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A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women's Liberation in America
The examination of the socioeconomic condition of American women draws on extensive research to demonstrate that in spite of the feminist movement, American women still lag far behind their European counterparts in earnings relative to men and in security
- GenresNonfictionFeminism
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First published January 1, 1986
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August 11, 2025
AN ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE OF MODERN AMERICAN WOMEN
Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and author who wrote in the Introduction to this 1986 book, “I grew up in Britain, and… viewed American women… [as] the most powerful and liberated women in the world…. women in the United States have had the benefit of many more civil rights and much more education than their contemporaries elsewhere… The prominence of feminism in the United States is seen as visible confirmation of that advanced status of American women…
“Way back in the 1950s a traditional division of labor gave women a substantial degree of financial security. Maybe many were stuck in bad marriages, but the man did go out every day and earn enough to support his family. In exchange the woman ran the home and brought up the children. With the sexual revolution and liberation this all changed. Divorce became common… and women could no longer count on marriage to provide the economic necessities of life… the rate of divorce in the United States is now two to twenty times higher than in other rich nations… the degree of financial insecurity and injury women suffer as a result of divorce is far higher in America than anywhere else in the world…
“Accompanying [this]… it is less well known that the United States has one of the largest wage gaps in the advanced industrial world and is one of the few countries where the gap between male and female earnings hasn’t narrowed over … the last twenty years. The plain truth is that modern American women, liberated or not, have little economic security as wives and mothers, or as workers. They are squeezed between the traditional and modern forms of financial security to an extent which is unknown in other societies.” (Pg.11-13)
She continues, “while women in other countries have better maintained the security of marriage and have steadily improved the material conditions of their lives… women in this country are becoming more and more vulnerable. Despite their legendary claims to power and privilege, American women actually face a bad and deteriorating economic reality.” (Pg. 15) She adds, “[This] led me to pose the central questions of this book. How did the most independent and best-educated women in the world come to have the least good conditions of life? And why has the American women’s movement failed to deliver on these critical economic fronts?” (Pg. 16)
She asserts, “The bottom line is that American women (and often their children) are in bad shape. They are squeezed between the modern and the traditional forms of economic security to an extent which is unknown in other countries. Women elsewhere simply do better, as wives and mothers and as workers.” (Pg. 50)
She reports, “The typical woman drops out of the labor force for nine years… Human capital theorists argue that the wage gap can be largely explained by those interruptions that mark women’s work lives.” (Pg. 81-82) Later, she adds, “In Europe working women are supported by an elaborate … family support system which is a major factor behind their improved earning power… Working women in this country bear the full brunt of the double burden because the United States does less than any other advanced industrial nation to provide support systems for families… both family support measures and anti-discrimination efforts are needed if women are to improve their earning power significantly… If working women had job-protected maternity leave, subsidized day care, and flextime, they would then be better able to seek out high-paying jobs. Secondly, since women do encounter discrimination in the workplace, vigorous antidiscrimination efforts should continue. Particularly important is the discrimination that ensures low wages for traditional jobs in the pink-collar ghetto.” (Pg. 99-100)
She notes, “The sorry but remediable truth about divorce is that much of the anxiety that follows it is centered on money… the most detrimental aspect of the absence of fathers from one-parent families headed by women is ‘not the absence of a male presence but the lack of a male income.'" (Pg. 115)
She asks, “But what of the women’s movement?... Why has this not succeeded in upgrading the economic conditions of women’s lives? The answer is that American feminists have emphasized formal equality and have encouraged women to enter the world of work on male terms… The last thing most American feminists would admit is that working mothers might just need special concessions to give them a shot at equal opportunity.” (Pg. 138)
She suggests, “The problem is that consciousness raising tends to shift the burden for change away from society and toward the individual woman... It encourages women to look to themselves, or to that small group of women with whom they share consciousness, as the source of their ‘liberation.’ In short, consciousness-raising is an approach that deemphasizes broad-based social action in favor of personal redemption.” (Pg. 157-158)
She argues that the women’s movement “lashed out at the most widely shared experience of women… motherhood. In so doing the movement alienated its main constituency. The great majority of women have children at some point of their lives… For the majority of mothers their children constitute the most passionate attachment of their lives. It is absurd to expect to build a coherent feminist movement, let alone a separatist feminist movement, when you exclude and denigrate the deepest emotion in women’s lives… it is impossible to build a mass women’s movement on an anti-child, anti-mother platform. (Pg. 188)
