“A collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic and social rights and equal opportunities for women.”  Wikipedia definition of feminism

Are there people who disagree with women having equal rights in the US in 2011?  It is amazing to me that such a basic concept of equal rights for women has not been added to the US Constitution, although the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced in 1923 – it still hasn’t passed.

In the current discussion, feminism is sometimes referred to as the new F word – more shocking than the four letter version.  In an amazing example of negative spin, those with an investment in the status quo have taken feminism and made it synonymous with unattractive and unfeminine.  How did this happen?  Is it just another example of a patriarchal society with everything to lose making women feel bad about getting what is due to them – basic equality?

Newsweek

In 1970, a group of women working at Newsweek filed a gender discrimination against Newsweek. Forty-six women sued for employment dis -crimination based on gender under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act – the first group of media professionals to do so.  Ironically their suit coincided with a cover story on Feminism published by Newsweek. In the end, the ACLU, which was representing the women agreed not to press the suit if Newsweek  set goals and timetables to remedy the inequalities, which included women working as researchers, but turning their material over to men who actually wrote the articles.

In 2011, three current employees of Newsweek wrote an insightful article called “Are we there yet?” The writers, young women writers were unaware of the 1970 suit.  When they discovered it, they circulated a book called In Our Time by Susan Brownmiller that had a chapter about the suit. The authors of the article say: Read more…

“Because respondents provide no convincing proof of a companywide discriminatory pay and promotion policy, we have concluded that they have not established the existence of any common question” necessary for a class-action suit, Justice Antonio Scalia said in the 5 to 4 opinion. The Washington Post

The Supreme Court sided with Wal-mart and concluded that there was no official policy of discrimination against women at Wal-mart and so declined to let the gender bias class action suit representing more than a million women – yes 1,000,000 women.  If here is no policy that promotes gender discrimination – then it doesn’t exist?

Despite the facts that things like this were said to women working at Wal-mart:

“Women will never make as much money as men…God made Adam first, and so women would always be second to men.” “If you would wear lower cut shirts…., you would probably get more pay.” [1]  MomsRising.org

Despite the fact that analysis showed patterns of pay discrimination at Wal-mart:

According to a statistical report prepared by Dr. Richard Drogin, a plaintiffs’ expert in the Wal-Mart case, “Women employees at Wal-Mart are concentrated in the lower paying jobs, are paid less than men in the same jobs and are less likely to advance to management positions than men. These gender patterns persist even though women have more seniority, have lower turnover rates, and have higher performance ratings in most jobs.”   MomsRising.Org Read more…