Instead of blaming men for their own failures, or giving feminists undeserved credit, more and more women recognize that they control their own careers.
Contrary to the contentious claims of frenzied feminists, women are "well represented in the professions, and they continue to enter fields of study that were previously dominated by men. Women are starting their own businesses in record numbers and winning elective offices throughout the country," say Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the American Enterprise Institute and Christine Stolba of Emory University. "Laws barring discrimination against women are on the books and enforced. All those gains clearly belie the image of women as victims struggling against discrimination in the workplace."
In a new report called Women's Figures, The Economic Progress of Women in America, published by the Independent Women's Forum, the two analysts argue that the image of women as victims "contradicts the obvious statistical gains American women have made in this century. It is also not an image with which most women identify," they contend. "The countless women who have started their own businesses, won elective office, and made it to the top of their professions are not victims. They are evidence of just how far American women have come and how far they are going."
There are different kinds of success, of course, and every woman has her own definition of it. "The personal choices women have made are perhaps the most important and least appreciated factor in women's economic progress over the years," the Independent Women's Forum report observes. "Decisions to enter previously male-dominated fields of education and employment, to marry and bear children later in life, to join the work force, and to leave the work force to raise children have all had an enormous effect on whether women can achieve total parity with men. Some of those choices, such as leaving the work force for a time to raise children, can have a negative effect on women's total lifetime earnings; others, such as entering previously all-male fields, have led to remarkable gains for women in the work force."
The report maintains that the portrayal of women as victims of discrimination overlooks "the possibility that women do not want to reach the top of the corporate ladder. The mass media uncritically accept as the standard of equality the requirement that women's achievements be statistically identical to men's achievements in all areas." That standard, the report argues, "suggests that something is wrong if the highest salaries are not earned. That is insulting to all workers who choose flexibility, a friendly workplace environment, and other nonmonetary factors in the course of their careers."
Authors Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba conclude that "many groups have an investment in maintaining myths such as the wage gap and the glass ceiling." They argue that such myths "are harmful to women and do little to accurately describe the complex factors that determine a woman's place in the labor market."
