Beka’s Reviews > Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women > Status Update

"In the 1970s, many states passed new 'no-fault' divorce laws that made the divorce process easier.

In the 1980s, these 'feminist-inspired' laws came under attack: the New Right painted them as schemes to undermine the family, + the media/popular writers portrayed them as inadvertent betrayals of women + children, 'throwing middle-class women into impoverished states'."

"What is going to happen to marriage + childbearing in a society where women really have equality? The more economically independent women are, the less attractive marriage becomes." -Princeton demographer Charlie's Westoff, 1986

Hardest eyeroll over here. Shit. I wonder why. To begin with...men need to be raised to be efficient co-partners in parenting + household care, that's what. Sheesh.

"In the 1980s, the Public Health Ssrvice censored information on the beneficial health effects of abortion + demoted + fires federal scientists whose findings conflicted with the administration's so-called pro-family policy."

Wait...you mean that something giving women the ability for choice and waiting and prioritizing how and when to procreate.... was hidden and shut down? Color me surprised. #patriarchy

"In the Reagan administration, U.S. census bureau demographers found themselves under increasing pressure to generate data for the government's war again women's independence, to produce statistics 'proving' the rising threat of infertility, the physical + psychic risks lurking in abortion, the dark side of single parenthood, the ill effects of daycare."

"As the backlash consensus solidified, statistics on women stopped functioning as social barometers. The data instead became society's checkpoints, positioned at key intervals in the life course of women, dispatching advisories on the perils of straying from the appointed path."

"To blame feminism for women's 'lesser life' is to miss entirely the point of feminism, which is to win women a wider range of experience."

"Just when women were starting to mobilize against battering + sexual assaults, the federal government stalled funding for battered-women's programs, defeated bills to fund shelters, + shut down its Office of Domestic Violence -- only 2 years after opening it in 1979."

"While the homicide rate generally declined, sex-related murders rose 160% between 1976 + 1984. These murders weren't simply the random, impersonal byproduct of a violent society; at least 1/3 of the women were killed by their husband's or boyfriends just after declaring their independence in the most intimate manner -- by filing for divorce or leaving home."

"From 'the man shortage' to 'the infertility epidemic' to 'female burnout' to 'toxic daycare,' these so-called female crises have had their origins not in the actual origins of women's lives but rather in a closed system that starts + ends in the media, popular culture, and advertising -- an endless feedback loop that perpetuates its own false images of womanhood."

"In poll after poll in the decade, overwhelming majorities of women said they needed equal pay + equal job opportunities, an Equal Rights Amendment, the right to an abortion without government interference, a federal law guaranteeing maternity leave, decent childcare services. They have none of these. So how exactly have we 'won' the war for women's rights?"