Myths or Facts in Feminist Scholarship?

An exchange between Nancy K.D. Lemon and Christina Hoff Sommers

Christina Hoff Sommers, in her essay "Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship" (The Chronicle Review, online edition, June 29), criticized Nancy K.D. Lemon, a lecturer in domestic-violence law at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Law, for publishing errors in the popular textbook she edits, Domestic Violence Law, and for not taking seriously her continuing criticisms of the book. "One reason that feminist scholarship contains hard-to-kill falsehoods is that reasonable, evidence-backed criticism is regarded as a personal attack," Sommers charged. Following is Lemon's response to those criticisms and Sommers's rebuttal. Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Nancy K.D. Lemon: Christina Hoff Sommers accused me of being a "scholarly merchant of hype" for material in my popular textbook, Domestic Violence Law. In fact, she is the one whose assertions are untrue and who is impervious to correction.

http://chronicle.com/article/Domestic-Violence-a/47940/

Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship

By CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS
"Harder to kill than a vampire." That is what the sociologist Joel Best calls a bad statistic. But, as I have discovered over the years, among false statistics the hardest of all to slay are those promoted by feminist professors. Consider what happened recently when I sent an e-mail message to the Berkeley law professor Nancy K.D. Lemon pointing out that the highly praised textbook that she edited, Domestic Violence Law (second edition, Thomson/West, 2005), contained errors.

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i40/40sommers.htm

Liberated and Unhappy

By ROSS DOUTHAT

American women are wealthier, healthier and better educated than they were 30 years ago. They’re more likely to work outside the home, and more likely to earn salaries comparable to men’s when they do. They can leave abusive marriages and sue sexist employers. They enjoy unprecedented control over their own fertility. On some fronts — graduation rates, life expectancy and even job security — men look increasingly like the second sex.

But all the achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness. In the 1960s, when Betty Friedan diagnosed her fellow wives and daughters as the victims of “the problem with no name,” American women reported themselves happier, on average, than did men. Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped. In postfeminist America, men are happier than women.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/opinion/26douthat.html?_r=2&em

Phyllis Schlafly at 84

By Andrea Sachs
As the most visible and effective critic of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), Phyllis Schlafly squared off against the National Organization for Women and other pro-ERA groups in one of the most bitter battles of the 1970s. Critics denounced her as a hypocrite: though she lauded stay-at-home mothers and wives, she herself was a full-time political activist and lawyer. Nonetheless, Schlafly's grass-roots efforts prevailed, and the ERA went down to defeat. Now 84, Schlafly remains a force in conservative politics, with a busy lecture schedule. She is the president of the pro-life, anti–gay marriage Eagle Forum, which has 25,000 members. TIME senior reporter Andrea Sachs reached Schlafly at her home in St. Louis.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1889757,00.html

International Women’s Day at the UN

Carolyn Moynihan

The annual Commission on the Status of Women is under way at United Nations headquarters in New York with thousands of activists, government and UN officials gathered to discuss the theme of “The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS”. The meeting also features sideshows where lobby groups promote their agendas on subjects such as “sexual and reproductive rights” and pro-life groups raise the flag for the right to life and family values.

http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/international_womens_day_at_the_un/

Where Dr J Has Been: MN

While I was in Minneapolis, I addressed about 300 high school students and their parents at Providence Academy, on the topic of Smart Sex. Principal Dr. Todd Flanders said my presentation struck just the right tone of academic credibility, along with edginess. I always benefit from interaction with my audiences, but the Providence parents were exceptional. One mom was a doctor, and shared that she often sees young patients who are either pregnant or have STD’s. She always begins by apologizing to them. “My generation lied to you when we told you that you could have sex without consequences. I’m sorry.”

Another Providence Academy mom told us the most poignant story I’ve heard in a long time. This very fashionable, obviously well-educated woman shared that she was the only one of her college circle of friends who got married and had a child. All her friends focused the energies solely on making money. When she visits them, they fawn over her son. These friends live in gorgeous apartments in Manhattan, which are decorated with photos of her child. They know they have missed something of value, something their money will never be able to replace.