She says of the Equal Rights Amendment, “I heard rumors [that] Phyllis Schlafly… was merely a cover for an ugly, well-heeled conspiracy spawned by the lunatic right wing of American politics… by the time I finished the research for this book … I could no longer be counted on to vote for the ERA… The more I understood about this piece of legislation, the less I supported it.” (Pg. 197-198)
But she adds, “Modern women… need a new set of rights and benefits: tougher divorce laws, child allowances, maternity leave, independent health coverage, and adequate retirement benefits. They also need better jobs and higher pay, and this is where Schlafly’s nostalgic vision has been damaging to women. For she has failed to grasp the fact that the majority of wives and mothers now work---most of them because they have to.” (Pg. 209)
She observes, “It seems an obvious alliance—the one between trade unions and working women. To put it baldly, they need each other. Women need better pay and better working conditions, and unions can help them fight for these things; unions need more members, and women are potential candidates because they comprise the fastest-growing segment of the labor force.” (Pg. 343-344) Later, she adds, “If feminists and trade unions pool their resources and energies and succeed in upgrading the wages of low-paid working women, the benefits could be enormous.” (Pg. 365)
She concludes, “The crux of the problem lies in the fact that there have been no cultural or institutional changes in the way children are supposed to be raised. Sooner or later almost every working mother in America has to face the hard truth: that she is either shortchanging her child or her career… We are expected to raise our children according to the example set by the complete mothers of the 1950s, and we are also expected to clone the male competitive model in the workplace… Doing it all does not turn most women into superheroes; it merely produces strain, stress---and low pay...” (Pg. 402)
This book will be of keen interest to those interested in the ‘economics’ of modern American women.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and author who wrote in the Introduction to this 1986 book, “I grew up in Britain, and… viewed American women… [as] the most powerful and liberated women in the world…. women in the United States have had the benefit of many more civil rights and much more education than their contemporaries elsewhere… The prominence of feminism in the United States is seen as visible confirmation of that advanced status of American women…
“Way back in the 1950s a traditional division of labor gave women a substantial degree of financial security. Maybe many were stuck in bad marriages, but the man did go out every day and earn enough to support his family. In exchange the woman ran the home and brought up the children. With the sexual revolution and liberation this all changed. Divorce became common… and women could no longer count on marriage to provide the economic necessities of life… the rate of divorce in the United States is now two to twenty times higher than in other rich nations… the degree of financial insecurity and injury women suffer as a result of divorce is far higher in America than anywhere else in the world…
“Accompanying [this]… it is less well known that the United States has one of the largest wage gaps in the advanced industrial world and is one of the few countries where the gap between male and female earnings hasn’t narrowed over … the last twenty years. The plain truth is that modern American women, liberated or not, have little economic security as wives and mothers, or as workers. They are squeezed between the traditional and modern forms of financial security to an extent which is unknown in other societies.” (Pg.11-13)
She continues, “while women in other countries have better maintained the security of marriage and have steadily improved the material conditions of their lives… women in this country are becoming more and more vulnerable. Despite their legendary claims to power and privilege, American women actually face a bad and deteriorating economic reality.” (Pg. 15) She adds, “[This] led me to pose the central questions of this book. How did the most independent and best-educated women in the world come to have the least good conditions of life? And why has the American women’s movement failed to deliver on these critical economic fronts?” (Pg. 16)
She asserts, “The bottom line is that American women (and often their children) are in bad shape. They are squeezed between the modern and the traditional forms of economic security to an extent which is unknown in other countries. Women elsewhere simply do better, as wives and mothers and as workers.” (Pg. 50)
She reports, “The typical woman drops out of the labor force for nine years… Human capital theorists argue that the wage gap can be largely explained by those interruptions that mark women’s work lives.” (Pg. 81-82) Later, she adds, “In Europe working women are supported by an elaborate … family support system which is a major factor behind their improved earning power… Working women in this country bear the full brunt of the double burden because the United States does less than any other advanced industrial nation to provide support systems for families… both family support measures and anti-discrimination efforts are needed if women are to improve their earning power significantly… If working women had job-protected maternity leave, subsidized day care, and flextime, they would then be better able to seek out high-paying jobs. Secondly, since women do encounter discrimination in the workplace, vigorous antidiscrimination efforts should continue. Particularly important is the discrimination that ensures low wages for traditional jobs in the pink-collar ghetto.” (Pg. 99-100)
