Because of the superstition that ruthlessly aggressive competition is the primary and necessary factor for success, the businessman sees himself in constant warfare for dominance of the worker. Workers are set one against another as a routine policy, with labor unions a main target. Racism and sexism are deliberate tactics in the war against organization. The fundamental strategy is to dominate the worker at all costs.
It is a fact that men's wages have fallen as a direct result of the entry of more and more women into the labor market. To the extent that the Democrats are seen as the party of women and feminists, they lose votes not only from the Religious Right, but also from the broad masses of men who perceive themselves to be at a competitive disadvantage with women.
On closer inspection, it is ironic that the Democrats should bear the burden of this loss, as the feminist agenda advanced by Ms. was an embarrassing break with feminist history, and, with the exception of equal pay for equal work, served the interests of the business community to the detriment of the labor unions. In this sense, feminism helps Republicans, the party of business, far more than it does the Democrats, the party of labor. The Republicans have the advantage of being able to benefit from the economics of the trend as well as the resentment it arouses.
The kind of feminism sponsored by Gloria Steinem set men against women in a vicious battle for jobs. Although the business community fought equal pay for equal work, it benefited from the entry of women into the labor market:
# Women work for less.
# They are more docile and less likely to deviate from company policies.
[editor's note, by Jules Siegel] Let's change "docile" to "tractable."
# Women are less likely to join labor unions.
# By increasing the size of the labor pool, they created more competition for jobs and enabled employers to make better deals.
# In two-income families, one person is more likely to be willing to work part-time or as a temporary, which employers prefer as it tends to decrease various labor costs, including fringe benefits.
# The atomization of the family reduces the strength of the individual worker by depriving him or her of a base independent of the company.
# Taking children away from their mothers at an early age tends to increase their anxiety levels and results in higher rates of tension-relieving consumption as they grow up.
# The loss of women's household services increases purchases of various forms of fast foods, which have higher profit levels than home-cooked meals.
# Declining birthrates are associated with increased purchases of hard goods. This seems ridiculous but it is a well-documented fact, which I first saw in the Scientific American "Energy" special issue in 1975.
There is a startling congruence in priorities of NOW and the business community: children are at the bottom, or do not exist except as proto-consumer/worker. Children were Number 14 on the famed NOW agenda of fifteen priorities. It is tempting to ask how any feminist would have felt as a child had she found out that she was fourteen on her mother's list of fifteen priorities.
Any attempt to re-capture the high ground here presents the Democrats with a dilemma pitting its feminist allies against the realities of American life. The issue is family values. The feminist denial of the special role of the mother and her need to be sheltered from the brutalities of the work place does great damage to family values. It also makes it impossible for the Democrats to respond to the deeply felt anguish of mothers and fathers who must sacrifice their children's well-being in order to feed, clothe and house them.
Thus, what was originally mostly a lower class problem has become one that crosses all class boundaries. We aren't all Hillary Clintons, are we? For most of us, the day care center is a new kind of hell that separates us from our children. To the extent that feminists are blamed for this, the Democrats lose votes. Thus, Hillary Clinton may very well have contributed to her party's defeat, because although she may very well represent the aspirations of many women, she also is the symbol of their failure.