Views > February 24, 2006

Friedan and King: Super Models

By Susan J. Douglas

Within the space of a week, three stories were front page news—the deaths of Betty Friedan and Coretta Scott King and this newsflash from the New York Times: “Some Democrats Are Sensing Missed Opportunities.”

Talk about understatement, especially when the whopping lies of the Bush administration continue to pile up (Bush never met Abramoff, domestic spying is legal, no one at the White House knew the levees had broken). The old white guys in the party—Harry Reid, John Kerry, Howard Dean—and the disappointing female leaders like Pelosi and especially Hillary Clinton (Joe Leiberman in drag) would do well to consider what Freidan and King achieved in their lifetimes.

King, of course, endured real threats to her and her family’s safety and, as Jimmy Carter pointedly reminded us (bless you, Jimmy), surveillance of their private life. She was enormously courageous. But so was Friedan, who forged ahead to change the lives of millions of women of several generations despite ongoing ridicule of her politics and, crucially and repeatedly, her looks. But in addition to the lessons in courage the Democrats might take from these women, they might note that both women fought for concrete, systematic policies and laws—to be enacted and enforced by, yes, state and federal governments—that dramatically reduced and, in some cases, ended inequality.

The major obituaries of Friedan, especially in the Times and on PBS’s “News Hour,” either missed or underplayed this point entirely. Instead, it seemed that the main things Friedan did was coin a term—”the feminine mystique”—and change people’s minds about women’s roles. It’s true, The Feminine Mystique was the number one bestselling paperback of 1964 and it has continued, to this day, to help women appreciate the costs of being defined only as a wife and mother, and of being economically and emotionally dependent on men. In this age when cultural politics and discourse seem to matter more than the law, the obits highlighted Friedan’s contribution to consciousness raising, and downplayed how she and legions of feminist allies fought for a new legal system.

So let’s remember what economic, political and social life was like for women in 1964. Want ads in the newspapers were segregated by gender, meaning that women simply could not apply for some jobs. Discrimination and admissions quotas to graduate and professional schools meant that women could be nurses but not doctors, teachers but not professors, secretaries but not managers or executives, paralegals but not lawyers. It was worse for African American and Latina women, who were consigned primarily to domestic and agricultural work. High school and college sports were for boys, not girls. Women could not get credit cards or mortgages in their own names, and when a couple applied for a mortgage the wife’s salary was not counted because it was “pin money.” Abortion was illegal, there were no sexual harassment laws, no battered women’s shelters and a woman had to have two eyewitnesses to get a rape conviction. There was no pregnancy leave, and once a married working woman got pregnant, she also got fired.

All of this has changed because of legislation and court cases: not ideas and discourse alone, but the law. In 1963, Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act and in 1964, at the last minute, women succeeded in getting the word “sex” added to the list of things you could not discriminate against in the Civil Rights Act—the all-important Title VII. Some congressmen regarded the addition of this word as a joke, so laughingly approved it, thinking no one would actually enforce such a prohibition. They were wrong. With the founding of the National Organization for Women in 1966, Friedan and a cohort of feminist compatriots began suing entities in violation of the law—and winning.

Coretta Scott King continued her husband’s work on racial justice and peace. She also dedicated herself to establishing the King Center in Atlanta and to advocating that her husband’s birthday become a national holiday. As a result, institutions all over the country, especially schools, take a day to recall what the Civil Rights Movement did accomplish, and what still needs to be done.

If the Democrats would truly study what these women accomplished, they might have something to say that would include plans for new institution building and legislative initiatives. They might say, “We fought against poverty before, we can do it again. We fought to support women and children before, we can do it again. We fought against racial injustice before, we can do it again.”

Democrats don’t need to raise people’s consciousness about these issues. Like Friedan and King, they need to offer concrete proposals for progress before we regress to a time when nothing seemed possible.

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• Reader Comments

  So let’s remember what economic, political and social life was like for women in 1964. Want ads in the newspapers were segregated by gender, meaning that women simply could not apply for some jobs. Discrimination and admissions quotas to graduate and professional schools meant that women could be nurses but not doctors, teachers but not professors, secretaries but not managers or executives, paralegals but not lawyers...

  Thank you. I remember much of this, and it is refreshing to see this as a follow up:

  All of this has changed because of legislation and court cases: not ideas and discourse alone, but the law.

  Reading of The Feminine Mystique changed the way I think and who I am. Without the subsequent changes in law, that would have been cruel awareness, indeed.  I don’t want to downplay the importance of grassroots consciousness raising----I believe that such a movement could do wonders for problems of sexism that remain (men need to start supporting each other, women need to get real about how they treat each other), and for racism in the U.S. But if structural change doesn’t follow, then the awareness will just melt away and torment minds.

  That’s why I’m sending money to the ACLU. This nation is built on law, and whatever you think about lawyers, if we don’t have lawyers fighting for freedom and equality, we don’t have a chance.

  These women were great and are due the honor they have received (except for having four or five presidents at their funerals---puleeze). But they fought on their path in their time. They didn’t follow a cookbook. We must fight on our path in our time and find our own ways of doing battle. The revolution is not a rerun, and civil rights were not won with folk songs and tie-die.

  Posted by wileywitch on Feb 27, 2006 at 1:39 PM

  “We must fight on our path in our time and find our own ways of doing battle. The revolution is not a rerun, and civil rights were not won with folk songs and tie-die.”

