This woman's work.(Feminist Fantasies)(Book Review)

Feminist Fantasies By Phyllis Schlafly Spence Publishing, 256 pages, $27.95

Courses in women s studies carefully avoid mention of Phyllis Schlafly, a living example of how women really can have it all. A graduate of Washington University Law School in St. Louis and an ardent critic of feminism, Schlafly led the ten-year campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment. For 30 years she has attacked feminist claims on issues such as motherhood, women in the military, and the role of women in society. Her most recent book, Feminist Fantasies, collects many of her writings from the past three decades. In the book, she argues that the feminist movement ignores "common sense, the realities of human nature, the dignity of marriage, and respect for the wives at home," and calls for a return to "traditional moral standards."

Feminists, Schlafly charges, "cover themselves with victim status," while claiming that "they are so macho that they can do anything a man can do." She derides feminist attempts to use government policy to further women's careers, pointing out that women's independent choices are responsible for discrepancies in average pay and in the number of female CEOs, not oppression by an imagined patriarchy. But because feminists view these discrepancies as evidence of discrimination, they insist on independence from men and "run to Big Brother Government as a replacement."

Schlafly yearns for a return to the nuclear family of the 1950s. While a stable, loving family remains the dream of most Americans, Schlafly takes the idealized image too far. She insists that women must have children if they are to have meaningful lives, recounting tales of childless women who realize their "mistake" only after it is too late. Divorced women, lesbians, and single ...