Gail Collins by Marta Steele
Anna Quindlen by Marta Steele
Dearest Betty, Gloria, Hillary, Madeleine, and even
Elizabeth Warren:
I went to a panel
celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Betty's The Feminine Mystique. You know, the
book that launched a zillion desperate white housewives out of suburbia (the
poorer classes of women were already working at menial jobs) into the workplace
because they wanted jobs. A domestic professional (housewife?!) herself, Betty
had other fish to fry when she skewered women's magazines, for which she was
writing at the time, and consumerism in general.
And women visited
psychiatrists far more often than men back in those days, I remember reading.
It came out more
recently that Friedan was in an abusive marriage when she wrote the book.
Beyond that, in the 1997 edition, she turned to the masculine persuasion and
realized what confined closets they inhabited: work and exhaustion and little
else. This needed to change, too, despite advances already made that had
obliged some higher-educated dads to pitch in and get to know their kids and so
on. It frees up the joy of parenting for men, too, and they deserve it--all
levels of society and not just the tippy-tops.
The panel, which
filled the small auditorium to standing-room capacity, was held by DC's Center
for American Progress on May 23 and starred two icons, Gail Collins, the well-known New York Times op-ed columnist, and Anna
Quindlen, the popular and prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction. Both
have published numerous books and both had much to say about "where we are
now," us girls (oops).
The Civil Rights
Act of 1964 showed us how and before we knew it, record numbers of desperate
housewives were happily (?) working and two-thirds of families included women
wage earners.
Today, the United
States is behind the rest of the world in women's involvement in both the
workplace and society at large, the only developed nation that does not grant
family leave. Our agenda for the twenty-first century is paid leave and other
forms of improved treatment of women.
Anna Quindlen recalled the frown on her
mother's face as she watched her reading The
Feminine Mystique with deep absorption. Collins also looked back, to the
period after World War II, when "anything was possible" for both sexes. Her
mother regretted not having lived Collins's life.
Today women are
living a "synthesis," said Quindlen. Collins praised the millennial generation
as "ahead of us" (but under what circumstances did we live, FCOL?); this
"kickass group" is asking more questions about the work-life balance and
therefore "won't make the same mistakes that we did." They are the true
synthesis people.
Though today's
women lawyers don't face the sexism that confronted Sandra Day O'Connor when
she graduated from law school and sought employment, there are still far more
women associates than partners in firms.
And where do we
go from here?
Said Collins,
early childhood education is most relevant to upward mobility for all.
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