Sheryl Sandberg’s well-researched new book, Lean In, focuses on helping women who aspire to careers identify and overcome negative societal messages they have internalized over the years – old scripts that undermine women’s self-confidence and hold them back from achieving their full potential on the job.

It’s not every day that a high-achieving woman proclaims herself a feminist, so I have been surprised by the amount of venom heaped on Sandberg’s book. Some commentators complain that Sandberg places too little emphasis on the institutional barriers and prejudices that stand in the way of women’s struggle for equality and that she “blames the victim” when she points out things women do — or fail to do — that hold us back from exercising leadership roles. Others charge that Sandberg’s advice for overcoming these socially-ingrained habits is only relevant to women with jobs where individual initiative is rewarded and with partners who will step up to the plate when asked to share family responsibilities.

It’s true that Sandberg’s book is addressed primarily to highly educated business and professional women whose employers have a stake in retaining their skills and whose partners tend to be more egalitarian in outlook than many other men. For that reason, the ideal companion volume to Lean In is The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict: The Poor, the Professionals, and the Missing Middle, by Joan Williams and Heather Boushey, which lays out the range of problems facing less privileged women.

But Sandberg does not discount the external barriers facing women. Nor is she unconcerned with the well-being of less affluent women. Lean In is nothing like The Secret, the Oprah-endorsed 2006 best-seller that claimed failure to achieve wealth and happiness is caused by lack of positive thinking.

Read the rest here.

AS a historian, I’ve spent much of my career warning people about the dangers of nostalgia. But as a mother, watching my son graduate from medical school on Thursday, I have been awash in nostalgia all week.

In personal life, the warm glow of nostalgia amplifies good memories and minimizes bad ones about experiences and relationships, encouraging us to revisit and renew our ties with friends and family. It always involves a little harmless self-deception, like forgetting the pain of childbirth.

In society at large, however, nostalgia can distort our understanding of the world in dangerous ways, making us needlessly negative about our current situation.

Nineteenth-century Americans were extremely worried, the historian Susan Matt points out, about the incidence of nostalgia, which was the term used to describe homesickness in those days. According to physicians of the era, acute nostalgia led to “mental dejection,” “cerebral derangement” and sometimes even death. The only known cure was for the afflicted individual to go home, and if that wasn’t possible, the sufferer was seriously out of luck....

Read the rest here.

FIFTY years ago, Betty Friedan made a startling prediction in her controversial best seller, “The Feminine Mystique.” If American housewives would embark on lifelong careers, she claimed, they would be happier and healthier, their marriages would be more satisfying, and their children would thrive.

At the time, experts believed that a married woman should work only to kill time while searching for a husband or to fill time after the children had left home. A wife who pursued a career was considered a maladjusted woman who would damage her marriage and her kids.

Today, with almost two-thirds of married mothers employed and women the sole or main breadwinner in 40 percent of households, according to a Pew study released Wednesday, we can test these competing points of view.

Ms. Friedan wins on the question of whether working improves women’s well-being. At all income levels, stay-at-home mothers report more sadness, anger, and episodes of diagnosed depression than their employed counterparts....

Read the rest here.

Co-authored with Virginia Rutter of Framingham State University for the Council on Contemporary Families.

Fifty years ago this week, on June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, amending the earlier Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, to "prohibit discrimination on account of sex in the payment of wages by employers." So, how’s that going? The Council on Contemporary Families has convened an online symposium representing the latest thinking from pre-eminent work-family scholars, top female executive Sheryl Sandberg, and advocates for low-wage workers and unions. For an index of their papers, visit here. For a .pdf of the full set of papers, visit here.

The good news: Gains in pay and education, and opportunity

•Women’s pay in the United States has gone from 59 percent of men’s in 1962 to almost 80 percent today. Less than 14 percent of women were managers then; three times as many are now. Seven percent of wives out earned their spouses then; 28 percent do now. (See Cohen)

•Today, women in the U.S. make up nearly half of the paid workforce (See Milkman) -- something not true even in gender-egalitarian Scandinavian countries: Norway and Finland are at 44 percent. (See Seguino.)

•In education, U.S. women now earn nearly half of all law and medical degrees and a majority of BAs. The good news extends internationally, even to countries with very traditional gender mores: Over the past 35 years, the Arab region saw a remarkable rise in the ratio of female to male secondary enrollment rates, from 59 to 98 percent; in the same time, Africa rose from 54 to 85 percent. (See Seguino.)

•Women’s earnings influence life at home. Each thousand dollars of earnings for women is associated with a 14-minute reduction in daily housework -- and working wives’ proportion of housework has dropped significantly since the early 1960s. (See Cohen.)

