April 1998: Vol. 11, Number 4
- The malebashing myth
- Report on tenure
- He said, she said: a dialogue
- Sexual Assault Awareness Month
- Women in science
- Majority Report Index
- Index sources
- Take note...
World without men?: The malebashing myth
It's a world in which popular culture is in the thrall of academic discourse; in which Catharine MacKinnon beats out Betty Crocker in a battle for the hearts and minds of American womanhood; in which white men are quickly disappearing into the margins; in which make-up companies and Victoria's Secret outlets across the nation are going under; in which teenaged boys are so cowed by Gloria Steinem, grown men so exhausted by housekeeping, that nobody's having sex anymore, and the continuation of the species is in question. This is what America looks like, if you listen to those who cry "Malebashing!"
Accusations of malebashing generally fall into two categories: the first is the recreational accusation, the sort of thing that crops up all over the Internet and is presumably reiterated over after-work beers. The general tenor of these accusations is that the American white male is an endangered species, and that American women are too demanding, too critical, and are recognized around the world (European aristocrats are especially likely to be invoked as authorities here) as sexually undesirable. These kinds of claims are very often accompanied by scurrilous abuse of women in general that certainly cancels out whatever moral weight the accusations might carry. I mean, you might have my sympathy as far as deploring the web site for a group called S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men). But when you follow your complaint with a list of 50 reasons why every woman needs to be raped, you've lost me.
The second sort of accusation is more insidious; that is, the professional accusation, in which the accuser claims some special credential, sociological or legal expertise, for example, or a feminist pedigree. The problem with this kind of allegation of malebashing is that it is harder to dismiss. The issues raised may well be legitimate areas of disagreement, about the degree to which the law should regulate what we used to think of as private matters, about the settlement of custody disputes, or other contentious questions. But the claim of malebashing in these contexts raises a smokescreen, recasting a complicated debate as a sex war.
It is a genuine puzzle why the popular equation of feminism with malebashing has proven so potent. Young women in particular agree in huge majorities with pollster after pollster that yes, they think that women are equal to men, and yes, they think that women should have control of their bodies, and yes, they think that the classroom and workplace should be free from sexual harassment, but no, of course they're not feminists. After all, they shave their legs and they don't hate men.
The usual explanations--that the national women's movement is out of touch with women's actual lives, and that radicals such as Andrea Dworkin, with her assertion that every act of intercourse is an act of rape, have repelled sensible women from an extremist movement--don't really convince. In the first place, media coverage of the "national women's movement" is pretty much limited to trotting out a representative figure to interview about some mess already on the carpet. So we hear a lot about what feminists think about Clarence Thomas and Paula Jones (prior public preoccupations), but relatively little about what feminists think should be on our national agenda and isn't. Once a feminist cause becomes a national one, on the other hand, it is dissociated from feminism. Now that sexual harassment is widely recognized and talked about as an evil, only advocates of the most extreme policies are described as feminists.
With regard to the repellency of radical voices among feminists, women are much more likely to have heard the hundreds of critics condemning them than they are to have heard and been put off by the radicals themselves. Andrea Dworkin can hardly be said to have the ear of the American public. Rush Limbaugh's coinage "femi-nazis" is surely more widely known than the name of Catharine MacKinnon. The charges of malebashing are repeated far more often than the statements on which the charges are based, creating the perception of a ubiquitous phenomenon, where none such exists.
Those loudest in denunciation of malebashing often argue that it is a recent development. Feminism, they say, was well and good, up to some point already reached, but there it took a wrong turn. Certainly women ought to have the right to vote, and no doubt equal pay for equal work is a worthy goal, and so on. But the feminist response to date rape and sexual harassment is tantamount to mass emasculation. This is the line taken by Camille Paglia, for example, and Christina Hoff Sommers, in her book Who Stole Feminism?, and Warren Farrell, author of The Myth of Male Power. These are kiss-and-tell polemics; readers are supposed to give special weight to the arguments because their authors claim to have been—in the past, mind you—sleeping with the enemy. We are feminists, they say, but not the no-account, man-hating kind who are never satisfied with what they've got. We know when enough is as good as a feast.