  Beautifully phrased, wiley, gracias.

  One year after Friedan published her book, my mother became “single” when my dad left the house, and she suddenly had to raise me and my brother alone. I think it’s safe to say about her, now 12 years after her own death, that my mother’s thinking processes in 1965 were about as far away from “feminist” as could be imagined. She and I spoke many times about how much she changed from then until my brother and I were self-sustaining. Her perceptions and understandings became so much altered that she said (frequently), “I was another person then.”

  The civil rights leaders of that era, as well as the feminists, can be jointly credited with popularizing what I consider a pivotal idea: You do not have to accept the strictures and underestimations that others may try to lay upon you. Your worth is not defined by whether they accept or respect you. Your worth is inherent, and your respectability is something you create in yourself.

  For people like my mother, who was raised believing that it is others’ job to define your worth according to the roles appropriate to your station and your ability to fill them, these were revolutionary ideas indeed. And my mom was no revolutionary, I assure you! The fact that I recall “The Feminine Mystique” on her bookshelf represents a big departure for her from the ideas she imbibed during her own childhood.

  Susan Douglas is of course perfectly correct to note the role of law in either upholding or damaging the sense of worth and the quality of life among those who have been marginalized, whether they’re members of minorities or, in the case of women, the majority who has been treated like a minority.

  But at the level of the person herself or himself, I think the turning point is when those ideas I mention above take root, more so than a change in the law. Those ideas allowed a single mom with a severely constrained understanding of “womanhood” to alter her view of herself and single-handedly help two rowdy boys grow up and get a university education, while refusing to latch onto the nearest man to make these things possible (actually, considering the prejudices about “easy” divorced women in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it’s little wonder she didn’t re-marry; her luck with men was pretty dismal). She retired at the top of her game and started a second life in the rural South as a farmer until her death.

  Had she stuck with “categorical” thinking, fitting the mold that her upbringing prepared her for, she would not have succeeded at or even attempted the things that eventually stood out as the high points of her life.

  Many people enjoy lampooning the 1960s, as though the transformations that accelerated at that time were either detrimental, or are now “done already” and therefore not worth the attention. You could easily find malignant self-indulgence, I admit. But there is a foundational idea of appreciating and insisting upon one’s own worthiness, regardless of customary preconceptions, that also goes back to that time. Despite the attention that the self-indulgent ones get when we hear of that era these days, there was also a great deal of benefit and excellent personal examples derived from those events. We should not forget that fact, and the passing of two women who devoted their lives to upholding a higher view for men and women to aspire to is a suitable occasion for our remembrance.

  Posted by Kuya on Feb 28, 2006 at 4:30 AM

  Clearly, change happens on many levels (or there wouldn’t be enough momentum for change), but your story reminds me of an important point about the third wave of feminism. Many people have the misconception that women started going to work because feminists convinced them that they weren’t full members of society and/or independent without jobs.

  Fact is, the family wage began to end in the mid to late fifties and women were forced to go to work. Of course, poor women often had to work even before them, but middle class women were being forced into the workforce in droves and the conditions they worked in and the abuses heaped on them were horrible. They were still required to fulfill all their other gender roles as well.

  With the breaking down of the family wage, the age of the bachelor arrived, and women also had to get jobs because it was hard to find a husband.

  It was the shared experiences of exploitation and gender obligations that were becoming maladapted and overwhelming while women were still being held personally to gender definitions based on a different economic and social structure that led women to work together in conscous raising groups and to reexamine their own assumptions about who they were. Their were many other factors as well, but somehow our society gives the impression that feminists sent women out into the work force and women didn’t need to work or didn’t really want to.

  Posted by wileywitch on Mar 1, 2006 at 3:08 AM

  the age of the bachelor arrived

  bachelor , noun

  1. An unmarried man.
  2. A person who has completed the undergraduate curriculum of a college or university and holds a bachelor’s degree.
  3. A male animal that does not mate during the breeding season, especially a young male fur seal kept from the breeding territory by older males.
  4. A young knight in the service of another knight in feudal times.

  .. and I am living it . Well, three of them at least.

  What do they call a female bachelor?

  But if I were to marry and have children I would be happy to be the stay at home dad while mom goes to work kind of guy. That would be just fine.

  Posted by David in Canada on Mar 1, 2006 at 2:01 PM

  In the old days, they were called spinsters. Then they got hip with bachelorette. To insecure married women, the term was slut---still is.

  So, you’re saying that you’re not a young fur seal kept from the breeding territory by older males? Be completely honest, dave.

  The bachelor thing is really interesting. Until the bachelor age arrived, women did most of the shopping for the men in their lives.  American men have pretty much always had simple uniforms.  Concern for finery was considered effete and possible grounds for a beating in fifties American male culture.

  The large group of unmarried men, however, became a hot demographic and were groomed as a consumer market. The initial role of Playboy magazine (like most magazines) was to sell products. The babe in the middle was a way for men to buy a magazine featuring fancy watches, and silk ties and deny that they were gay, or to be more fair---to assert their heterosexuality.

  James Bond was the pinnacle of bachelordom.

  Now, most Americans have no idea that men ever worried about people wondering if they were gay because they talk about clothes and shoes. Though American men do still wear “salmon” and “shrimp” colored shirts that are suspiciously “pink”.

  Posted by wileywitch on Mar 1, 2006 at 10:11 PM

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