The semi-good news

University of Maryland’s Philip Cohen reports that in 1962 wives did six times more housework as husbands. Today they do only1.7 times as much. You’d think that if this rate of change continued, before 2023 men and women would be doing exactly the same. But, according to Cohen, that is not how it has worked. There hasn’t been any appreciable change in shares of housework since the early 1990s, and he shows that the stall in housework equity is related to a stall in pay equity.

Looks like a victory, sounds like a victory, but is it really a victory?

The rise in women’s educational attainment has not been accompanied by a proportionate expansion of their political voice. Women hold 18.3 percent of seats in the U.S. Congress. University of Vermont’s Stephanie Seguino profiles representation around the world: “The global average in 2010 was 19 percent, ranging from a low regional average of 8 percent in Arab countries to a high of 26 percent in rich countries. (Sweden stands out amongst rich countries at 45 percent, surpassed only by Rwanda at 56 percent).”

Bias against women continues. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg reports, “Even in the U.S., a recent study found that when faculty evaluated identical lab manager applications, the one with a man’s name on it received a higher starting salary.”

And some of the relative gains for women do not represent actual improvement in their wages but declines in men’s wages. “In 1979, the median hourly wage for women was 62.7 percent of the median hourly wage for men; by 2012, it was 82.8 percent. However, a big chunk of that improvement – more than a quarter of it -- happened because of men’s wage losses, rather than women’s wage gains,” reports Heidi Shierholz from the Economic Policy Institute. Similarly, Seguino reports that in 96 of the 135 countries where gender employment gaps have narrowed since 1991, the convergence is partly accounted for by declines in men’s employment rates.

With women as with men, elites are taking a greater share of growth in income. In 2010, high earning women made more than 1.5 times as much as the typical man, reports Northwestern’s Leslie McCall, more than in previous decades. But in a new development earnings have been flat for the typical woman over the last decade. This means that women’s success continues to be concentrated at the top of the ladder. Women in the middle and the bottom have been losing relative ground along with men during this period of growing inequality. (Keep in mind, Catalyst reports, women’s gains at the very top have been modest: four percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women.)

The interaction of gender and race inequality produces an optical illusion about the progress of minority women. At first glance it may appear that there is more gender equality among minority men and women than among whites. Jane Farrell and Sarah Jane Glynn, from the Center for American Progress, report that Hispanic or Latina women make 88 percent of what Latinos do and African American women make 90 percent of what their male counterparts make, whereas white women earn just 81 percent of what white men make.

But when we add race to gender, these pay gaps become a veritable chasm. African American women earn 36 percent less than white men and Latinas a mere 45 percent. The gap between the earnings of Asian women and white men is smaller, just 12 percent, but Asian American women earn just 73 percent of what Asian American men make.

Trouble spots: What public sector unions have to do with women’s equality

CUNY’s Ruth Milkman reports how unions -- and women in them -- spearheaded the campaign for the Equal Pay Act, even though they made up only 18.3 percent of members. Today, women make up 45 percent of all union members, but unions have declined: In 1960 one in four workers was in a union; today, that is down to one in ten. The historic decline hit private sector unions, where male unions used to be strong, first and hardest, says Milkman. But “starting in 2011, a wave of state-level legislation weakening collective bargaining rights for public sector workers has directly targeted teachers and other unionized female-dominated occupations.”  This attack is a real problem since women union workers earn an average of more than $5 an hour more than nonunion ones and have more benefits and job security as well -- and nonunion workers in unionized fields benefit from this advantage.

More trouble spots: bias against caregivers

University of Massachusetts’ Joya Misra reports that penalties facing working mothers – but not working fathers -- are now the major source of gender pay differences. Stanford’s Shelley Correll explains: “When we compare the earnings of mothers and childless women who work in the same types of jobs, have the same level of education, have the same amount of experience and are equal on a host of other dimensions, mothers still earn five percent lower hourly wages per child.”

Mothers also face difficulties getting hired in the first place. On average, Correll’s studies show, when employers compare a childless woman and a mother with the same qualifications, the mother is rated as less committed to her job, despite the absence of any evidence supporting this perception, and this substantially reduces her chances of getting the job.

University of California, Hastings School of Law’s Joan Williams reports on a number of remarkable cases that highlight a legal strategy for addressing such bias: “One vitally important and fast-developing area of law is family responsibilities discrimination (FRD), which involves pregnant women or mothers, fathers who seek an active role in family care, or adults caring for elders or ill family members.” FRD suits grew 400 percent in the decade before 2008.

What else can we do? Change policy and attitudes

“Motherhood penalties vary substantially cross-nationally, suggesting that social policies can reduce or exacerbate them,” explains Joya Misra. For example, Misra explains, “The per-child wage penalty is 9.5 percent in countries with minimal public childcare for infants and toddlers, but shrinks to 4.3 percent in countries with more expansive public childcare programs.” Availability of leave matters -- too little is harmful to women’s opportunities, but so is too much. Misra reports, “Employment and wages also may suffer when mothers are offered very long, unpaid/poorly paid leaves, such as three-year ‘care leaves.’ Here mothers lose valuable job experience, and may find themselves in jobs with little prospect for career advancement.”

Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg -- who just recently started LeanIn.org--reminds us that women have internalized some of the social prejudices against them, starting with lower salary expectations, for instance, which provides employers with an excuse for offering them less. She argues that women must cooperate to improve their own self-confidence as well as to change the attitudes of others.

Click here for an index to CCF’s Equal Pay Act 50th Anniversary Symposium Briefs.

Click here for a .pdf of all CCF’s Equal Pay Act 50th Anniversary Symposium Briefs.

MY column last month about the dangers of nostalgia inspired many readers to write to me about their family memories of the 1950s and ’60s. Some shared poignant stories about the discrimination they encountered as blacks, women, gay men or lesbians. Others described how much easier it was for their working-class fathers to support a family back then.

Manufacturing workers have reason to regret the passing of an era. Between 1945 and 1978, their real earnings almost doubled — rising by 95 percent — but then, over the next 34 years, they actually fell by 2.3 percent. Supporters of women’s reproductive rights might feel nostalgic for an era when three former presidents, the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Democrats Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson, were happy to serve as honorary co-chairmen of a Planned Parenthood fund-raising committee.

But you can’t just stroll through the past, picking the things you like and skipping the ones you don’t, as if historical eras were menus, and you could pick one from column A and one from column B. They are, rather, interconnected social, economic and political systems. Whether someone would really want to return to a particular time depends on socioeconomic class, age, sex, race and health....

It is often forgotten that this was a bipartisan campaign. A Republican president, Richard Nixon, and legislators from both sides of the aisle expanded the War on Poverty in the early 1970s. Nixon extended the reach of the food stamp program, added an automatic cost-of-living increase to Social Security and instituted the Supplemental Security Income system to benefit disabled adults and children. He even proposed a guaranteed national income though that died in the Senate after passing in the House.

The truth is that the war on poverty produced some stunning successes, many of which are still felt today. And it likely could have produced more if politicians hadn't abandoned it in the 1980s, at the very moment that America's working families were facing heightened assaults on their living standards.

In 1963, despite more than 15 years of prior economic expansion, the child poverty rate was almost 25%. By the early 1970s it had been lowered to 15%. Between 1967 and 1975, poverty among elders was cut in half....

Now. The Council on Contemporary Families asked a dozen researchers to discuss what has changed in the past half century for each of the populations affected by the law – religious groups, racial and ethnic minorities, and women. On, February 4, the Council released an update on the changing religious landscape of America. On February 5, researchers described the rearrangements of racial and ethnic relations since 1964. And on Thursday, February 6, we reported on the progress of women since passage of the Civil Rights Act.

CCF’s Symposium on Civil Rights. Three themes emerge from the papers in this symposium. The first is that American men and women now live in much more diverse racial, religious, and occupational settings than 50 years ago. The second theme is the dramatic increase in cultural approval of “intermingling” between men and women of different races, ethnic origins, and religions. The third theme is that many groups continue to face serious disadvantages and inequalities, even as their more educated and privileged members have found a significant measure of acceptance into the upper echelons of economic and political life.

For more detailed information including figures and graphs that illustrate fifty years of changes in civil rights, we invite you to read the CCF Online Symposium on Civil Rights. Stephanie Coontz was convener and editor of this symposium. The authors along with Stephanie Coontz are available for further information.

Table of Contents

Religion and Relationships: Introduction

Fifty Years of Religious Change: 1964-2014

Interfaith Marriage & Romantic Unions in the U.S.

Racial Ethnic Realities: Introduction

Changes in America’s Racial and Ethnic Composition Since 1964

Are African Americans Living the Dream 50 Years After Passage of the Civil Rights Act?

Changes in Interracial Marriage

The State of Latino Children

Women’s Changing Social Status: Introduction

Civil Rights for Women, 1964-2014

Dilemmas Facing High-Achieving Career Women

Download Full Symposium

Download as PDF

Download as DOCX

Gone are the days when segregationists in Congress proudly declared they would resist "social equality" and racial "intermingling" to "the bitter end," and when the head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission flatly refused to enforce the act's provisions against gender discrimination.

In 1964, fewer than 5% of Americans approved of interracial marriage. Today, 77% do, according to a Gallup poll. In 1970, a majority of Americans still opposed efforts to end gender inequality. By 2010, 97% of Americans supported equal rights for women, according to the Pew Research Center.

The number of elected black officials in the country has soared, growing from 103 in 1964 to more than 10,000 today. Since 1990, there have been two African-American secretaries of state, and an African-American president is now in his second term....