In my last update, I told you about meeting Rev. Walter Hoye, an African-American pastor in Oakland. Rev. Hoye has become a symbol of the assault on free speech from the abortion lobby. He stood on a public sidewalk outside an abortion clinic, trying to talk with women as they entered. Rev Hoye did nothing violent or intimidating. Yet he was sentenced last week. We gave an update of his case on the blog.

We realize that the economy is difficult right now. But please consider investing in the work of the Ruth Institute. After all, investments in stocks or real estate aren’t doing so well right now. Investing in the future of marriage will pay dividends for years. Your gift will allow Dr. Morse to visit more campuses with her message of lifelong married love. The future of marriage is in the hands of college students. The market will come and the market will go. If marriage goes down, it will be almost impossible to revive. Donate to the Ruth Institute today.

(This material was originally published in the free weekly Ruth Institute newsletter. Click here to subscribe.)

Where Dr J has been in February: Virginia and DC

The Ruth Institute exists to promote lifelong married love to the young by creating a social and economic climate favorable to marriage. We accomplish our mission through speaking engagements across the country.

I had two major trips in February. I went to Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia, and then to the Minneapolis area. I spoke on “Alternatives to Feminism” to Federalist Society chapters at Georgetown Law School and the University of Virginia Law School. The UVA students surprised me. A couple of women who identified themselves as feminists came up to me to tell me that had expected to hate me and my talk. But they were astonished by how much they agreed with my message that women have been sold a bill of goods, when they were told to eschew marriage in favor of complete focus on a career. One of them told me that she thought I was a “totally awesome feminist.”

As a result of that encounter, I got to thinking, “what the heck is feminism, anyhow? Do we really need to rehabilitate the word? Or should we start over with new terminology to describe a pro-woman position within the broad conservative context?” So, we have started a discussion over at the Ruth Youth blog. Go check it out and tell us what you think feminism is or should be. If you have college age friends or relatives, send them to the Ruth Youth blog.

Same sex marriage was on the agenda at the George Mason University Law school in Arlington, Virginia and the University of St. Thomas Law school in Minneapolis. At George Mason, I debated same sex adoption with Gabriel Hudson, a young political science professor, (pictured.) I gave a speech about same sex marriage and Proposition 8 at the University of St. Thomas.

By the time I arrived home from my trip to George Mason, I found a nice hand-written note in the mail.

“I wanted to thank you for your participation in George Mason Law’s same sex adoption debate. While I may have ideological differences from yours, I found your presentation today very fair and respectful and I respect you for that. Sincerely, … Vice President/Secretary of GALLA, LBGT Law Association.”

That made my day. We need more civil discussions of these important issues. I’m proud to play a small part in raising the level of the debate.

At the same time, these events revealed just how much work we have to do on campuses. I have often made the point that same sex marriage requires us to believe that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. Many, many young people do not have a problem with that. They insist that we demonstrate things that are intuitively obvious to older people. I am committed to bringing the best arguments and the most respectful presentations of these issues. With your help, I will continue to carry this message to campuses across the country.

(This was originally published in the Ruth Institute free weekly newsletter. Click here to subscribe.)

Madonna syndrome

From The Times February 5, 2009

Madonna syndrome: I should have ditched feminism for love, children and baking
A playwright who embraced the feminism espoused by her mother and flaunted by Madonna now feels betrayed

I never thought I would be saying this, but being a free woman isn't all it's cracked up to be. Is that the rustle of taffeta I hear as the suffragettes turn in their graves? Possibly. My mother was a hippy who kept a pile of (dusty) books by Germaine Greer and Erica Jong by her bed (like every good feminist, she didn't see why she should do all the cleaning). She imbued me with the great values of choice, equality and sexual liberation. I fought with my older brother and won; at university I beat the rugby lads at drinking games. I was not to be messed with.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article5662099.ece

What is Feminism?

What is feminism? What does this word mean to you? I gave a talk at the University of Virginia called, "Alternatives to Feminism," which was a free market, family friendly, pro-woman talk. I had the president of one of the feminist clubs come up to me afterwards and say that she had come to fight with me, but she concluded that I was, "a totally awesome feminist."

