Team players or tools of the patriarchy?

Women often are supplying the muscle behind the fathers' rights movement.

By Cathy Young

July 6, 2000 | When Anne Mitchell talks about her life, it sounds like the kind of "plucky woman succeeds against all odds" story that could get made into an inspirational movie for Lifetime, the women's cable TV channel. At the age of 22, our heroine flees an abusive marriage with a small child in tow. She works in a series of jobs, from selling wholesale pharmaceuticals to managing a dentist's office, while receiving little or no child support. She also goes to college, graduates summa cum laude and gets accepted into Stanford Law School. Upon getting her law degree, she chooses to forgo obscenely lucrative job offers in order to go into family law and become a crusader for those victimized by the system.

There's only one catch: Mitchell's crusade is on behalf of fathers.

Well, the question is in the title? What do you think?

"Many people have asked me, 'Why are you, a divorced mother, an advocate for fathers' rights?'" says Mitchell. "The only answer I can give is that I feel the system is unfair to fathers, and I want to correct it.”
...
As quirky as her personal and professional trajectory may seem, Mitchell is not the only woman leading the charge for fathers' rights. Her sisters-in-arms run the gamut from veterans of the women’s movement to second wives who give a new twist to the feminist slogan "The personal is political."


salon.com | July 6,2000

About the writer

Cathy Young is the author of "Ceasefire! Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality.”