It's helpful in assessing the merits of such arguments to realize that the outcry against malebashing is not new. It does not arise out of new and especially egregious developments in feminism. In the early 20th century, when the cause célèbre of feminism was the right to vote, a chorus of male critics decried the "sex-antagonism" (read malebashing) of the suffragists. Only man-haters, they judged, would disrupt what male defenders of our own time like to call the "dance of the genders," once dubbed "the natural order of things," by extending the franchise to women. True, conceded the reasonable among them, it was a good thing for women to be educated and active, but suffrage was going too far. Enough is as good as a feast.
In the same way, Paglia and Farrell merely echo the early anti-feminists when they argue that feminists fail to understand that women have always been all-powerful in the sexual realm and that our culture has been dangerously feminized. In fact, anxiety about "petticoat government" and "apron strings" has been around a long time, and belief in their omnipotence has never been incompatible with gross inequity.
All of this begs the question, of course, of what malebashing actually is. The accusations may be overblown, but surely there is no smoke without fire. Don't some feminists go too far? Aren't there some kinds of blanket condemnations of men that really do deserve to be dismissed without a hearing?
Well, yes.
IU law professors Susan Williams and David Williams address precisely this question in the field of feminist jurisprudence in their article "A Feminist Theory of Malebashing," which appeared in the Michigan Journal of Gender and Law in 1996. Their conclusions, while grounded in the context of academic discourse, carry over into other less rarefied contexts as well, offering a reasonable boundary to the current free-for-all of accusation.
The main thrust of their argument is that criticism and negative characterizations of men can be wrong without being malebashing. In other words, a claim that men are more violent than women, for example, should not be dismissed a priori because it casts men in general in an unfavorable light. On the other hand, a claim that every man is violent and always will be can fairly be characterized as malebashing.
The Williamses identify two categories of claims that they would set aside as illegitimate: Their "men-as-beasts" category includes charges against men that are based on the idea that men are incapable of changing their innately base natures, that they have no personal agency at all. The second category, of "universal conspiracy theory" claims, presumes that men have total agency, and that every man has chosen to create or perpetuate a system that oppresses women.
The Williamses argue that both these kinds of charges against men oppose two of the basic tenets of feminism, that gender roles are to some degree socially constructed, not consciously chosen, and that individuals are capable of transcending those roles. Claims that deny men either the will or the power to achieve justice automatically preclude the possibility of an answer. You can't have a dialogue with a beast or a villain. And the hopes and goals of feminists are closely bound up in the possibility of dialogue. Indiscriminate accusations of malebashing, as surely as actual malebashing and far more frequently, get in the way of an open exchange of ideas.
It's been said before, but it bears repeating: Feminists don't hate men. We want the best for them. Just ask our dads, our sons, our husbands, our brothers, and our friends.
—Leora Baude
Report on tenure: IU examines 'revolving door' cycle
Overall, female faculty are as likely as male faculty at IU Bloomington to receive tenure. In the period from 1981 to 1988, 58% of the 145 women assuming tenure-track appointments received tenure compared to 56% of the 306 men. Forty-one percent of women and 44% of men from these cohorts had left IU and 1% of women (n=2) were still on track towards tenure.
Examination of more recent cohorts of faculty suggests that despite considerable parity between men and women in terms of attainment of tenure, at least some women have a somewhat slower career trajectory than their male colleagues. Obviously, the bulk of the faculty in the 1989 to 1996 cohorts are still on track towards tenure. Nonetheless, faculty who had attained tenure were more likely to be male: 13% of 305 men compared to 9% of 164 women. Women were slightly more likely than their male counterparts to have left the university (21% of women compared to 19% of men). There is some suggestion that more recent cohorts of women are not as likely to leave in the first couple years of their appointment, but instead depart closer to the tenure review period. More striking than attrition patterns, however, is the discrepancy in the proportion of male and female faculty still "on-track" in years 7 and 8. Only 9% of male faculty from the 1989 cohort were still on track in 1997, while 20% of female faculty were. Similarly, 48% of male faculty from the 1990 cohort were still on track in 1997, and 21% of female faculty. (Remember that tenure review is completed by the end of year 6 but is not effective until the end of year 7 following AAUP guidelines.)
