A war on women? Which women?

War has often been harder on women and children than on combatants. When the tides of battle wash over a populated area, women herding children will always be overrepresented in the crowd of refugees. Matthew 24:19 even singles out pregnant and nursing mothers as particularly unfortunate during bad times. Misfortune is multiplied for the fairer sex when they are also considered a prize to one army or the other. This is also a reasonable way to describe the political rhetoric of our day. Women are disproportionately affected (because they are often the primary caretakers of dependent children) by drastic changes in a nation’s social policies. This year women are also a prized voting bloc—one that tempts politicians to overstate their own good intentions, and the dark motives of their opponents. 

Perhaps we can rescue a bit of clarity from the clumsy fingers of political bluster. First, it’s wrong to suggest that women are a unified bloc up for bid to the best panderer. Second, those policies that benefit women and their little dependents are not mere matters of funding or withholding of funds. The present kerfuffle over the mandate to fund contraceptives illustrates how unclear the issue can be. Pro-life women are as horrified as men that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would require otherwise pro-life religious institutions to fund “preventive services” that they consider murderous. The overturning of this mandate will not make the country sufficiently pro-life, but neither should such an overturn be described as a disaster for (or war on) women in general. 

But women and families do have destructive adversaries, in effect if not intent. The work of groups that demean motherhood and marriage has been insidiously effective. Easy divorce has resulted in increased poverty for single mothers. A shockingly high percentage of children are now born without the benefit of marriage, or any actual long-term commitment by their parents. Blasted apart from its traditional context, sexual behavior has become the focus of nearly every aspect of modern culture. At the same time sexual relationships are seen by many as without significance beyond the merely biological. One observer has described human sexuality in our day “simultaneously as no big deal and Life’s Ultimate Expression that no one should be denied.” It is evident that a trend toward desire without boundaries has not been advantageous for women. Victimization through sex trafficking, pornography, and misogyny in popular culture has flourished since our nation’s sexual revolution.    

The most ardent advocates for marriage and family are women but the official spokesmen for women behave as though there is only one true voice for the cause of women in the U.S., and that voice is radical. They’ve said it pretty plainly. A relatively tame example from 1993 is when feminist icon Gloria Steinem attacked then-senatorial candidate Kay Bailey Hutchinson, calling her a “female impersonator” because Hutchinson, who describes herself as pro-choice, was not liberal enough to be considered female by her feminist sisters. Examples of the things said of more conservative female politicians in the last five years alone are not printable here. Women who hold conservative convictions are called enemies of their sex by other women, slandered by male pundits, and crudely lampooned in entertainment venues. No ethnic minority, and evidently not the more liberal women, could ever be treated this way by those who remain employed.

It is convenient to the leftist narrative to suggest that there are no bright women who agree with Rick Perry or James Dobson on social issues. Men, after all, are not qualified to speak on issues that affect women. It is also convenient, by the way, to magnify not the delightful differences between men and women but certainly the political divide. Anyway, the keepers of the leftist narrative must shout down or demean women like Sarah Palin, Phyllis Schlafly, and Ann Romney in order to prosper. I can only imagine the contempt they reserve for thousands of feminine pro-life workers in pregnancy resource centers. The flame these women tend is not the strange fire of feminism but that which has warmed and lit a billion homes for thousands of years.   

I am not naïve enough to think that we’ll undo the sexual revolution society-wide, but progressive efforts to tinker with traditional mores have made the plight of women worse and devastated families. We’ve tried it in the old-fashioned way and we’ve tried it in the modern way; one way has observably worked better than the other. This does not mean that we can roll back the clock but it does mean that we can argue credibly that our women choose a respectable path when they become mothers—even stay-at-home mothers. Perhaps too much was made of Democrat strategist Hillary Rosen’s comment that Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life” and thus did not understand the way “real” Americans live. What she meant was that Mrs. Romney had not worked outside her home and thus did not understand the way “real” Americans live. That’s better, I guess. But is Mrs. Rosen correct in assuming that most Americans will be contemptuous of a woman who stays at home? That was clearly the mind of feminist matriarchs who described homemakers as “parasites” doing work “not worthy” of intelligent people.       

I do think some women have been provoked to righteous bellicosity. But I don’t think it’s leftist women who have been attacked. 

I believe our nation is at war with itself. It’s a war of worldviews. It is not a new divide but it is a nastier fight than any we’ve seen in 150 years. Men and women are on both sides of it, as you’d expect. And yet endless talk of one side or another’s war on women is not very useful. It is a too-tightly focused, oversimplified way of looking at the matters truly at issue. A distracting magnification of a political divide between men and women implies several things that are not true—chief among them might be the suggestion that things women need from a community are largely different from what their husbands and sons and fathers need.