The War Against Feminism

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But the main reason for the book's success is the resonance of the questions Faludi raises. Were all the movies and television shows and advertisements that featured blissful mothers and frazzled career women intended, either consciously or subconsciously, to sow doubts in women's minds about their real goals? Or, as her critics counter, did the mass media merely pick up on concerns that already existed and touch a nerve that had been rubbed raw by a generation of out-of-touch feminist leaders?

Behind the Backlash

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is," wrote Rebecca West in 1913. "I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute." Decades later, for millions of American women the label remains slippery. During the feminist revolution of the 1970s, it was understood as an effort to secure for women the economic, political and social rights and protections that men have always enjoyed. It was about opening doors, not shoving women through them.

But in the 1980s that understanding of the term seemed to disappear. In the decade's dismissive shorthand, feminism came to mean denigrating motherhood, pursuing selfish goals and wearing a suit. Whereas feminism was hip and fashionable in the '70s, antifeminism became socially acceptable in the '80s. First the fundamentalist right, then the White House -- and ultimately Hollywood, television and many journalists -- held feminism responsible for "every woe besetting women," Faludi writes, "from mental depression to meager savings accounts, from teenage suicides to eating disorders to bad complexions."

The "family values" agenda was the rhetorical basis on which Reagan and Bush and scores of other Republicans swept into office, thanks to the votes of millions of women as well as men. Feminism, meanwhile, lost many of its government sponsors. Support for the Equal Rights Amendment reached 60% in 1981, only to be defeated the following year; the number of women seeking out battered-women's shelters soared, but federal funding shrank and the Office of Domestic Violence was shut down. Complaints of sexual harassment climbed 70% between 1981 and 1989, but a congressional study found that caseworkers were rarely bothering to investigate before dismissing the charges.

But it was not simply this overt partisan assault that created the backlash. According to Faludi, women came to condemn the movement because they heard from messengers they trusted that it was responsible for their pain. When the source of attack claims neutrality, offers statistics, cites an expert, the message carries even more weight.

Her chronicle of the backlash began in 1986, after major magazines and newspapers trumpeted stories on an unpublished Harvard-Yale marriage study. The researchers claimed that a college-educated woman of 30 had only a 20% chance of finding a husband; by age 35 it was 5%, by 40 she was "more likely to be killed by a terrorist" than make it to the altar, in Newsweek's memorable analogy. Reading the article on an airplane on the way to a friend's wedding, Faludi recalls, "I hadn't been worrying about marriage, but suddenly I felt glum and grouchy."