Two female academics and authors take aim at a central point in NYT columnist Mo Dowd's new book  Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide.

An excerpt from the article on the Common Dreams website by Caryl Rivers and Rosalind C. Barnett (originally published at Women's eNews):

What a waste of such a powerful platform. If only Dowd--capable of such wit, charm and political insight--had bothered to check her social science data.

"Decades after the feminist movement promised equality with men," Dowd laments, "it was becoming increasingly apparent that many women would have to brush up on the venerable tricks of the trade: an absurdly charming little laugh, a pert toss of the head, an air of saucy triumph, dewy eyes and a full knowledge of music, drawing, elegant note writing and geography. It would once more be considered captivating to lie on a chaise lounge, pass a lacy handkerchief across the eyelids and complain of a case of springtime giddiness."

For this surreal description of contemporary men and women, Dowd draws on "data" that shows her running with the media pack, yes, but sadly out of touch with serious social science.

An Alleged Trend

In particular, Dowd hypes an alleged trend of men rejecting ambitious women based on a 2004 study by psychology researchers. Those findings, by psychologists Stephanie Brown of the University of Michigan and Brian Lewis of University of California, Los Angeles, were wildly overblown.

The study was done on a small sample of 120 male and 208 female undergraduates, mainly freshmen.

The males rated the desirability as a dating or marriage partner of a fictitious female, described as either an immediate supervisor, a peer or an assistant.

Surprise, surprise! The freshman males preferred the subordinate over the peer and over the supervisor when it came to dating and mating.

The study, however, was no barometer of adult male preferences. Rather, it reflected teen boys' ambivalence about strong women.

Men, by contrast, do not reject achieving women. Quite the opposite. Sociologist Valerie Oppenheimer of University of California, Berkeley reports that today men are choosing as mates women who have completed their education. The more education a woman has, the more likely she is to marry. Unlike the single University of California, Los Angeles study, this finding comes from an analysis of 80 peer-reviewed studies.

They conclude:

When Dowd bases her views of men and women on such poor research, it's no wonder that Dowd looks into the crystal ball of feminism and finds the picture so disconcerting.