How Women See Themselves: The Latest Polls

Karlyn Bowman | 2000/05/12

To talk about attitudes of women today is a very big subject, and I propose to paint with a broad brush.

A good place to begin today is with a Gallup poll that was conducted in 1946. That year Gallup asked men and women separately about opportunities for their sons and daughters. They asked mothers whether the opportunities for their daughters would be better than the ones that they had and fathers about opportunities for their sons

Virtually identical portions, about 60 percent of men, and 60 percent of women, expected that the opportunities for their sons and daughters would be better than the ones they had had. That's a very familiar finding in public opinion; we tend to be optimistic about our prospects--it's part of the way we define ourselves as a nation.

Gallup didn't repeat that question until 1997. And in that year, the results were quite interesting. Roughly 60 percent of men said, once again, that their sons opportunities would be better than the ones they had had. But the mothers' optimism about their daughters had soared: 85 percent of women said they believed that their daughters would have a better life than they had had.

It's hard for many of you here to realize how different attitudes were just twenty-five or thirty years ago, a single generation. In 1969, for example, for the first time in polling history, a majority, 55 percent, approved of a married woman earning money in business or industry if she had a husband capable of supporting her. And in the early 1970s, about 45 percent agreed that most men are better suited emotionally for politics than are most women.

The idea that women should be given full equality of status is, of course, a natural element of the socio-political individualism that defines us as a nation. By contrast, in societies that are based on class or hereditary ideas, the difference in men's and women's roles are seen as immutable and natural, and changes have been more often denied.

Today in the United States, women tell the pollsters that the jobs available to them, their salaries, their opportunities for leadership have improved since the 1970s.

But women here are divided, and on many questions, downright pessimistic, about whether life has improved in terms of their roles as homemakers, mothers, and in the kind of marriages that they have. Only slightly more than a third say that their lives have improved in those dimensions since the 1970s.

Japanese women, by contrast, live in a traditional, patriarchal society. They also see progress in terms of opportunities, salaries, and jobs that are available to them. But they are much more likely than American women to see progress in their marriages and their home lives.

The puzzle is explained this way; we are much farther along than the Japanese in terms of expanding individualism and extending opportunities for women, and therefore, we're the first to experience and confront the problems that those new opportunities create.

Given our history, I don't think it's surprising that a majority of women in the 1999 Roper Starch Worldwide poll told interviewers that because women have more choices today they have a greater chance of being happy. But a solid 25 percent disagreed, saying that more choices simply made life more complicated.

Forty percent of women in that same poll said that their expanded choices had made life more difficult for men; only 36 percent said it provided men with more opportunities.

In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, we as a society generally agreed that women should be provided full opportunities to participate. We agreed on the ends that policy should serve. When societies agree on ends, most people tend to disengage from the discussion about the means by which those ends will be accomplished. Thus it's not surprising that a CBS poll from 1997, thirty-five years after the heyday of feminism, found that only 43 percent said that the women's movement had achieved anything to make their lives easier; 48 percent said it had not. Just 28 percent told Yankelovich Partners in 1998 that feminism today was relevant to them personally--a third of young women gave that response. Fifty-six percent of women in the poll were not familiar with Gloria Steinhem; and only 50 percent of self-identified feminists were familiar with her. Today, only around 30 percent of women call themselves feminists.

Because of the success of the women's movement, most women have turned their attention to other things. Many social movements and organizations find it difficult to thrive, once their goals are generally adopted. Organized feminism doesn't interest most women today. Let me now relate some recent findings about how women see themselves.

Huge majorities say that women do not face discrimination in getting a college education. They say that their salaries are generally equal to those of the men they work with.

Nearly six in ten, however, say that women are discriminated against in getting executive positions or top government jobs. Although men and women say that they would vote for a qualified woman for president, majorities of women still believe that many Americans aren't ready to elect a woman.

