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With the tenth anniversary of Take Our Daughters to Work Day fast approaching, and with the holiday under siege from parents concerned about unfairness to boys, Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen has boldly taken up the cudgels on behalf of Take Our Daughters to Work Day. If boys complain about being left behind, says Quindlen, let their unhappiness be a lesson to them. Women, after all, were shut out of the professions for years, so let boys take the unpleasantness of the day as an exercise in empathy for what it used to be like to be a woman. Some might accuse Quindlen of thirsting for revenge, or of acting as though two wrongs make a right. But the real problem with her kind of thinking is that it doesn't really get at the sources of women's "inequality." True, some women in earlier generations were directly prevented from entering the professions. But for the most part, economic and technological changes (including, for good or for ill, reproductive technology) have opened up options that women themselves never dreamed of. Discrimination is the least of it. What really makes women "equal" to men ("equal," in Quindlen's constricted sense of the word) isn't discrimination or the lack thereof. It's what women themselves want. Since women now want careers, they have them. But since women continue to be far more interested than men in serving as the primary caretakers of children (i.e. mothers), fewer women than men hold powerful and prestigious jobs. You see, the problem with Quindlen is that she spends so much time justifying the holiday's treatment of boys that she never bothers to explain how Take Our Daughters to Work Day is actually supposed to accomplish its ends. Presumably, showing girls that women can succeed in the workplace will make them far less likely to choose to be housewives. As Quindlen puts it, if not for feminism, women might have ended up "plowing their ambition into casseroles and no-wax floors instead of punditry and sociological research." Apart from its uncomfortable resemblance to Hillary's derisive "Should I have stayed home to bake cookies?" Quindlen's remark misses the point. The choice women face isn't between sociology and floor wax; it's between a legal brief and a baby. The truth is, women in this country don't need Take Our Daughters to Work Day to convince them that a successful career is well within their grasp. The real problem for folks like Quindlen is that, even given every chance of pushing their way to the top of their profession, not all women choose to go for broke. Most prefer to devote several years to mothering instead. So far, so good. Any effective critique of pro-androgyny feminism explains the lack of workplace "equity" between men and women as a function of women's disproportionate desire to mother. But I want to go further and give feminists a holiday that will solve their problem with "gender" in a way that Take Our Daughters to Work Day cannot. One obvious answer would be "Explain To Our Daughters That Career Success Is More Important Than Mothering Day." Given the continued power of women's desire to mother, however, I think this particular approach is too direct. That's why I've come up with "Women Date Down Day." To understand the rationale of Women Date Down Day, we'll need the assistance of yet another feminist pundit, Maureen Dowd. In a recent column on "The Baby Bust," Dowd laments the reluctance of men to date women who are more successful than they are. It is this reluctance, says Dowd, that makes it so difficult for successful women to become mothers. Dowd notes with concern a Time cover story, a recent story on 60 Minutes, and other reports, all of which conclude that women who put off child bearing to climb the career ladder often end up unmarried and motherless. The solution, says Dowd, is for men to stop acting like troglodytes and get over their reluctance to date powerful women. Actually, what Dowd suggests is in some ways the opposite of this. It seems that real troglodytes — bonobo chimpanzees, that is — already live in a feminist paradise. According to Dowd, among the bonobo (pygmy chimpanzees, who live in the equatorial rainforests of the Congo) females are dominant. Using the bonobo as a model, Dowd expends considerable effort trying to convince men to make monkeys of themselves by dating "aggressive female primates." Here, I think, we have the germ of an idea for a simply spectacular feminist holiday — one that can succeed in wiping out "gender" in a way that Take Our Daughters to Work Day cannot. Feminists need to turn April 25 into Women Date Down Day — a day on which successful women everywhere are encouraged to ask less successful men out on dates (naturally, the women should do the asking). Participation may be limited in the early years, but the eventual success of Women Date Down Day promises to work a change in gender roles in a way that Take Our Daughters to Work Day never will. Women Date Down Day has several advantages over Take Our Daughters to