The Lipstick Proviso: Women, Sex & Power in the Real World. - book reviews

Reason, July, 1997 by Cathy Young

If we step back and consider that 100 years ago American women could not vote, and that a mere 50 years ago many companies did not hire married women as a matter of policy, the changes in women's status in the last half of this century seem nothing short of amazing. Yet what used to be called "the Woman Question" is still with us. With external barriers to advancement largely gone, many women find themselves held back by conflicts between career and family - while the women's movement continues to see patriarchal oppression everywhere and is preoccupied with such perils as dirty jokes at the office.

In recent years, there has been a spate of books attempting to reclaim feminism from the ideologues and the crazies. Karen Lehrman's The Lipstick Proviso is the latest addition to the body of dissident feminist literature. A former New Republic editor, Lehrman espouses a classical "liberal feminism." She is angered by the "victim-based theories" and the "group-think mentality" that have replaced the old mandates of femininity with an equally or more rigid "set of opinions, values, behaviors, even clothes." She is appalled by feminist theories that scorn rationality and independence as "male values," and she is impatient with the notion of women or feminists as "a homogeneous sisterhood."

Feminism, Lehrman says, is simply about equal rights and equal opportunities: "How women exercise those rights and what they decide to do with their opportunities - these are matters of personal choice." Above all, feminism must treat each woman as a unique individual: She may be a corporate raider or a full-time mother, may "wear slinky dresses and heels or baggy overalls and combat boots." The "lipstick proviso" Lehrman would append to the feminist contract says, "Women don't have to sacrifice their individuality, or even their femininity - whatever it means to each of them - to be equal."

In the public sphere, "liberal feminism" requires gender-neutral treatment - with no special protections and no preferences: "Feminism, like (classical) liberalism, requires equality of opportunity, not equality of result." Lehrman provides a good overview of research showing that much of the gender disparity in pay and job status results from individual decisions such as starting families and choosing jobs more compatible with child rearing. She notes that men's and women's career choices have converged greatly and will probably continue to converge, but may never be the same. "[I]f women choose not to go into every profession, be it auto repair or brain surgery, in the same numbers as men, this represents no affront to feminism."

An emphasis on individuality and equality does not, Lehrman argues, imply wholesale denial of innate sex differences. Women, she writes, "have made enough progress to be able to discuss the fact that some emotional and behavioral differences between the sexes may have biological roots." She is particularly interested in evolutionary psychology, which examines ways in which our behavior is (supposedly) affected by the strategies our ancestors pursued to enhance their genetic survival - a theory which, Lehrman stresses, does not necessarily confirm traditional stereotypes; new research suggests that competitiveness and ambition are "natural" female traits.

As Lehrman points out, the knee-jerk dismissal of biology has obvious dangers: If, as is now generally agreed, women's greater susceptibility to depression is partly genetic, ignoring this does no one any good. Other issues are perhaps more controversial. If women are biologically predisposed to be better at caring for the young, will child rearing remain woman's work? Lehrman says that "the average mother...will probably be more sensitive, nurturing, and responsive to a child's needs than the average father" but adds that in many cases the father can be an equally good or even better parent. As important, she makes the often overlooked point that just because some behaviors may be biological doesn't always mean that they're good or that they can't be modified.

Just as equality and individuality are not incompatible with sexual difference, they are not incompatible with sexual dynamics. Lehrman is sharply critical of the dogma that the workplace must be unsexed. "Sexual tension is as much a part of any office environment as professional jealousy," she writes, while stopping sensibly short of the notion, which a few mavericks have taken to promoting, that women should use sexuality as a career asset. Refreshingly, she also observes that a rejection of anti-sex feminism does not require or justify flaunting one's sex life and kinky fantasies: "Real strength - even real sexual strength - doesn't need to be constantly exhibited and reinforced."

Lehrman has insightful things to say on many other topics, from the hypocrisy of women (including Hillary Rodham Clinton) who use the specter of "backlash" to deflect charges of unethical conduct to the absurdity of arguing that it's unfeminist to want to be thin while ignoring the serious health risks of being fat.