She notes, “The sorry but remediable truth about divorce is that much of the anxiety that follows it is centered on money… the most detrimental aspect of the absence of fathers from one-parent families headed by women is ‘not the absence of a male presence but the lack of a male income.'" (Pg. 115)
She asks, “But what of the women’s movement?... Why has this not succeeded in upgrading the economic conditions of women’s lives? The answer is that American feminists have emphasized formal equality and have encouraged women to enter the world of work on male terms… The last thing most American feminists would admit is that working mothers might just need special concessions to give them a shot at equal opportunity.” (Pg. 138)
She suggests, “The problem is that consciousness raising tends to shift the burden for change away from society and toward the individual woman... It encourages women to look to themselves, or to that small group of women with whom they share consciousness, as the source of their ‘liberation.’ In short, consciousness-raising is an approach that deemphasizes broad-based social action in favor of personal redemption.” (Pg. 157-158)
She argues that the women’s movement “lashed out at the most widely shared experience of women… motherhood. In so doing the movement alienated its main constituency. The great majority of women have children at some point of their lives… For the majority of mothers their children constitute the most passionate attachment of their lives. It is absurd to expect to build a coherent feminist movement, let alone a separatist feminist movement, when you exclude and denigrate the deepest emotion in women’s lives… it is impossible to build a mass women’s movement on an anti-child, anti-mother platform. (Pg. 188)
She says of the Equal Rights Amendment, “I heard rumors [that] Phyllis Schlafly… was merely a cover for an ugly, well-heeled conspiracy spawned by the lunatic right wing of American politics… by the time I finished the research for this book … I could no longer be counted on to vote for the ERA… The more I understood about this piece of legislation, the less I supported it.” (Pg. 197-198)
But she adds, “Modern women… need a new set of rights and benefits: tougher divorce laws, child allowances, maternity leave, independent health coverage, and adequate retirement benefits. They also need better jobs and higher pay, and this is where Schlafly’s nostalgic vision has been damaging to women. For she has failed to grasp the fact that the majority of wives and mothers now work---most of them because they have to.” (Pg. 209)
She observes, “It seems an obvious alliance—the one between trade unions and working women. To put it baldly, they need each other. Women need better pay and better working conditions, and unions can help them fight for these things; unions need more members, and women are potential candidates because they comprise the fastest-growing segment of the labor force.” (Pg. 343-344) Later, she adds, “If feminists and trade unions pool their resources and energies and succeed in upgrading the wages of low-paid working women, the benefits could be enormous.” (Pg. 365)
She concludes, “The crux of the problem lies in the fact that there have been no cultural or institutional changes in the way children are supposed to be raised. Sooner or later almost every working mother in America has to face the hard truth: that she is either shortchanging her child or her career… We are expected to raise our children according to the example set by the complete mothers of the 1950s, and we are also expected to clone the male competitive model in the workplace… Doing it all does not turn most women into superheroes; it merely produces strain, stress---and low pay...” (Pg. 402)
This book will be of keen interest to those interested in the ‘economics’ of modern American women.
June 23, 2020
Although this was published in 1986, this was an eyeopener, a reminder of how other countries do better than we in America. Answer? Labor unions! While Sweden, Norway, and Finland have a high rate of people in labor unions, the U.S. averages about 11% currently for labor unions. Our highest states have been Hawaii with 23% currently.
I appreciated the author's own stories and personal interviews. It is shocking how Barnard, a women's college, refused to have a maternity leave policy for the seven years the author taught there. Shameful. Sadly this sort of thing still goes on.
American feminism's focus is on sexual liberation and on ideology. American feminists viewed motherhood as oppressive and shunned it, thus alienating many women. They did not address motherhood or maternity leave. They simply missed the point that many women do want children and would like to have help in having supportive policies to be able to do so. Instead the cultural reaction in America is “ oh you decided to get pregnant, it’s up to you to solve that problem’ rather than seeing children as a collective good and benefit.
European feminism made measurable material gains because they put a women’s committee in many different issues- i.e. labor unions, economics- so from government to private. So while this book came out in the 80s European women had it remarkably better, with maternity leave, paid, better wages and health care.
This book was excellent in showing the shortcomings of the ERA. The ERA lacked protection for women specifically. Many women, say in factories, during this era got extra breaks due to their sex and they were not forced to work overtime. Naturally these women did not see the benefit to the ERA that would mean the same treatment as men. Women feared the sexual revolution, divorce and mistakenly associated the changing times with the ERA. Hewlett points out the shortcoming of the ERA was that it did not align with other movements, such as labor unions, worker rights… so it was insular.