Wow. I decided years ago that I did not want anything to do with the feminist movement. My views have not changed that much. So now, I conclude I don't know what the word means.

Two other incidents suggest to me that the "old feminism" is pretty much shot. Not long ago, retired law professor and feminist philosopher Linda Hirshman declared that Obama's economic 'stimulus' package didn't do enough for women. Big yawn. No one under 55, Left or Right, cares. From the Right, I recently heard about a conservative woman whose goal is to help conservative women leaders break the glass ceiling, so that the first woman president will be a conservative. Equally Big Yawn. Young conservative women are not excited about the glass ceiling.

What do you think feminism means? And what do you think it means that we don't know what it means any more?

Sarah Palin

What I like about Sarah Palin: she is a post-feminist, professional woman. She doesn't so much reject Establishment Feminism: she just ignores it. She has a collaborative relationship with her husband, not, as far as I can tell, an adversarial or competitive relationship with him. He is not an obstacle to her life goals: he is a help and support to them. And her life goals include accepting children lovingly from God, in fact, all the children God may choose to send her.
For all these reasons, she is a complete mystery to most of the mainstream media, including much of the conservative media that should be sympathetic to her. Notice the WSJ: and here. They talked about her reform streak. They seem to be clueless about why her life story is so exciting to so many women.

More on Humanae Vitae

I posted about Mary Eberstadt's article on Pope Paul IV's birth control encyclical, Humane Vitae (Of Human Life) earlier. I have been thinking about Paul's prediction that artificial birth control would sour relations between the sexes. Now, I have to say, in advance, that my training is in economics. One of the first things you learn in economics is that the best test of a theory is its predictive power. Sounding reasonable at the outset isn't enough. Having "realistic" assumptions isn't enough. The real test of a theory is whether the predictions of the theory are falsified or verified by events.

By that standard, Paul VI should get a Nobel Prize. The enthusiasts who predicted that birth control would usher in an era of "every child a wanted child," look pretty silly in retrospect. Paul VI had a superior theory of the human condition.

In any case, here is what Mary Eberstadt has to say about his prediction that contraception would damage relationships between men and women.

Perhaps the most mocked of Humanae Vitae's predictions was its claim that separating sex from procreation would deform relations between the sexes and "open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards." Today, when advertisements for sex scream from every billboard and webpage, and every teen idol is sooner or later revealed topless or worse online, some might wonder what further proof could possibly be offered.

But to leave matters there would be to miss something important. The critical point is, one might say, not so much the proof as the pudding it's in. And it would be hard to get more ironic than having these particular predictions of Humanae Vitae vindicated by perhaps the most unlikely—to say nothing of unwilling—witness of all: modern feminism….

Consider just what we have been told by the endless books on the topic over the years. If feminists married and had children, they lamented it. If they failed to marry or have children, they lamented that, too. If they worked outside the home and also tended their children, they complained about how hard that was. If they worked outside the home and didn't tend their children, they excoriated anyone who thought they should. And running through all this literature is a more or less constant invective about the unreliability and disrespect of men. …

Beneath all the pathos, the subtext remains the same: Woman's chief adversary is Unreliable Man, who does not understand her sexual and romantic needs and who walks off time and again at the first sashay of a younger thing. What are all these but the generic cries of a woman who thinks that men are "disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium" and "no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection"?...

That there is no auxiliary literature of grievance for men—who, for the most part, just don't seem to feel they have as much to grieve about in this new world order—is something else that Humanae Vitae and a few other retrograde types saw coming in the wake of the revolution. As the saying goes, and as many people did not stop to ask at the time, cui bono? Forty years later, the evidence is in. As Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver observed on Humanae Vitae's thirtieth anniversary in 1998, "Contraception has released males—to a historically unprecedented degree—from responsibility for their sexual aggression." Will any feminist who by 2008 disagrees with that statement please stand up?

