While the nation remains transfixed by news of Afghanistan and anthrax, special interest groups in Washington continue their work underneath the media radar screen. In The Feminist Dilemma: When Success Is Not Enough, authors Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Christine Stolba offer a thorough accounting of the costs of preferential policies advocated by some feminist groups. They explain how contemporary feminism's campaign in the courts and in Congress is undermining the principles of our economic system and the principle of equality.

By all measures, American women have achieved unimagined success over the past fifty years. Even today, however, legislation is pending in Congress and new lawsuits are on the dockets of our nation's courts that treat women as victims and provide them with more specific benefits. Some examples are:

• Sen. Tom Daschle's Paycheck Fairness Act, which would bring comparable worth into the wage setting process;
• the Right Start Act of 2001, which would expand the Family and Medical Leave Act by requiring employers to provide paid parental leave; and
• a sex discrimination lawsuit against the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority claiming that an aerobic test required to join the police force was biased against women, 93 percent of whom could not run 1.5 miles in twelve minutes.

In each of these cases, advocates of preferences for women seem not to realize that when the law confers more benefits, it also results in additional costs. In the area of employment, higher costs for women mean that employers become more resistant to hiring them. Lower standards for female police officers and firefighters result in diminished service to the public.

Furchtgott-Roth and Stolba assess the ideological impulses fueling these lawsuits and legislation. They offer insight into the reasons that feminist organizations continue to deny women's success and paint them as the weaker sex. The authors argue that even though women's opportunities are now equal, women's and men's choices are not always the same. The flaw in contemporary feminist thinking, the authors contend, is its insistence that anything less than statistical parity with men is proof of discrimination against women.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth was a resident fellow at AEI from 1993 to 2001. Christine Stolba is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. They are the authors of Women’s Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America (IWF and AEI Press, 1999).