I appreciated the author's own stories and personal interviews. It is shocking how Barnard, a women's college, refused to have a maternity leave policy for the seven years the author taught there. Shameful. Sadly this sort of thing still goes on.
American feminism's focus is on sexual liberation and on ideology. American feminists viewed motherhood as oppressive and shunned it, thus alienating many women. They did not address motherhood or maternity leave. They simply missed the point that many women do want children and would like to have help in having supportive policies to be able to do so. Instead the cultural reaction in America is “ oh you decided to get pregnant, it’s up to you to solve that problem’ rather than seeing children as a collective good and benefit.
European feminism made measurable material gains because they put a women’s committee in many different issues- i.e. labor unions, economics- so from government to private. So while this book came out in the 80s European women had it remarkably better, with maternity leave, paid, better wages and health care.
This book was excellent in showing the shortcomings of the ERA. The ERA lacked protection for women specifically. Many women, say in factories, during this era got extra breaks due to their sex and they were not forced to work overtime. Naturally these women did not see the benefit to the ERA that would mean the same treatment as men. Women feared the sexual revolution, divorce and mistakenly associated the changing times with the ERA. Hewlett points out the shortcoming of the ERA was that it did not align with other movements, such as labor unions, worker rights… so it was insular.
November 18, 2025
I’ve been trying to make sense of that strange gap between how much progress we say women have made and how things actually look on the ground. The statement that had liberation happened seems to require some inquiry, the reality on the ground feels much more uneven. Hewlett gets right to the heart of that gap.
What really hit me is her argument that the modern workplace was built around one specific kind of life: the uninterrupted, linear, masculine one. University, early career, long hours, no breaks, and a steady climb. If you happen to live a life that involves pregnancy, caregiving, or stepping out and back in again, well, the structure simply wasn’t designed with you in mind. And Hewlett shows, with example after example, that women didn’t fail to “fit” the system, the system never bothered to fit them.
She also makes a point I hadn’t fully considered. Progress didn’t arrive evenly. It lifted a certain group of women, usually educated, urban, and with resources, while others were left juggling the same responsibilities as before, only now with a full workday added on top. Many women gained opportunity, but not mobility. Some gained choice, but not support.
I’d also add that across regions and regimes, women enjoy or suffer from vastly different systems. How can we say women’s liberation arrived if it didn’t arrive to all women? But I digress.
Her chapters on “choice” stayed with me the most. We love that word. It sounds empowering on paper. But Hewlett examines the actual choices on offer from women’s perspective: insecure jobs, inflexible schedules, childcare you can’t afford, and the quiet penalty of motherhood that still follows women through their careers. It made me rethink how often freedom gets confused with simply having more things to feel guilty about.
What I appreciated is that none of this is written in a despairing way. If anything, it feels like someone finally naming what so many women have been living: the progress that’s real, and the work still undone. Hewlett doesn’t dismiss the gains, she just refuses to let polished slogans overshadow the everyday reality. I think this helps point the way forward.
What really hit me is her argument that the modern workplace was built around one specific kind of life: the uninterrupted, linear, masculine one. University, early career, long hours, no breaks, and a steady climb. If you happen to live a life that involves pregnancy, caregiving, or stepping out and back in again, well, the structure simply wasn’t designed with you in mind. And Hewlett shows, with example after example, that women didn’t fail to “fit” the system, the system never bothered to fit them.
She also makes a point I hadn’t fully considered. Progress didn’t arrive evenly. It lifted a certain group of women, usually educated, urban, and with resources, while others were left juggling the same responsibilities as before, only now with a full workday added on top. Many women gained opportunity, but not mobility. Some gained choice, but not support.
I’d also add that across regions and regimes, women enjoy or suffer from vastly different systems. How can we say women’s liberation arrived if it didn’t arrive to all women? But I digress.
Her chapters on “choice” stayed with me the most. We love that word. It sounds empowering on paper. But Hewlett examines the actual choices on offer from women’s perspective: insecure jobs, inflexible schedules, childcare you can’t afford, and the quiet penalty of motherhood that still follows women through their careers. It made me rethink how often freedom gets confused with simply having more things to feel guilty about.
What I appreciated is that none of this is written in a despairing way. If anything, it feels like someone finally naming what so many women have been living: the progress that’s real, and the work still undone. Hewlett doesn’t dismiss the gains, she just refuses to let polished slogans overshadow the everyday reality. I think this helps point the way forward.
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