I'm not exactly a feminist. And I don't exactly disagree with Archbishop Chaput. But I do think that there is a grievance literature for men: the dispossessed fathers that I and Steven Baskerville have written about. Ironically, these are the men who are doing what they ought to be doing. They are trying to be good husbands and fathers, but have been kicked out of their family's lives. These men, are, for all practical purposes, invisible in our society. (My website has a page called The Reluctantly Divorced. I call them the Unknown Soldiers of the Culture Wars.) They are dismissed by some, even in the Fatherhood Movement, who call them "Mad Dads."

There is something seriously wrong when the most aggrieved people in society are those who are trying to be responsible parents and spouses.

Alice Walker’s Daughter Rejects Feminism

 

Rebecca Walker, daughter of feminist icon Alice Walker, has published a new book in which she rejects her mother's views in no uncertain terms. Rebecca, now 38, enjoys motherhood and longs for a second child, which she may not be able to have. She suffered from her parents' divorce and its aftermath. She wants lifelong love for herself and stability for her son. Naturally, these views distance her from her mother, Alice Walker, the author of The Color Purple.

The ease with which people can get divorced these days doesn't take into account the toll on children. That's all part of the unfinished business of feminism.

Then there is the issue of not having children. Even now, I meet women in their 30s who are ambivalent about having a family. They say things like: 'I'd like a child. If it happens, it happens.' I tell them: 'Go home and get on with it because your window of opportunity is very small.' As I know only too well.

Then I meet women in their 40s who are devastated because they spent two decades working on a PhD or becoming a partner in a law firm, and they missed out on having a family. Thanks to the feminist movement, they discounted their biological clocks. They've missed the opportunity and they're bereft.

Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating.

But far from taking responsibility for any of this, the leaders of the women's movement close ranks against anyone who dares to question them  -  as I have learned to my cost. I don't want to hurt my mother, but I cannot stay silent. I believe feminism is an experiment, and all experiments need to be assessed on their results. Then, when you see huge mistakes have been paid, you need to make alterations.

I hope that my mother and I will be reconciled one day. Tenzin deserves to have a grandmother. But I am just so relieved that my viewpoint is no longer so utterly coloured by my mother's.

I am my own woman and I have discovered what really matters  -  a happy family.

Rebecca's story could be the story of her generation. I hear this all the time from students and young adults. In fact, Rebecca could be the poster child for my new institute, the Ruth Institute, which tries to show intelligent women that they can have love and family and education and career, without all the feminism baggage we have all had to suffer with.

Alice Walker essentially disowned her daughter when she announced that she was pregnant, and delighted.

When I called her one morning in the spring of 2004, while I was at one of her homes housesitting, and told her my news and that I'd never been happier, she went very quiet. All she could say was that she was shocked. Then she asked if I could check on her garden. I put the phone down and sobbed  -  she had deliberately withheld her approval with the intention of hurting me. What loving mother would do that?

Read the whole article here. Learn more about her book, Baby Love

I have to warn you: the comments on Amazon are terrible. She really rubbed the feminists the wrong way! So, to me, she must be doing something right! I have not read the book, only this article in the Mail. But, I have to say that Alice Walker doesn't know what she is missing. Based on what I've seen, I'd be proud to have Rebecca as my daughter.

A Non-Conservative Defense of Pro-Family Policies

I just got this message in my inbox:

Check out this book by a U.C. Berkeley professor who suggests policies that favor stay-at-home parents are good. I think you'll enjoy this bit of fresh air now coming from the Left. What Nel Gilbert says in A Mother's Work is policies that reward working mothers/fathers really reward consumerism and corporations. So I think the problem here is not socialism, but unrestrained capitalism or just plan corporate greed manipulating the public.

The she is referring to is A Mother's Work. I have read it, and think it is a good book. I don’t think he thinks the problem is “corporate greed.” And I wouldn’t necessarily call him a man of the Left. I think he is more of an old-fashioned New Deal Democrat, type of person, a type that is almost a dying breed. This book is as much an indictment of feminist ideology as of capitalist greed.

Also, I seem to recall that he was sceptical of some of the more extreme feminist claims about domestic violence. I think he was on a panel sponsored by the Women's Freedom Network, back in the late 80's or early 90's, that tried to take a hard look at some of the data concerning various feminist arguments. If I'm not mistaken, it was published in this first volume of teh Women's Freedom Network, Neither Victim Nor Enemy.

