Public Employee Press

March is Women’s History Month
Carolyn Maloney tackles the myths about women’s progress

U.S. Congress member Carolyn B. Maloney has always been an outspoken advocate for women’s rights. Now she has put her concerns into a new book, “Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated: Why Women’s Lives Aren’t Getting Any Easier and How We Can Make Real Progress for Ourselves and Our Daughters.”

Born and raised in the South, Maloney’s constituents in the 14th Congressional District know her as a soft-spoken champion of progressive issues. But in fluent prose packed with statistics and history, she succeeds in raising her readers’ emotional temperature and paints a vivid picture of the inequality that governs women’s lives at work and at home.

At times, her picture is too rosy. She writes: “By the end of the 1980s, it was no longer a novelty … to see women construction workers … and in the cockpits of commercial airplanes.” But since women hold under 3 percent of construction jobs and 8 percent of pilot positions, sighting a woman in either is still a “novelty.” But overall, Maloney effectively shatters the myth that says, since women have come such a long way, equality is now every girl’s birthright and no barriers stand in the way.

She tackles head-on the conservative think tanks that argue that all discrepancies between males and females — from the wage gap to the glass ceiling — can be traced to choices made by individual women. Maloney skewers the fiction that females compete on an even playing field, addresses the critical imbalance of power and leadership between males and females, and describes the mechanisms that deprive women of choices on issues including reproductive rights, child care, career ladders, health care and domestic violence. Each chapter concludes with an action agenda — how the reader can plug into confronting and changing these inequities. “Rumors of Our Progress” is available in the DC 37 Ed Fund Library on the 2nd floor.

— Jane LaTour