Private: What Women Want

by Deborah L. Rhode, the Director of the Center on the Legal Profession, the  E.W. McFarland Professor of Law,  and the Director of the Program on Social Entrepreneurship at Stanford University 

In a New Yorker cartoon, a woman frostily informs her obviously skeptical husband, “Yes, Harold, I do speak for all women.” This is not a claim any contemporary feminist will readily make. Women do not speak with one voice on women’s issues. But to build a powerful political movement, we have to be prepared to generalize about the interests of women as a group. What would most women want if they were fully informed and free to choose, and the goal was true equality between the sexes? 

A central problem in securing such gender equality is the “no problem” problem: the lack of consensus that there still is a serious problem, or one that they have any capacity or responsibility to address. Yet on virtually every major dimension of social status, financial well-being, and physical safety, women still fare worse than men. Sexual violence remains common, and reproductive rights are by no means secure. Women assume disproportionate burdens in the home and pay a price in the world outside it.  But these issues are not cultural priorities. What Women Want (Oxford University Press, 2014), argues that this has to change and sets forth a compelling agenda for the women’s movement.

What are the issues that should motivate women to seek change? Employment is an area ripe for reform.  The labor force remains gender-segregated and gender-stratified, with women still overrepresented at the bottom and underrepresented at the top. Full-time female workers’ annual earnings are 77 percent of men’s. In management, women constitute a third of MBA graduates, but less than 4 percent of Fortune 1000 CEOs and 14 percent of corporate officers. At current rates of change, it would take over two and a half centuries to achieve parity in the executive suite. To address these inequalities, women need legislation and worplace initatitves that secure  equal pay for comparable work, paid parental leaves,  flexible work structures, and affordable quality childcare.

Women also need greater protection of reproductive rights. About a quarter of family planning clinics report incidents of severe violence annually. Over 85 percent of counties have no abortion provider, and a third to a fifth of poor women cannot obtain abortions that they desire. Anti- abortion activists have also succeeded in passing a broad array of restrictive statutes designed to make abortion more costly and less accessible. These statutes seek to force clinic closures by imposing expensive requirements, such as demanding that  clinic facilities meet similar building standards as hospitals. Almost three quarters of states require women seeking abortions to wait a specified period of time between when they receive counseling and when they obtain the procedure, which imposes substantial barriers on women who do not live close to an abortion provider.

Although women differ on the morality of abortion, most can unite around the goal of making them safe and unnecessary. More resources should be targeted at ensuring that women, particularly poor and adolescent women, have adequate access to family planning information and assistance. 

More resources also need to go to supporting the one in seven women who are poor. Only about a quarter of those living in poverty are receiving welfare, and benefits are 50 percent below the poverty line. The human costs are substantial. Millions of families suffer from shortages in food and housing, and the inadequate safety net keeps many women trapped in violent relationships. Ronald Reagan once famously quipped that “we fought a war on poverty and poverty won.” The battle lines are still drawn and women cannot settle for defeat.

Rape and domestic violence also call for more effective enforcement strategies. An estimated quarter of women  have experienced domestic violence and sixteen to eighteen have experienced an attempted or completed rape.  The United States  has the highest rate of spousal homicide and the second highest rate of  reported rape in the developed world. Although a common response to domestic abuse is  “Why doesn’t she just leave?,” the answer too often is that she has nowhere safe to go. Shelters for victims come nowhere close to meeting the need; some turn away as many as 5000 requests a year.  We urgently need better strategies for prevention and victim support.   

Part of the way to move this agenda forward is to put more women in leadership positions. In elective office,  women account for just 18 percent of Congress, 24 percent of state legislatures, and 10 percent of governors.  The United States ranks 78th in the world for women’s representation in political office, below Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia. Women’s underrepresentation is especially troubling because women are disproportionately likely to make women’s issues a priority. Over a century ago, newspaper editor  William Allen White advised women to “raise more hell and fewer dahlias.” It remains good advice. 

Reproductive Rights, Women's rights