Student Reactions to My Alternative Feminism Talk

Students who have heard me speak on Humane Alternatives to Feminism, or It Takes a Family to Raise a Village, may have heard me use this line:

I claim the right to participate in the labor market as women, not as men in skirts. Up until now, we have insisted that women change their fertility in order to accommodate the labor market. I say we should take women’s fertility as given and change the labor market to accommodate our bodies. I claim the right to get married and stay married, not the right to raise our children alone, and to spend larger and larger portions of our lives alone.

I have had women students applaud at that line. But the audience at Harvard was rather subdued, in comparison with my normal student reactions.
However, I discovered that part of the reason Harvey Mansfield invited me for this particular panel was that his assistant had seen my review of Hirshman's book on the Weekly Standard. Unbeknownst to me, this particular assistant has a doctorate, but is raising two children, and so is working part-time for Mansfield. Also unknown to me, she had invited a bunch of her friends in similar situations. After my talk, and at the dinner later, several different women came up to me and told me how much they appreciated my message and my support for their decision to stay home with kids. These women had doctorates, MA's or were ABD (All But Dissertation) in a variety of disciplines.
I don't think they realized how numerous they actually were. If they had known how many other women were in the audience, maybe I would have gotten some applause! :-)

Giving Credit to Linda Hirshman

I will give Linda Hirshman credit for the fact that we had a very civil and useful debate. Our encounter was useful, in that it clarified our respective positions. She thinks well-educated women who stay home to raise their children are wasting their time and talent. I think such women are doing a valuable public service. She seems to view the work/family decision as an all or nothing proposition. I view women's life-choices as on-going, works-in-progress. Each woman can cycle in and out of the labor market, as her family's needs and her desires dictate. I pointed out that 1960's style feminism was based on Marxism, and that I consider this legacy to be unnecessary baggage. She never denied her Marxist roots.
I will give her credit for one other thing: she believes in Truth and Goodness. She said as much to me at the end of our panel. "With you, I can have a discussion about what constitutes the Good Life. We disagree about what constitutes the Good Life. But at least we can talk about it. A lot of people are unwilling to acknowledge that some ways of life are objectively better than others." (I'm paraphrasing here. I think I have the gist of it.) I asked her if that criticism came mostly from the Left. She said it was all from the Left.
I welcome the opportunity to continue the conversation with her about what constitutes the Good Life, and what public policies should do to support it.

Reactions to The Legacy of Feminism Conference

I've been meaning to write about the Legacy and Future of Feminism conference held at Harvard on April 11, but life intervened. (See previous post.) I want to tell my readers what I saw and heard. In this post, I will report on how people reacted to my message.
My principle opponent was Linda Hirschman, author of a book charmingly entitled, Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World, (which I reviewed here.) She said she read my book, Love and Economics, on the plane. She noticed that I thought properly brought up children were necessary for a free society. But her spin on the that was that I thought women should stay home with their chidlren, so we could have a capitalist society. I don't think she quite grasped the significance of infant/mother attachment for the development of the child and for the long run good of the whole social order. That was of course, the whole point of Love and Economics. She made the predictable comments that fathers should be involved with their children, which of course, I never deny. In fact, I have a whole section in Chapter 6 called The Irreplacable Contribution of Fathers.
Luckily, I had prepared my opening statement in advance: I was concerned that I might be diverted into responding to her, and not make the points I really wanted to make. Readers of this blog know what that opening statement said. I had made up my mind that I would begin and end my opening presentation with stories, but I would decide exactly which story to use once I heard what she had to say. Given what she said, I decided to tell the part of my story about adopting a child who proved to be very needy. He didn't need High-Quality-Low-Cost-Daycare. He had enough institutional care. He needed a mommy. (People who have heard my talks, or listened to my CD's, have heard this story.) I ended with this story about Jonathan Hughes.

