A generation ago, men defended it and women guarded it. But several high-profile incidents have led pundits to wonder whether honor is still a badge women want to wear. In the movie theaters some women have cheered–be it publicly or privately–the adultery in “Unfaithful,” in which it is the husband who sits at home unaware of his wife’s trysts. On Broadway, “The Smell of the Kill” features three women who debate offing their dishonorable husbands.
And the foundation of honor isn’t shifting just in the fictional minds that playwrights and screenwriters create. WomanNews took a look at several events during which women and their judgment calls made recent headlines, and asked ethics experts to weigh in on whether or not we’ve lost our way.
Some say we have.
“Our blurring social boundaries and self-absorption have created a new code,” say Leslie Charles, author of ” Why is Everyone So Cranky: The Ten Trends Complicating Our Lives and What We Can Do About Them” (Hyperion, $12.95). “It’s no longer simply a question of good versus bad, but a question of ‘Will it serve me and help me get ahead?” As black and white universals have faded, rendering judgment on people’s conduct also has become more complicated. Witness:
Silence about Brown’s secret
Last month, two suspects were charged in connection with the Brown’s Chicken & Pasta Restaurant slayings, the Palatine murders that eluded investigators for more than nine years. The break in the case came from two women, one the ex-girlfriend of one of the suspects, after someone else tipped police to follow up with her. That woman, Anne Lockett, and another woman, Eileen Bakalla, had kept their mouths shut about the identities of the suspects for almost a decade. Legal experts have repeatedly said that the women did not break the law by keeping quiet, and some have even called the women’s belated cooperation heroic, but others have wondered if they broke a code of conscience.
Many have debated whether the women’s fear of consequences mitigates their silence in the Brown’s case. But beyond that ethical issue, experts say that the toll of an unclear conscience can be far heavier than the person even realizes, dragging down even the most basic daily functioning.
“Most women I meet could use more energy,” says Deborah Rosado Shaw, author of “Dream BIG! A Roadmap for Facing Life’s Challenges and Creating the Life You Deserve” (Simon & Schuster, $23). “Yet, often the energy zappers are the ones we produce ourselves, by lying to others and ourselves.”
Credit where it’s not due
While police have been working to crack the Brown’s Chicken case, Sandra Baldwin, the first woman to serve as president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, resigned from the volunteer post, a day after she admitted to falsifying her academic credentials. (Her resume lists a Ph.D., for example, but she says she didn’t complete her dissertation.) The inconsistencies were discovered when an alumni magazine went to write an article about her.
“The joke in the workforce is, anybody’s resume, from staff level to executive level, has embellishments on it. Your resume is your brag sheet,” says Mary N. Wong, president of HRizen Solutions L.L.C.
Wong says women, in particular, may feel pressure to have credentials that meet or beat those of men, which is how embellishment can lead to falsification. Just because everyone is doing it–and in Houston, home of Enron, Wong’s firm is busy offering counsel on many ethical conundrums–doesn’t make it OK.
Even so, some virtue can be restored by owning up to misconduct.
“With a resignation, if you really admit that you have done something wrong, there can be integrity in that,” Wong says. “It doesn’t have to ruin your professional career.”
Plagiarism accusation
Another high-profile woman, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, didn’t exactly do that when she resigned from the Pulitzer Prize board in May after conceding that she had copied material that was used in her 1987 book “The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys.” She said the copying was accidental, the result of her longhand notes in which she didn’t distinguish between her own observations and passages from other texts.
But beyond the particulars of this case, unethical actions aren’t uncommon among respected people–women or men. (Stephen Ambrose is another author who has been accused of failing to acknowledge other sources in his books.) But for women, the temptation sometimes can be even greater, Leslie Charles says.
“Sometimes it’s incomprehensible that a successful, highly educated, credentialed, supposedly credible woman would be so desperate, but the drive to compete and succeed and stay on top can make a woman engage in desperate acts to hold onto what she has,” Charles says.
An affair with a student
In May, Pamela Diehl-Moore, a New Orleans schoolteacher, was given five years of probation on charges that she had a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student. The relationship between the two–who had a 30-year difference in age–lasted for six months.
In Woodridge, Ill., a 27-year-old teacher’s aide faced similar allegations in March.
Such predatory behavior instigated by men has been in the headlines for generations, but the instances of women as the dishonorable aggressor are increasing, and some say that women aren’t being penalized as harshly as men, which compounds the insult to honor.
In the Diehl-Moore case, for instance, it was reported that the judge inflamed many by saying, “I really don’t see the harm that was done, and certainly society doesn’t need to be worried.”
And certainly, there are women who still rise to do what they believe is right, despite risks to themselves–Coleen Rowley of the FBI, for instance, who came forward and testified last week that her own agency put up roadblocks to an investigation related to the Sept. 11 attacks, and Enron vice president Sherron Watkins, who raised concerns about the company’s accounting before the scandal broke.
But in a broad sense, experts say changes in society are making it less attractive for people to do the right thing.
“We, as a culture, are much more isolated than in years past,” says Susan Wilson, president of Executive Strategies Inc., an Iowa-based consulting firm that focuses on issues of trust. “We don’t recognize the damage of selfishness over selflessness, of me over we, and of isolation over community. Wooden fences, gated communities, and pass-protected facilities remind us that we are separated into `me’ versus you.’ In our separate lives, we justify our actions as being good for `me.’ “