Women thus appear to be as successful in obtaining tenure as men but, in a number of cases, take longer to achieve the same end. The data here are simply descriptive and cannot provide an explanation for the gender differences found. Childbearing is an obvious possibility, but given empirical data indicating that women often receive less mentoring as graduate students than men do and less sponsorship as job applicants and junior faculty, it may be worthwhile to explore differences in career trajectories more fully. It is heartening that women are currently less likely to leave in the first two years, suggesting we do not have the kind of "revolving door" for female faculty that national research documented in the 1980's and early 1990's. It is also positive that we are not seeing differential rates of attainment for men and women. If we can now understand women's career patterns more fully, we may be able to further improve on what appears to be a generally good environment for female faculty on our campus.
—Deborah Olsen,
Assistant Vice Chancellor for
Academic Affairs and Director of Institutional Research
He said, she said: A dialogue (in stereotype)
[Special to the Web! Since this issue of the Majority Report appeared in print, several readers have kindly informed us that the source for this dialogue is Dave Barry's Guide to Guys. We hasten to add that neither the omission of Barry's name nor the minor editorial changes we made in our ignorance of the author's identity was in any way intended to be a slur on guys.]
Editor's note: The obstacles to communication between men and women have been extensively canvassed in recent years, from Deborah Tannen's study, You Just Don't Understand, to the Virginia Slims "It's a woman thing" ad campaign. Far be it from us to suggest that all of these glib characterizations constitute the last word in understanding gender roles. But there's enough truth in the stereotypes to make most of us pause in recognition. So with the caveat that any assumptions you make about what someone else is thinking may lead you astray, we reprint the following dialogue, which has been making the Internet rounds and was recently heard on NPR's Car Talk, as a case study in miscommunication.
A guy named Roger is driving his girlfriend, Gloria, home from dinner one night, when Gloria says, "Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?" There is silence in the car. To Gloria, it seems like a very loud silence.
Gloria (thinking): Geez, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of.
Roger (thinking): Gosh. Six months.
Gloria (thinking): But, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are...I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?
Roger (thinking): So that means it was...let's see...February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means...lemme check the odometer...Whoa, I am way overdue for an oil change here.
Gloria (thinking): He's upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed, even before I sensed it, that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.
Roger (thinking): And I'm gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those morons say, it's still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It's 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600!
Gloria (thinking): He's angry. And I don't blame him. I'd be angry too. God, I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.
Roger (thinking): They'll probably say it's only a 90-day warranty. That's exactly what they're gonna say, the scumballs.
Gloria (thinking): Maybe I'm just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I truly do care about, a person who is in pain because of my self-centered schoolgirl romantic fantasy.
Roger (thinking): Warranty? They want a warranty? I'll give them a warranty. I'll take their warranty and stick it right up their...
Gloria (aloud): Roger?
Roger (startled): What?
Gloria (her eyes filling with tears): Please don't torture yourself like this. Maybe I should never have...Oh God, I feel so...
Roger: What?
Gloria (sobbing): I'm such a fool. I mean, I know there's no knight. I really know that. It's silly. There's no knight, and there's no horse.
Roger: There's no horse?
Gloria: You think I'm a fool, don't you?
Roger (relieved finally to know the right answer): No.
Gloria: It's just that...It's that I...I need some time.
Roger (after a 15-second pause during which he is thinking as fast as he can, trying to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.): Yes.
Gloria (deeply moved, touching his hand): Oh, Roger, do you really feel that way?
Roger: What way?
Gloria: That way about time.
Roger: Oh. Yes.
Gloria (gazing deeply into Roger's eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.): Thank you, Roger.
Roger: Thank you.
Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed and cries until dawn. Roger goes back to his place, opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a tennis match between two Czechoslovakians he never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he could ever understand what. He figures it's better if he doesn't think about it.
The next day Gloria calls all her best friends and talks about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail they analyze everything she said and everything he said, considering every possible ramification. They continue to discuss this subject off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions.
Meanwhile, Roger, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Gloria's, pauses just before serving, frowns, and says, "Norm, did Gloria ever own a horse?"
April marks Sexual Assault Awareness Month
The cartoons above are taken from a four-part series that ran on selected Indiana University buses during the month preceding spring break. The bus ads were part of a campaign by SAFE (Safety Awareness Facilitators and Educators) to increase awareness and knowledge of sexual assault. SAFE, which is directed by Office for Women's Affairs staffer Samantha Brauner, runs a year-long education program through which undergraduate and graduate men and women volunteers educate others about rape prevention and campus safety.