In 1991, I was a tenured professor of economics at George Mason University. I received a phone call from a dear friend of mine, Jonathan R.T. Hughes, who was one of the Great Men of Economic History. He had received our adoption announcement for the arrival of our two and a half year old son from Romania. He had also heard through the grapevine that I was pregnant. And, as I knew, Jonathan Hughes had terminal cancer.
So he called me up to congratulate me on our new arrival and to coo over the photo I had sent him. Then he said, “when you get to be my age, you realize that being a parent was the one thing in life that was really worth doing.” Mind you, Jon had a distinguished teaching and publishing career. But that was how he saw his own life from his death bed. He went on, “Enjoy your kids while they are young. The university will still be there after they have grown up.”
I wanted to take his advice, but I was afraid to quit my job. I’ll never get another tenured position, I told myself. Yet the tug, the pull of the children was unmistakable. And our son had genuine needs. He’d had plenty of institutional care in his orphanage in Romania. He needed a Mommy. That would be me.
My husband had moved to the DC area for the sake of my teaching job at Mason. He is a nuts and bolts engineer. There was nothing really for him in DC. He had worked with the same contracting firm for ten years. By 1996, he deeply wanted to move to California to join a laser company and get in on the high tech boom. I was finally ready to let go.
I took a leap of faith and went with my husband. When we left the DC area, I did not have another job lined up. I made a decision that the family would be my first priority, and I would fit my work in around the edges of my full-time job. As it happened, part time research and writing positions fell into my lap. I had all the work I wanted.
During those years, our family had any number of problems to deal with. Death and dying, mental illness and physical illness, all came into our immediate world. The fact that I had made myself available to my children meant that we had some “slack” in our family system to deal with these problems as they arose. As a bonus, I got the opportunity to do many other wonderful things I didn’t have time for when I was working full-time. I could actually plan vacations and outings for our family. I could help at the kids’ schools, and bring casseroles to sick friends. I got to have friends, dear women friends, really for the first time since high school. We were foster parents for three years, to a total of eight children.
And you know what? Jonathan Hughes was right: the university is still here. Here I am. University life hasn’t changed all that much. It is almost as if I never left.

The Conference Radcliffe Wouldn't Host

As faithful readers know, I attended a conference at Harvard University last week on The Legacy and Future of Feminism. Here is the tongue-in-cheek poster used to advertise the event. Here is an early blog post on the event. I will be blogging on it myself later today.

A Family-Friendly Small Business Nightmare

My friends at the Acton Institute published my article on the need to reform the Clinton-era Family Medical Leave Act. I have posted my full article on my site as well. The Act has been subject to abuses that cry out to be corrected:

The Act provides leave not only for maternity or the care of a new born, but also for care for a dependent with a serious illness. Unfortunately, the Department of Labor has issued conflicting opinions on what constitutes a serious illness. While the legislative history clearly indicates that the leave was not supposed to be used for minor sniffles, employees have obtained certification for minor conditions such as allergies, migraines, or back problems.
Compounding the problem, the FMLA allows for intermittent leave: that is, people can take leave in "separate blocks of time due to a single qualifying reason." According to the Small Business Administration, intermittent leave is the most challenging part of the FMLA for small businesses. The regulations require that leave increments have to be awarded in the "shortest period of time the employer's payroll system uses to account for absences or use for leave, provided it is one hour or less."
Some small manufacturing businesses track time in increments as short as six minutes. The Employment Policy Foundation found that 50 percent of leave-takers provide notice either the day the leave begins or the day after. The administrative and scheduling challenges this presents are a nightmare. And the program hurts overall employee morale, when other employees have to do the work of the absent employees.

The Acton Institute is interested in this because of my free market conclusions:
Small businesses want to retain skilled and dedicated employees without giving slackers an opening to abuse the company's good will. When problems arise, the firm and its employees can work out issues together. By contrast, when problems arise with federal legislation, there cannot be a carefully tailored, personalized response. The abuses and unforeseen consequences of the FMLA have to be dealt with by the federal government: litigation to determine the exact requirements of the law; further regulation to change the law; and a complex process of fact-finding in between.
Small competitive firms need not limit their scope to providing generic "family leave." Firms try to create a menu of ways to tailor policies to the specific needs employee needs. Firms would try various combinations of leave policies, job sharing, flex-time and telecommuting. Companies might try one approach for new mothers, something different for people with elderly parents, and something still different for people with minor chronic illnesses—assuming the law would allow you to "discriminate" in this way. But as things now stand, the government has preempted a lot of experimentation with programs that might possibly be better for the workers and cheaper for the companies.

