When Forbes.com reprinted some paltry statistical information (mostly outdated and inaccurate) and a hilariously lengthy article directed at men that begged them-no, pleaded with them, not to marry a woman who dared set foot outside of the kitchen and laundry room to take a job of her own, the feminist blogosphere struck back in fine force, and it wasn’t just the feminists either, a whole world of bloggers, commenters, and journalists flooded Forbes with comments both refuting the information in the article and lambasting them for publishing it in the first place. Forbes then had to back down from the story and publish an “alternative viewpoint” in the form of a rebuttal after the fact.

I read the article, and rolled my eyes as it regurgitated the same silly concepts and annoying myths that have come to the fore every so many years when men in the workplace yearn for the “good old days” of the 1950s when they ruled the home and the office, and could slap their secrtaries’ asses by day and beat their wives by night without so much as a societal blink. Oh, the good old days, when women weren’t allowed to think for themselves, eh Forbes?

Here’s to the bloggers and feminists who took Forbes to task about the issue. Two of these fine authors begin their story as such:

The two of us–my coauthor Rosalind Barnett and I–are standing on a mountaintop, being attacked by a huge, winged chimera with an enormous head and a mouth that keeps chanting, “Working women are miserable. Their marriages are terrible. Their husbands are miserable. Their children are wrecks.”

We deftly slice off the beast’s head with a sharp sword. Instantly 20 more heads appear to take its place, each chanting, “Working women are miserable . . . their marriages are terrible . . . ”

For the media, it is the story that simply will not die.

Sadly, it is indeed a myth that won’t die. Built on the shadiest and most politically motivated “sociological studies,” the stories claim to have the evidence to tell women to take off those shoes and get back in the kitchen and start rolling some pie crust. But the problem is not just with the assertions in the articles, but with the “science” that’s gone into the “studies” themselves. Let’s take a look:

Meanwhile, Slate media critic Jack Shafer weighed in, with a story headlined “Forbes’ Female Trouble. So what if career women are divorces waiting to happen?”

Shafer rightly said the original Forbes piece was largely junk and noted “the Web site entries appear to be a holding pen for crap Noer couldn’t shoehorn into his overstuffed thesis.” Noer included studies irrelevant to this thesis. One, for example, found that higher-income people cheat more in marriage.

But Shafer claimed he didn’t understand why women got so upset over the article, saying, “I’ve yet to read a blog item or a protesting e-mail from a reader that convinces me that the article, as opposed to the deliberately provocative headline, really insults women, career or otherwise.”

To which Jennifer Pozner, executive director of Women In Media and News and occasional commentator for Women’s eNews, responded: “He hasn’t been convinced that the article insults women? Really? Even after all these women online and on radio have said outright that it’s insulting?”

Shafer is right with his commentary, but herein lies a problem with that kind of logic. Shafer, you should know better-when women say they’re offended, they’re offended. They don’t need someone else’s, specifically yours, or any man’s permission, to be offended at something. They know how to think for themselves. Let’s move on, now to the hard science:

We have spent more than two decades researching the lives of working women, and written four books on the subject. We can reliably report that there is a growing consensus based on solid research that if a woman has a good job, the marriage benefits.

Jack Shafer says he “won’t quarrel” with Noer’s advice to men that “You’ll be unhappy if she makes more than you.” Shafer should quarrel, because Noer’s science is sloppy. Today, some 42 percent of college-educated married women out-earn their husbands. Are these marriages falling apart? Not according to recent divorce data. These marriages are as stable as those in which husbands earn more.

Noer appears to rely, for his contention that men are unhappy with career women, on a study based on data from the early 1990s by University of Virginia researchers. But this study says nothing at all about men’s happiness. It reports that women can be unhappy in marriage if they earn more than their husbands, if there is an unfair division of household labor and if men fail to do the “emotional work” to sustain the marriage.

Well then. Regurgitating half-facts and old research data and claiming that it’s recent and relevant sadly won’t make the case anymore, folks-the “good old days” good old boys will have to do better than that. That is, assuming they can fudge enough data to make it look at all truthful. Looks like they have quite the job ahead of them.

[ Career Women Bad Wives? Let's Ask the Guys ]
Source: Women’s News