Because 85% of all rapes are committed by someone the victim knows, acquaintance rape is the focus of SAFE programming. "He Said...She Said" is presented by a pair of volunteers, generally a man and a woman, who lead a discussion based on an acquaintance-rape scenario. What Men Need to Know about Rape is designed for all-male groups. Both programs address the role of alcohol in sexual interactions and how gender affects communication. The focus of both programs is on preventing sexual assault.
To schedule a SAFE program or become a SAFE volunteer, please contact the Coordinator of Safety Programming in the Office for Women's Affairs at 855-3849 or e-mail safe@indiana.edu.
For more information about sexual assault, visit the following Internet sites:
National Coalition Against Sexual Assault
www.achiever.com.freehmpg/ncas/
U.S. Department of Justice Report on Rohypnol
www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/rohypnol/rohypnol.htm
Women in Science: New trends call for closer look at careers in science
There is a nationwide trend of more women pursuing careers in industry. This changing workforce requires a look at other options for women in the sciences besides the traditional academic career path. During the past two decades, research-intensive corporations in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, aerospace, semiconductor, computer, and software industries have been growing at double the rate of the economy as a whole. Increasingly, science and technology will be the engine of economic growth and global competitiveness. Women must be an integral and contributing part of maintaining this trajectory of economic growth.
The computer and software industries are providing ways to connect, share information and ideas, and create new technologies. Women tend to view computers as tools rather than toys, and many women scientists are finding ways to maximize computer technology's instrumental abilities. Top women with training in the sciences currently working in information technology include Carol Bartz, CEO and chair of Autodesk (computer science); Linda Sanford, general manager for the S/390 division of IBM (mathematics); Ann Winblad, partner in Hummer Winblad Ventures (mathematics and economics); Denise Gilbert, executive vice president and CFO of Incyte Pharmaceuticals (biology); Mary Coleman, CEO of Aurum Software (electrical engineering and computer science); Deborah Triant, CEO of Check Point (mathematics); Pamela Lopker, president of QAD (mathematics); and Judy Estrin, president and CEO of Precept Software (mathematics, computer science, electrical and computer engineering). One of the attractions of a career in industrial computer science is that it can allow for a more flexible time clock, which can assist those women who need to balance career and family.
Biotechnology, a field which uses information technology to manipulate genes for creating new products, is also a place where women scientists can be found. With more than 50 new biotech drugs to be approved by the FDA within the next two years, biotechnology is booming, and has found, according to biotech analyst Vivian Lee, "a ready supply of talented female biologists...eager to escape the limited prospects offered by universities." The fall 1997 Joan Wood Lecture (sponsored by the IU Biology Department Task Force on Women) featured biology alumna Jennifer Kopczynski, now a senior research scientist and group leader for Exelixis Pharmaceuticals Inc. During her presentation, "Biotechnology: Model Organism Genetics and Human Disease," she stressed the team-oriented approach to scientific research and the supportive environment of her company. Collaboration and cooperation, the ways women traditionally prefer to work, can advance scientific understanding. Kopczynski reminded the predominately academic audience to consider other options for scientists besides academic science.
Dave Jensen, managing director of Search Masters International, a job placement firm specializing in biotechnology, has identified 15 job market trends in corporate biotech employment. Basic and applied science biotech firms will aid in developing treatments for known illnesses and will also help to combat new and emerging diseases. Development positions go beyond basic science and support implementation in the clinic. Hot jobs in this category are: bioanalytical chemistry, formulations and drug delivery, clinical research, and bioprocess engineering. Another strong career choice is bio-manufacturing operations. These jobs take products into the scaleup or manufacturing mode and include the following types of jobs: plant engineering, validation and regulatory compliance, regulatory affairs, and manufacturing management. Technical professionals with an interest in business are always in demand and can find employment of their choice in this "hidden" job market: sales and marketing, business development and licensing, and intellectual property. Biotechnology is an unusual job market, and according to Roger Shamel, industry analyst, the industry will grow rapidly to $35 billion in sales by the year 2004 (current sales are $6.7 billion). This represents the creation of a lot of new jobs and probably more than a few new technologies.