Gender "Equity" Activists are going after science

Christina Hoff Sommers reports on the omnious movement to use Title IX of the Civil Rights Act to enforce quotas in unviersity math, science and engineering departments.

Virginia Valian, a psychologist at Hunter College, is one of the most cited author­ities in the crusade to achieve equity for women in the sciences. Her book Why So Slow? (MIT Press, 1998) is indispensable to the movement because it offers a solution to a vexing problem: women’s seemingly free but actually self-defeating choices. Not only do fewer women than men choose to enter the physical sciences, but even those who do often give child care and family a higher priority than their male colleagues. How, in the face of wom­en’s clear tendencies to choose other careers and more balanced lifestyles, can one reasonably attribute the scarcity of women in science and engineering to unconscious bias and sexist dis­crimination? Valian showed the way.

Her central claim is that our male-dominated society constructs and enforces “gender sche­mas.” gender schema is an accepted system of beliefs about the ways men and women differ—a system that determines what suits each gender. Writes Valian: “In white, Western middle-class society, the gender schema for men includes being capable of independent, autonomous action…[and being] assertive, instrumental, and task-oriented. Men act. The gender schema for women is different; it includes being nur­turant, expressive, communal, and concerned about others.”...
To achieve a gender-fair society, Valian advocates a concerted attack on conventional gender schemas. This includes altering the way we raise our children. Consider the custom of encouraging girls to play with dolls. Such early socialization, she says, creates an association between being female and being nurturing. concludes, “Egalitarian parents can bring up their children so that both boys and girls play with dolls and trucks.... From the standpoint of equality, nothing is more important.”

But what if our daughters are not especially interested in trucks, as almost any parent can attest (including me: when my son recently gave his daughter a toy train to play with, she placed it in a baby carriage and covered it with a blanket so it could get some sleep)? a problem, says Valian.

“We don’t accept biol­ogy as destiny…. We vaccinate, we inoculate, we medicate.... propose we adopt the same attitude toward biological sex differences.” In other words, the ubiquitous female propensity to nurture should be treated as a kind of disor­der or disease....

Naturally, the solution to these problems is a greater expansion of government intervention in university life:

Alice Hogan, former director of ADVANCE, explained in a 2005 interview that the MIT study had been a wake-up call for the NSF. In the past, she said, the NSF had funded programs to support the careers of individual women sci­entists, but the MIT report persuaded its staff that “systemic” change was imperative.

Since 2001, the NSF has given approximately $107 million to 28 institutions of higher learn­ing to develop transformation projects. Hunter College, the site of Valian’s $3.9 million program, is one of them. The University of Michigan has received $3.9 million; the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao, $3.1 million; the of Rhode Island, $3.5 million; and Cornell, $3.3 million. What are these schools doing with the money?

Some of the funds are being used for relatively innocuous, possibly even beneficial, projects such as mentoring programs and conferences. But there are worrisome programs as well.

Michigan is experimenting with “interactive” theater as a means of raising faculty conscious­ness about gender bias. At special workshops, physicists and engineers watch skits where overbearing men ride roughshod over hapless but obviously intellectually superior female col­leagues. The director/writer, Jeffrey Steiger of the University of Michigan theater program, explains that the project is inspired by Brazilian director Augusto Boal’s book Theatre of the Oppressed (1974). Boal writes, “I believe that all the truly revolutionary theatrical groups should transfer to the people the means of production in the theater.” To this end, the Michigan fac­ulty members don’t just watch the plays, but are encouraged to interact with the cast and even join them on stage. Some audience members will find the experience “threatening and over­whelming,” and Steiger aims to provide them a “safe” context for expressing themselves....

More than just silliness however, are the expansion of quotas:

More mainstream schools are using their ADVANCE funds more conventionally—to ini­tiate quota programs. At Cornell, as of 2006, 27 of 51 science and engineering departments had fewer than 20 percent women, and some had no women at all. It is using its NSF grant for a program called ACCEL (Advancing Cornell’s Commitment to Excellence and Leadership), dedicated to filling science faculty with “more than” 30 percent women in time for the university’s sesquicentennial in 2015.