Women who work say that their jobs are essential in bringing in income for their families, not simply as money for extras.

Women with children who work outside the home, feel that they're balancing their work and their family lives pretty well. When asked what would make life better, twice as many women mention more money than mention anything else, such as “family friendly” workplaces.

Although women as a whole are divided about whether they prefer to stay home or have a job, a strong majority of working women say that they prefer to work outside the home. (Interestingly, more men than in the past are saying that they would prefer to stay home.)

When most women are asked whether they consider their work a career, or just a job, 44 percent of American women describe their work as a career, but 53 percent as just a job. Seventy-five percent of college grads described their work as a career, compared to 14 percent of non-high school grads, 28 percent of high school grads, and 39 percent of those with some college. Young employed women are more likely than any other group to see their work as just a job.

Perhaps because they believe discrimination still exists for top jobs, women think that their best chances for success are in starting their own business.

Most women and men say that they want to marry, and most in fact, will. The number of never-marrieds in the population was 23 percent in 1950; it's about 28 percent today. But in all the surveys I've seen since 1970, men and women think that the institution of marriage is much weaker than it was ten to fifteen years ago. They feel that same way about religion. Most people describe their marriages as happy and say they'd marry the same person again.

Husbands and wives disagree most about what TV programs to watch, who controls the remote, and how much to save and spend. Four in ten women say that their spouse really believes that housework is a woman's responsibility, and that he's doing her a favor by helping out; 54 percent of women disagree.

A near majority of women tell the pollsters that they are a lot more knowledgeable than their mothers about making financial decisions. Just a third of men say that they are more knowledgeable than their fathers about financial affairs.

In 1968 just 28 percent of young white women expected that they would be working at age thirty-five. More than 70 percent of them found themselves working in their thirties. Most young women today expect to work in their thirties.

When we're asked what we daydream about, 44 percent say about winning the lottery, 43 percent about having no stress in our lives, and 42 percent about being rich. Only 3 percent of women say they daydream about being elected to political office.

I'd like to turn to the attitudes of young people, and particularly young women in the eighteen to twenty-nine-year-old group, because they are very different from their older brothers and sisters in the Baby Boom generation. The surveys show something that is heartening for conservatives, because young people often lead change.

When asked what they want to be when they grow up, many young people give familiar responses: doctors, lawyers, teachers. But today many young people are saying that they want to start their own small businesses. We are seeing a reaffirmation of a very old virtue, and that is self-reliance.

Young people today don't have much trust in the federal government. Frank Luntz, a top pollster, did a poll a while ago, which showed that more young people believed they'd see a UFO than that they'd see their Social Security checks.

The young are also suspicious of big business. They've seen layoffs and downsizing in their own families and communities. And even though most of them say they want to marry, many distrust the institution of marriage. A quarter of the eighteen to twenty-nine-year-olds are now products of divorce.

So we have a generation that is much more skeptical of big institutions than in the past, and knows it will have to be more self-reliant. This is one of the reasons George Bush's discussion of partial privatization of Social Security will reach a very receptive audience. Young people are confident that they are going to have to rely on themselves as they grow older.

Most young women say that they want to marry and to have families, but they're not sure they will be able to realize that, their ideal. We don't have any good data about whether or not they'd like to work for a while, take some time off, and then go back into the workforce, or whether they plan to work all along. We need more time to see what young people are really saying about family and worklife. But this generation is going to be significantly different from the Baby Boom generation.

They may not have a big impact on this election campaign, because young people don't tend to vote at the same rates as their elders do. The survey data suggest that when you have more of a stake in society--when your are married, have a mortgage and children--you tend to be more prone to vote.

To wrap up, women as a whole are optimistic about many aspects of their lives, but pessimistic about some, in part because they have so many more opportunities than in the past, and are the first to deal with the problems that all these new opportunities provide.

(Portions of this talk have appeared in articles by the author.)

Related Subjects:

Career Development
Family
Feminism