economist Nada Eissa on the Tax Reform Act of 1986 which, among other things, reduced the highest tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent. The result, the percentage of married women in the highest tax bracket who worked outside the home jumped from 46 percent to 55 percent, and those who had jobs increased the number of hours they worked by 13 percent. Looking at women in the 75th percentile, who didn’t receive as dramatic a tax cut, the percentage of married women who worked increased by only 7 percent and the number of hours they worked increased by only 9 percent. As Eissa told Postrel, “There is a relationship between taxes and labor-force participation.”

Eissa found similar results when looking at the effects of the earned income tax credit which provides an economic incentive for poor families not too raise their incomes to high since it applies a de facto 21 percent marginal tax rate on all income above about $12,000 for a family of four. Women in that situation were 5 percent less likely to work outside the home if they were in a position where working would bump their family income above that level.

As Postrel notes, however, this is a topic that neither liberal or conservatives want to raise,

Democrats don’t want to admit that the soak-the-rich taxation wallops working wives, lest they split feminists and redistributionists. And Republicans don’t want to admit that cutting taxes will lead more married women to get jobs, lest they split economic libertarians and social conservatives. So everyone stays mum.

But the empirical evidence is pretty clear. Tax rates are a feminist issue.

Personally I tend to think the liberal feminists are the biggest hypocrites here, as they seem committed to maintaining that a professional woman has the right to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy but then is too stupid or too mean spirited to control her own finances, but instead must hand much of it over to the government which presumably knows better than she does. Much of the pro-choice movement has little use for truly giving women (much less men) the ability to make wide ranges of choices over their lives, turning incredibly statist once anything besides the narrow issue of abortion is put on the table.

Source:

Tax System Discourages Married Women from Working. Virginia Postrel, The New York Times, November 2, 2000.

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Did Harvard Reject Book Because of Its Pro-Marriage Viewpoint?

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Stanley Kurtz wrote an interesting summary of the controversy surrounding Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher’s book, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially. The book was originally scheduled to be published by Harvard University Press, but at the very last moment Harvard dumped the book and it went on to be published by Doubleday.

What gives? The book passed vetting by Harvard’s normal review process but got killed by the press’ Board of Synics which claimed Waite and Gallagher hadn’t adequately backed up their claims with enough evidence.

I haven’t read The Case for Marriage, but according to Kurtz the evidentiary problems are the sorts that are endemic to any book in the social sciences in that it establishes a lot of interesting correlations that don’t necessarily establish causation. For example, statistical studies and polls demonstrate two conclusions about married people: they tend to have higher incomes and they report having better sex lives than single people.

This certainly debunks claims to the contrary by feminists that marriage harms income and/or isn’t very sexy, but does it prove that marriage causes better sex and higher incomes? Of course not — it could simply be that people with higher potential incomes who are better lovers are more likely to get married. But that sort of objection is inherent with any study of social trends.

What irks Kurtz, however, is that at the same time Harvard rejected The Case for Marriage for its supposed lack of evidence and too strong of tone, it has had no problem publishing four books by Catharine MacKinnon which make grotesque claims that MacKinnon never even tries to back up with evidence.

In fact MacKinnon pretty much concedes that there is no evidence for her claim that pornography causes violence against women and retreated in one of her books to the ridiculous position that “there is no evidence that pornography does not harm,” which is about a vacuous claim as anyone could hope to write (in fact, as Kurtz notes, MacKinnon actually argues that even controlled social experiments to find the effects of pornography are useless since most men are prone to rape and there is no way to get a control group).

Similarly, Kurtz notes that Harvard press’s Board of Synics was apparently offended by the pro-marriage sentiments of Waite and Gallagher, but had no problem publishing a book by MacKinnon in which she wrote that, “What in the liberal view looks like love and romance looks a lot like hatred and torture to the feminist” among other things.

In fact in the Harvard-published Only Words, MacKinnon actually agreed with the legal theory put forth by a serial rapist that he should be set free since he had no free will to choose to rape or not — pornography programmed him to rape and he had no choice in the matter. Given the heightened awareness at most college campuses about rape issues, it is stunning that Harvard Press found MacKinnon’s legalistic defense of rapists uncontroversial while Waite and Gallagher’s defense of monogamous marriage is simply too much for it to stomach.

Source:

What Harvard Finds Unfit to Print. Stanley Kurtz, The Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2000.

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