Science guys, gentleman-nerds that they are, have no clue how to deal with the feminsit onslaught. The results could be ominous.

The power and glory of science and engineer­ing is that they are, adamantly, evidence-based. But the evidence of gender bias in math and science is flimsy at best, and the evidence that women are relatively disinclined to pursue these fields at the highest levels is serious. When the bastions of science pay obsequious attention to the flimsy and turn a blind eye to the serious, it is hard to maintain the view that the science enterprise is somehow immune to the enthu­siasms that have corrupted other, supposedly “softer” academic fields.

Few academic scientists know anything about the equity crusade. Most have no idea of its power, its scope, and the threats that they may soon be facing. The business commu­nity and citizens at large are completely in the dark. This is a quiet revolution. Its weapons are government reports that are rarely seen; amendments to federal bills that almost no one reads; small, unnoticed, but dramatically con­sequential changes in the regulations regarding government grants; and congressional hearings attended mostly by true believers.

American scientific excellence is a precious national resource. It is the foundation of our economy and of the nation’s health and safety. Norman Augustine, retired CEO of Lockheed Martin, and Burton Richter, Nobel laureate in physics, once pointed out that MIT alone—its faculty, alumni, and staff—started more than 5,000 companies in the past 50 years. Will an academic science that is quota-driven, gender-balanced, cooperative rather than competitive, and less time-consuming produce anything like these results? So far, no one in Congress has even thought to ask.

Fixing Family Leave

The WSJ takes on a policy that is supposedly "family friendly" and beyond criticism, Family Leave.

The law allows employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year to take care of themselves or relatives with a "serious medical condition." They can also take off for maternity, adoption or newborn care. That seems simple enough, but the courts continue to strike down regulations that the Clinton Administration issued to implement the act, and the result has been legal and economic confusion.

A 2005 study by the Employment Policy Foundation found the law's cost to businesses in 2004 was a not-so-cheap $21 billion. This included $5 billion in lost productivity, $6 billion to continue health benefits for employees on leave, and $10 billion in replacement labor costs -- including wages to employees who had to work additional shifts or overtime to fill in for the missing.
With these costs in mind, Secretary Elaine Chao's Labor Department last month issued rules to clear up ambiguities in the law that were being exploited. Take something called "unscheduled intermittent leave." Under current rules, an employee with a medical condition can simply fail to show up for two days before claiming leave. And since leave can be taken a few minutes at a time, employees can show up late, leave early, or disappear for an hour without notice. This is an invitation for misuse, especially at time-sensitive businesses (say, emergency first response or assembly lines) and many employers have lost control of their workforce. Under the proposed changes, employees would generally have to call in to request leave before taking it, which seems fair.

Labor's proposals would also clear up loose requirements for certifying what qualifies as a "serious" medical condition. Under current rules, workers can get an open-ended doctor's certificate for a condition -- asthma, migraines, whatever -- that allows them leave at any point. Under the new rules, companies can require employees to renew that certificate every year....
Many Democrats on Capitol Hill want to expand the law even further, imposing it on businesses with fewer than 50 employees, and making companies provide paid days off. But that would only expand the costs, and make employers even more reluctant to hire in the first place -- as in Europe. Meantime, the new rules will help ensure that family leave is taken by employees who really need it, not by slackers gaming the system.

These are just the cost associated with the federal requirements. If I'm not mistaken, CA has an even more generous policy.
In addition to these costs, you have to wonder how many employers are silently reluctant to hire women of child-bearing age, for fear of triggering these requirements.
Family leave is an example of a policy inspired by the desire to equalize the playing field between men and women, the ultimate goal of Leftist-inspired feminism. Once the concept is on the table, the regulation expands to include all kinds of Nice Things that Workers Will Love, but which will be expensive for business.
I maintain that it would be better for all to allow companies and workers to negotiate their own forms of flexible benefits, including flexible leave policies, rather than having the federal government impose a One Size Fits All policy.