Despite these huge improvements, the historical legacy of racial and gender discrimination has not gone away. Although one in 10 black households now earns more than $100,000 a year, the median net worth of black households is 14 times lower than that of white households. The black unemployment rate remains twice that of whites. Black poverty rates are almost three times as high. These ratios have hardly budged over the past 50 years....

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE AT CNN

Sure enough, the EEOC immediately outlawed race-segregated employment ads, but refused to do the same for gender-segregated ads. The head of the EEOC announced that the amendment banning sex discrimination was "a fluke," not to be taken seriously. The National Organization for Women and other groups spent the next 20 years struggling to get the anti-discrimination provisions of the act applied to women.

Not until 1973 did the Supreme Court rule that it was illegal to divide employment ads into "Help Wanted: Female" and "Help Wanted: Male." Only in 1974, a full decade after the Civil Rights Act was enacted, did Congress outlaw discrimination in housing and credit on the basis of sex. Until 1981, many states still designated the husband as the legal "head and master" of the household. And it took until 1984 for the court to compel previously all-male organizations such as the Rotary and Lions clubs to admit women. (That same year, the state of Mississippi finally ratified the 19th Amendment, granting women the vote.)...

READ MORE AT ARCAMAX

Since the 1970s, families have become more egalitarian in their internal relationships. But inequality among families has soared. Women have become more secure as their real wages and legal rights have increased. But families have become more insecure as their income and job instability have worsened.

Sometimes these trends counteract each other, with women’s work gains partly compensating for men’s losses in low-income families. Sometimes they reinforce each other, since the new trend for high-earning men to marry high-earning women increases the relative advantage of such couples over low-income or single-earner families. For all Americans, these trends have changed the rewards, risks and rules of marriage.

In 1977, two-thirds of Americans believed that the ideal family arrangement was for the husband to earn the money and the wife to stay home. By 2012, less than one-third still held this belief, according to a paper coming out this week by the Council on Contemporary Families.

Husbands have doubled the time they spend doing housework. One frequently cited study suggested that couples who shared housework equally had sex less frequently than couples who followed a more conventional division of labor. But a forthcoming study of more recent marriages finds that egalitarian couples report no difference in sexual frequency or satisfaction compared to couples who cling to traditional roles — the exception being the about 5 percent of marriages in which the husband performs most of the housework.

The researchers Christine R. Schwartz and Hongyun Han report[1] another striking indication of continuing progress toward marital equality. Through the 1980s, couples in which the wife had more education than her husband were more likely to divorce than couples in which the wife had less or equal education. But couples who have married since the early 1990s have no added divorce risk when the wife is better educated. In fact, the researchers found hints that such couples may now be less likely to divorce than those in which the husband has more education.

But while the sexes have become more equal, society as a whole has become far less, producing especially deep losses for young men. In 1969, by the time men reached age 25, three-quarters were earning wages that could support a family of four above the poverty line. By 2004, it took until age 30 for the same percentage of men to reach this income level. And while in 1969 only 10 percent of men ages 30 to 35 were still low earners, by 2004 almost a quarter of men in that age range remained low earners.... 

In 2003, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. At that time, 60% of Americans opposed the idea and the move provoked an immediate backlash. In the next year, 12 states passed constitutional amendments outlawing same-sex marriage. Eventually 30 states, including traditionally liberal California, passed such measures.

But since then there has been an astounding transformation of public opinion and legal thinking. Support for gay and lesbian civil rights, starting from a much lower base than support for racial and gender equality, has risen with stunning speed. Between 2003 and 2013, the proportion of Americans supporting same-sex marriage rose 21 points nationwide, from 32% to 53%, writes Robert P. Jones in The Atlantic.

Even in the socially conservative South, support more than doubled, increasing from 22% to 48%. By contrast, in 1978, 11 years after the Supreme Court struck down laws prohibiting interracial marriage, only 36% of Americans supported such unions.

This rapid and massive change in public attitudes toward same-sex marriage undercuts the argument that "judicial activism" has frustrated the will of the American people. But the legal tide has certainly turned as well. In the past year and a half, 42 separate court rulings have upheld marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

Because of this month's Supreme Court decision not to hear appeals of such rulings, 24 states and the District of Columbia now permit same-sex marriage. Today more than 50% of Americans live in places where it is legal for gays and lesbians to wed. That will soon rise to 60%, because the Supreme Court's actions affect six other states in the judicial circuits overseen by the same appellate courts.

Many factors have contributed to these changes in public and legal opinion. One is the increased visibility of gays and lesbians across the culture, as more come out of the closet. Three-quarters of Americans now say they have a relative, friend or co-worker who is gay and millions have become used to sympathetic gay and lesbian characters on television and to openly gay talk-show hosts and entertainers. It is harder to deny rights to people who are no longer faceless "others."...

Click here to read the rest of my column.