Information technology and biotechnology are just two among many areas of non-academic science careers. Participation of women in science and technology-based professions is a bottom line and global competitiveness issue that goes beyond the notion of social justice and the ideal of equal opportunity, as important as these issues are. Incentives must be provided to the best and the brightest so that they will pursue science and technology careers. The price of failure will be loss of opportunities for the success of women and the eroding of American leadership in creating innovations in the global marketplace.
—Lynn K. Wilson
Women in Science Project
Percent of households in China that have a telephone: 25
Percent that have a TV: 89
Percent of total price of a $200 TV that is devoted to labor costs: 5
Number of days a Georgia student was suspended from high school for wearing a Pepsi t-shirt on "Coke Day": 1
Number of mules arrested by Greek police last month for drug smuggling: 12
Chances that an American adult has not had sex in the last year: 1 in 5
Chances that an American adult has had sex three or more times in the last week: 1 in 20
Percent of Fortune 500 companies that have a woman on their boards: 84
Percent that have more than one woman: 36
Percent of stalking victims whose stalking episode ended through police intervention: 15
Percent whose episode ended when they moved out of town: 20
Number of calls received by Middle Way House last year related to stalking: 36
Total number of people sheltered at Middle Way last year: 289
Chance than an American would rather be mugged than audited: 1 in 2
Chance than an American man believes that oral sex does not constitute adultery: 1 in 8
Chance than an American woman believes this: 1 in 9
Amount of money America's wealthiest citizens say they would spend to buy a guaranteed spot in heaven: $640,000
Ratio of the duration of the sinking of the Titanic to the duration of James Cameron's film about the incident: 4:5
Area, in square feet, of IUB buildings devoted to academic or administrative use: 4,401,279
Area, in square feet, of academic/administrative buildings deemed in need of remodeling: 3,082,239
Earliest use of the word "feminist" in English: 1894
Percent of male corporate executives who find their jobs through "networking": 63
Percent of female executives who do: 41
Number of roses sold last Valentine's Day: 146,000,000
Percent of American men under the age of 50 who own a pair of Dockers khakis: 72
Odds that an IU alumnus has a degree from the School of Business: 1 in 6
Average number of questions fielded weekly by IUB's reference librarians: 12,500
Percent of American men who believe in aliens: 54
Percent of American women who do: 33
Number of times the late Tammy Wynette, who penned the hit song "Stand By Your Man," was married: 5
April Index Sources: 1, 2, 17, 22, 23, 27, 28 USA Today Snapshot (www.usatoday.com/snapshot/news/nsnap069.htm); 3 IDS 1/27/98; 4 Chicago Tribune 3/25/98; 5 Reuters 3/4/98; 6-9 American Demographics February 1998; 10,11 American Demographics March 1998; 12, 13 Middle Way House January 1998 newsletter; 14-16 Harper's April 1998; 18, 24 Harper's March 1998; 19, 20 1997-98 IU Fact Book; 21Oxford English Dictionary; 25, 26 IU Update February 1998; 29 Herald-Times 4/10/98.
A Call for Mentors: The Women Partners Program provides an important mentoring opportunity for women students in their junior year. The program allows women to explore career options, network with women professionals, and gain an inside understanding of the challenges and rewards of being a working woman.
The Women Partners Program is currently seeking women to serve as mentors. The ideal mentor for the Women Partners Program is a professional woman on campus or in the Bloomington community who would like to share time, insight, and advice with a student. The program does not generally match students with teaching faculty, as we hope there is ample opportunity for students to learn from these women in the classroom.
If you would like additional information or an application to become a mentor in the Women Partners Program, please call the Office for Women's Affairs at 855-3849 or e-mail wpp@indiana.edu.
Watch This Space: Julia Lamber is stepping down this summer as dean for women's affairs, a position she has held since 1993. She will also step down as the university's interim affirmative action officer in order to return to teaching full time in the School of Law.
A search committee appointed by Bloomington Chancellor Kenneth R.R. Gros Louis is currently looking for a successor, who will assume her new duties this summer.
Majority Report
Dean for Women's Affairs...................Julia Lamber Editor.......................................................Leora Baude
Assistant.................................................Karen Frane
The Majority Report takes its name from the composition of IU's student body, which is 53.2% female.
April 30, 1998
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