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Challenging the Myths About the US Women's Movement

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Challenging the Myths About the US Women's Movement @mnis Revue de Civilisation Contemporaine de l’Université de Bretagne Occidentale EUROPES / AMÉRIQUES http://www.univ-brest.fr/amnis/ The Focus of Feminism : Challenging the Myths about the U.S. Women’s Movement Cynthia Fuchs Epstein CUNY Graduate Center Etats-Unis [email protected] In the past year, the United States has witnessed a striking change in its political culture as the Democratic Party pitted two extraordinary candidates against each other for the party’s nomination as its Presidential candidate. The choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, a woman and a man of biracial ancestry (which automatically labels him as black in the United States) has been considered revolutionary – breaking a cultural mold. Americans have wondered whether voters’ possibly racist tendencies would affect their support for Obama and also whether underlying sexism would defeat a candidacy of Hillary Clinton. It is my view that sexism, some of it still lurking in everyday life, some of it orchestrated by right-wing ideologues, was responsible for the defeat of Clinton, and that she was a victim of the same biases directed against the women’s movement in the United States (and perhaps elsewhere in the world) and its late leader Betty Friedan. The attacks on Betty Friedan, founder of the National Organization for Women in 1966 in the United States, and on Hillary Clinton during her campaign in 2007-8, had not only to do with their agendas, but also with their presumed motivations, manners, and appearance. The shape of Clinton’s legs, the fact that she sometimes changed her hairstyle, and an image of her as humorless and harsh were all the subjects of repetitive media coverage. Whispering campaigns (for which there are no citations!) questioned her sexuality, and condemned her for remaining married to President Bill Clinton despite his alleged 1 infidelity. Similarly, Betty Friedan, was repeatedly described as unattractive, 1 insinuating that women’s movement activists offered a feminist agenda because their appearance and personalities made them unattractive to men. In spite of such mindless critiques, the women’s movement was successful in achieving major social changes, most notably in opening opportunities for women to obtain equal education and to work in the crafts and technological occupations formerly limited to men as well as in the professions. Further, the movement forced changes in many norms, permitting women to enter the public sphere and reach political positions only a tiny number of them had achieved before. Hillary Clinton and Betty Friedan each faced many attacks from those on the political Right, as well as on the political Left. The Right insisted that women made their own choices to make family roles primary and work secondary in their lives, and so were uninterested in career education and advancement. On the Left, and especially in academia in the U.S., many individuals have accused the feminist movement on being oriented primarily to the concerns and interests of middle-class white women. I believe that both sets of views are myths that are demonstrably wrong. This paper focuses on Betty Friedan and the woman’s movement. Although Hillary Clinton did not win nomination as the Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, I believe her near-success was due, in large part, to the achievements of the American women’s movement and the resulting breakthroughs in the status and opportunity structure for women in the United States and elsewhere. Beginnings of the Movement The push for women’s equality that resurfaced in the late 1960s in the United States after the first wave of feminism resulted in women achieving the vote in 1920 was touched off by the Civil Rights movement that sought rights for Black Americans. As is well known now, the 1960s were a time when several U.S. Presidents backed civil rights legislation and had the political support needed for it. This constituted the political opportunity structure within which women’s rights were renegotiated. It was the time of school desegregation and of the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. President John F. Kennedy had backed a Civil Rights bill to extend the rights of black people in the U.S. Although Kennedy was assassinated before he could act on it, his successor, President Johnson, maneuvered the bill through Congress as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII of the act guaranteed equality in employment to Americans no matter what their race, national origin, or sex. The inclusion of sex in the bill was accidental. In fact, its introduction by Senator Howard W. Smith of Virginia, a southerner opposed to civil rights legislation, was meant to draw opposition that would kill the entire bill 2. The addition of the word « sex » to the bill did draw jeering laughter from some of Smith’s colleagues but it also motivated several women members to mobilize the support needed to pass the bill, providing the mechanism for extreme social change with respect to the rights of women. The Act established the 1 Only recently the writer Christina Hoff Sommers, in a September 17, 2008 article in the New York newspaper The Sun, described her as a « stocky, disheveled volatile,…iconoclast ». 2 Pedriana, Nicholas, « From Protective to Equal Treatment : Legal Framing Processes and Transformation of the Women's Movement in the 1960s », American Journal of Sociology , 111, May 2006, p. 1733. 2 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) with the power to establish guidelines for enforcement, and later, some authority to litigate violations. For the 40 years since passage of the Act, the feminist agenda has had its ups and downs and attacks on the woman’s movement – now, hundreds of organizations devoted to supporting women’s rights – continue, with ridicule and invective from opponents, aided by infighting among various factions within the woman’s movement. In particular, some women writers have attacked the movement for being too centered on the needs and concerns of middle class white women rather than minority women or those who are economically disadvantaged (Erenreich and Hochschild XXXX). Some even condemn white professional women as exploiters of the minority women serving in their homes as housekeepers and nannies. The facts are totally contrary to these myths. Friedan, along with other feminist activists, was responsible for the strategies that brought most of the strides forward made in the past 40 years for minority and working class women. This piece of history remains hidden and unknown or has been disregarded by critics of the women’s movement who suggest that the movement has served the middle class and not women of color or the poor. A look back at history of the National Organization for Women, the first of the many organizations that now serve women’s interests, shows how from the very beginning it included minority women in positions of leadership, fighting for their rights and championing the cause of poor and working class women. The Beginning of the Woman’s Movement in the United States The book Betty Friedan wrote, The Feminine Mystique , published in 1963, made her very visible, and immediately a potential leader for change. Lawyers in government who had championed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 approached her to form an NAACP 3 for women, which would provide momentum and political will to help achieve the goals of the Act. Friedan’s book told the story of a generation of American women who lacked a sense of identity and purpose when not employed outside the home and it soon became a best seller, selling over a million copies, and identifying a sea of discontent among American women. In her book, Friedan labeled this « the problem that has no name »4, and also attacked stereotypes of women in society and in the works of academic social scientists. It was not surprising that the book touched the nerves of women who became housewives after World War II, many because it was difficult for them to get meaningful employment in terms of job content and salary. Those who had been recruited to take the place of men during the war in non-traditional (for women) war industry work, were expected, indeed were forced, to relinquish their jobs to the men coming home from war. The women who remained in the paid labor force were segregated in a narrow range of jobs, almost all of which were « dead-end » in that they provided no opportunity for advancement in authority or wages. Then, as now, few men were employed in such « women’s jobs » as telephone operators, secretaries, factory work in food processing and, somewhat more skilled, elementary school teaching. Women were extremely underrepresented in government, the professions and 3 This is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the organization responsible for legal cases and the litigation that resulted in desegregating schools in the South in the United States. 4 Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique. N.Y, W.W. Norton and Co., 1963. 3 business except at lower levels. The proportion of women who were elected officials was miniscule – no more than two women served in the U.S. Senate at any time until 1987 (and most of them were widows of men who had served in the Senate). Furthermore, before the 1960s many laws and practices resulted in discrimination against women in the areas of property rights and reproductive freedom. These issues had been raised by feminists during the first woman’s movement by such activists as Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the landmark Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Equality has been a contested concept in the United States, as in many other societies.
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