The Feminist Dilemma: When Success is Not Enough

Over the past several decades, American women have gradually overcome the legal and cultural barriers to equal opportunity. Women now receive well over half of all B.A.s and M.A.s, and working women have become the rule rather than the exception. Women are becoming physicians, lawyers, CEOs, and scientists and are founding their own businesses in record numbers.In The Feminist Dilemma: Why Success Isn't Good Enough, Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba argue that even though women's opportunities are now equal, women's and men's choices are not always the same. Ironically, the achievement of women's equality poses a serious dilemma for contemporary feminists, who do not want to acknowledge that some of women's choices, such as studying literature rather than math, or leaving the workforce to raise children, or even working part-time, lead to fewer women in top jobs. The flaw in contemporary feminist thinking, Furchtgott-Roth and Stolba contend, is its insistence that anything less than statistical parity with men in any field -- or even on college sports teams -- is proof of discrimination against women.The Feminist Dilemma describes a wayward feminist movement that does not want to acknowledge women's real accomplishments because their existence marks the end of the movement's reason for being. Rather than celebrate victory in their pursuit of women's equality, today's feminists feign defeat. They adopt the rhetoric of victimization, suggesting that women can never succeed on their own, and they crusade for preferential programs for women in education and the workplace. Politicians and businesses fear becoming feminist targets and so lack the courage to challenge theirclaims.The Feminist Dilemma explains how the contemporary feminists' ideological campaign in the courts and in Congress is undermining the principles of our economic system -- and how these efforts actually do not help women'