Work Day. For one thing, both men and women can participate. This should silence the complaints of those who worry about boys being left behind on Take Our Daughters to Work Day. Second, Women Date Down Day can fill the vacuum left by the old Sadie Hawkins Day, which is no longer observed. Of course, Sadie Hawkins Day was about women chasing after men for a date, but in the feminist version, the rules will be changed. Women will still chase men, but they have to be less successful men. If you doubt this is a serious proposal, let me note that something like it was already floated by a feminist named Rhona Mahony, in her fascinating 1995 book, Kidding Ourselves. Mahony argued that the only way to make "gender" disappear — the only way to equalize the numbers of men and women in the professions — is to encourage women to "marry down." Mahony's point was that, so long as one member of a couple tends to make more money than the other, the spouse with lower income tends to be the one to give up work in order to raise the children. But what if a successful woman were married to a less successful man? In that case, Mahony argued, when the time to decide who stays home and who works arrives, the woman will continue to work, while the man will stay home to raise the kids. So Mahony argued that, given how many men "marry down," the only way to equalize the professions is to create a class of successful women who also "marry down." Mahony suggested that women at Harvard Law School would need to start dating men at a nearby junior college if workplace equity was truly to be achieved. Without that sort of deep change in "gender roles," Mahony argued, feminists who thought they could achieve true societal equality simply by encouraging women to turn professional were just kidding themselves. As long as women continue to marry more successful men, the woman will be the one to sacrifice her career advancement to spend time with the kids. So that's what Women Date Down Day is all about. On Women Date Down Day, feminist groups can sponsor mixers between women at Ivy League law schools and men from junior colleges, or maybe between female medical students and construction workers. It won't be easy, of course. No truly revolutionary social change is. But Women Date Down Day, unlike Take Our Daughters to Work Day, might actually succeed at achieving Anna Quindlen's cherished goal of eliminating gender. Only Women Date Down Day can equalize the numbers of men and women in prestigious and powerful positions. Now some will object that Women Date Down Day is a ridiculous and utopian idea. They'll argue that, contrary to Maureen Dowd, women themselves, for the most part, actually prefer to date more successful men. They will say that this is especially so because women want men who can serve as good providers during the period when they will be concentrating on mothering their children. It may also be argued that, even though a woman has a more successful career than a man, she will still be far more likely than him to want to serve as the primary caretaker for their children. For all of these reasons, it will be said that Women Date Down Day will never work. These points are all well taken. In fact, I plan to make them myself, just as soon as Women Date Down Day is established. (I am a conservative pundit, after all.) But what I'm looking for is a more interesting and challenging target than tired old Take Our Daughters to Work Day, which doesn't even come close to doing what it's cracked up to do. When you think about it, this is really a no-lose proposition for me. If Women Date Down Day catches on, then at least I can take the credit for having created an important national holiday. If, on the other hand, Women Date Down Day fails, I can attribute its collapse to the power of my withering conservative critique. In any case, if we start debating Women Date Down Day, instead of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, we might finally find out how serious feminists really are about what they say they believe in. Otherwise, one begins to wonder whether, on April 25, Anna Quindlen and her friends will actually be celebrating the feminist future, or just kidding themselves. - Mr. Kurtz is also a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. |
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et's face it. Take
Our Daughters to Work Day just isn't cutting it. I'm not talking about
all the clamor from parents who worry about their sons feeling left out
of the celebrations. True, those who want to rechristen April 25, Take
Our Children To Work Day, are causing serious trouble for feminist
proponents of the holiday. But the real problem with this feminist festival
is that, even with the best will in the world, Take Our Daughters to Work
Day simply isn't going to bring about the genderless society that its
backers are looking for. That is why I am pleased to propose a new feminist
holiday — a holiday that will really work. To achieve a truly
androgynous society, what feminists actually need is Women Date Down Day.
