Words Worth Repeating
By Christina Hoff Sommers

Did you know that the United States Congress now categorizes American girls as "a historical under-served population"? In a recent education statute, girls are classified with African Americans, native Americans, the physically handicapped, and other disadvantaged minorities as a group in need of special redress. Programs to help girls who have allegedly been silenced and demoralized in the nation’s sexist classrooms are now receiving millions of federal dollars. At the United Nations women’s conference in Beijing, the alleged silencing and short-changing of American schoolgirls was treated as a pressing human rights issue.

Several popular books have appeared in recent years to build up the notion that ours is a "girl-poisoning culture." That phrase is Dr. Mary Piper’s and her book, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, has been at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. According to Piper, "Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so do the selves of girls go down in droves. They crash and burn."

Where did she get this idea? Where did the United States Congress get the idea that girls are a victim group? How did the "silencing" of American schoolgirls become an international human rights issue?

To answer that, consider some highlights of what might be called the myth of the incredible shrinking girl. The story epitomizes what is wrong with the contemporary women’s movement. First, a few facts.

The U.S. Department of Education keeps records of male and female school achievement. They reveal that girls get better grades than boys. Boys are held back more often than girls. Significantly fewer boys than girls go on to college today. Girls are a few points behind in national tests of math and science, but that gap is closing. Meanwhile, boys are dramatically behind in reading and writing. We never hear about that gap, which is not shrinking.

Many more boys than girls suffer from learning disabilities. In 1990, three times as many boys as girls were enrolled in special education programs. Of the 1.3 million American children taking Ritalin, the drug for hyperactivity, three-quarters are boys. More boys than girls are involved in crime, alcohol, drugs.

Mary Piper talks about the "selves" of girls going down in flames. One effect of a crashing self is suicide. Six times as many boys as girls commit suicide. In 1992, fully 4,044 young males (ages 15 to 24) killed themselves. Among same-age females there were 649 suicides. To the extent that there is a gender gap among youth, it is boys who turn out to be on the fragile side.

This is not to deny that some girls are in serious trouble, or that we can’t do better by girls, educationally and otherwise. What I am saying is, you cannot find any responsible research that shows that girls, as a group, are worse off than boys, or that girls are an underprivileged class. So, where did that idea come from? Therein lies a tale.

The reality is, the contemporary women’s movement is obsessed with proving that our system is rigged against women. No matter what record of success you show them, they can always come up with some example of oppression. Never is good news taken as real evidence that things have changed. The women’s movement is still fixated on victimology. Where they can’t prove discrimination, they invent it.

I, for one, do not believe American women are oppressed. It is simply irresponsible to argue that American women, as a gender, are worse off than American men.

More women than men now go to college. Women’s life expectancy is seven years longer than men’s. Many women now find they can choose between working full-time, part-time, flex-time, or staying home for a few years to raise their children. Men’s choices are far more constricted. They can work full-time. They can work full-time. Or they can work full-time.

The reason we hear nothing about men being victims of society, or boys suffering unduly from educational and psychological deficits, is because the feminist establishment has the power to shape national discussion and determine national policy on gender issues.

Feminist research is advocacy research. When the American Association of University Women released a (badly distorted) survey in 1991 claiming that American girls suffer from a tragic lack of self-esteem, a New York Times reporter got AAUW President Sharon Shuster to admit that the organization commissioned the poll in order to get data into circulation that would support its officers’ belief that schoolgirls were being short-changed. Usually, of course, belief comes after, not before, data-gathering. But advocacy research doesn’t work that way. With advocacy research, first you believe, and then you gather figures you can use to convince people you are right.

The myth of the short-changed schoolgirl is a perfect example of everything that’s gone wrong with contemporary feminism. It’s all there: the mendacious advocacy research, the mean-spiritedness to men that extends even to little boys, the irresponsible victimology, the outcry against being "oppressed," coupled with massive lobbying for government action.

The truth is, American women are the freest in the world. Anyone who doesn’t see this simply lacks common sense.

Christina Hoff Sommers is the author of Who Stole Feminism? This is adapted from her remarks at a December 1996 AEI conference.