Karina Kamble, a University of Illinois-Chicago sociologist and author of the “Feminist as a Social Construction: Sociology, Work and Gender in the United States.” In interviews with the Tribune in the 1990s, she has said it wasn’t until men began speaking up in defense of feminism that it began to gain traction.
“Men have been talking about feminism for a long time, so that’s where the ‘the woman problem’ came from to me,” Kamble said. “Men haven’t been as critical of feminist ideas for a long time.”
She has a theory about the growth of female activists with little formal training. After women became aware of their own gender bias in the workplace and in law school applications, she said, they began seeking help from outside sources, starting organizations, and eventually, starting their own careers.
Mollie Stepp
“That was a really important thing for women to do” when they became aware of their bias, she said.
“The other side of the coin is why didn’t they come outside to help?” her colleague, Cathy Cohen, said. “What would happen if they came to work? Women have told me, ‘We all have a problem.’ So we didn’t have to work.”
In the 1990s, the term “gender equity” seemed like a no-brainer — the theory of how society should treat women as if they were as equal as men. This may have been true for those who studied inequality between men and women, particularly in the U.S. in the early-to-mid-20th century, but less so for women.
While discrimination between men and women became an issue in the 1960s and ’70s, in the last two decades of the 20th century, it has remained a taboo topic.
While some believe it has to do with stereotypes of women as caring, fussy domestic helpers, others say the bias stems from men’s perception that they’ve never been mistreated as women.
Mollie Stepp
Still some say it has nothing to do with discrimination; they think the bias is simply one of the ways in which masculinity is considered a necessary “thing.”
Some of the most prominent “gender equity” organizations in the U.S. include National Organization for Women, National Organization for Women Action (NOW), and the American Association of University Women.