Feminism and Feminist Theory

Simone DeBeauvoir once wrote: "One is not born, but becomes a woman". What she has outlined is what Betty Friedan popularized: that there is more to a woman and her role in society than to be "feminine". After World War II, Ms. Friedan points out, a "feminine mystique" came to be accepted: marriage at an early age, children at an early age- and then growing old with grace and dignity, keeping house for the working husband and the demanding children. In fact, she begins her book by stating: "I came to realize that something is very wrong with the way American women are trying to live their lives today...The problems and the satisfactions of their lives...and the way education had contributed to them, simply did not fit the image of the modern American woman, as she was written about in women's magazines, studied and analyzed in classrooms and clinics." (Friedan, p. 9) There was a strange discrepancy between the reality and the image. And, it was growing more and more difficult to live up to the image. The rest of the book really makes the point that women should not have to live up to any sort of image, real or imagined, but learn to live their lives in a way that provides satisfaction. "The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive."

Ms. Friedan is not alone, of course, is complaining that the definition for femininity is provided by men, or by glamour magazines whose pages are as unreal as the petulant feminine (but not feminist) editors. Femininity, as women told Ms. Friedan, is dull and boring, especially for those who have gone to, and matriculated from college. Of course, in those days (unlike today, when law schools, pre-Med and MBA classes have the highest complement of women ever) a girl went to college to learn to be a wife and mother, and only secondarily to become (as Mme De Beauvoir points out so succinctly) a woman. Examples are given of frustrated professors at smith and Barnard, two "women's colleges" who could not understand the ambition-less classes of girls they were facing. "Two out of three girls who entered college were dropping out before they even finished...those who stayed, even the most able, showed no signs of wanting to be anything other than suburban housewives and mothers." (Friedan, p. 150) There are those, upon reading this, who would complain: "What's wrong with wanting to be a wife and mother?" The answer today's feminist writers and lecturers would give is- There is nothing wrong with that, but there is more to life than coitus, breast feeding, and diaper changing. Women should neither be using sex as an offensive or a defensive weapon. On the other hand, most women (until very recently) were not interested in politics or economics. As Gloria Steinem reports: "(On writing) a report on women's economic development...I began to notice that readers of its proposed table of contents received 'economics' like a sleeping pill, and 'economic development' with all the enthusiasm usually reserved for a hydroelectric dam." (Steinem, p. 12) The point is whether this is merely unease with a "non-feminine" subject, or whether the women truly felt that tradition had left everything to do with money to the "menfolk". This is where the whole idea of female empowerment, or, if you will, "feminism" comes into play.

"The term was first used by Alexandre Dumas the younger in 1872, in a pamphlet, L'Homme-Femme , to designate the emerging movement for women's rights." (Grendon, p. 107) Actually, the feminist movement in modern times came out of the family room, so to speak, after the publication of john Stuart Mill's Subjection of Women in 1869. "This book became the Bible of Feminism in every Western country, including the U.S." (Grendon, p.111) The idea was that equality for women should be considered a moral problem, not a political or sexual or social one. Friedan, in essence, was a pioneer only in the sense that she brought up to date what had been going on for nearly a century. She put her finger on the feminine malaise, so to speak.

Who preceded Friedan? In the U.S. there was Elizabeth Cade Stanton, who, in 1848 held the first Women's Rights Congress in Seneca Falls, N.Y. But, rather than a "feminist" she and others who followed her were considered "suffragettes" since their principal goal was to get voting rights for women (which did not happen until the 19^th Amendment was passed in 1920!) Prior to Friedan's book, the best-seller on women and feminism was written by a man- Ashley Montagu, a distinguished American anthropologist, who published The Natural Superiority of Women in 1953. The basic theme of the book was that the times were ready for women to show that they can excel.

There were role models for those women who wanted more than what the Europeans referred to as Kinder,Kuche und Kirche (Children, Kitchen and Church). The first female cabinet member was Frances Perkins, appointed Secretary of Labor by President Roosevelt. Clare Boothe (who later married Henry Luce, the publisher of TIME and LIFE) was a noted playwright, Dorothy Parker and Lillian Helmann were writers and "wits", and Jaqueline Cochran and Amelia Earhart were the first "daredevil" women aviators.

However, feminism (as opposed to suffrage) was not really politicized until Betty Friedan's book in 1963.and, as happens with anything that is considered "political" the sniping at Betty Friedan began. As one critic wrote: "Friedan's portrayal of herself as so totally trapped by the feminine mystique was part of a reinvention of herself as she wrote and promoted 'The Feminine Mystique'." (Horowitz, p. 2) In addition, he commented: "Friedan offered a feminist reworking of important themes in a genre of social criticism, including the notion of a faltering masculinity. (Horowitz, p. 3) Most of Horowitz' attacks are on Friedan's objectives- that she and "The Feminine Mystique" not merely politicized feminism, but turned it to the Political Left. While this may be true, given a number of accurate sources, one can only conjecture that the idea of feminism could not move to the Right, strongly occupied by the likes of Phyllis Schlafly and Anita Bryant, women whose staunch conservative roots prefer to continue the priorities that raising a family and nurturing children and husband should precede any political or social involvement.

However, Gerda Lerner, a union activist, who was present at the founding of NOW, which Friedan headed for many years, wrote Friedan: "You have done for women what Rachel Carson did for birds and trees." But, Lerner had a legitimate complaint: "I have one reservation about your treatment of your subject: you address yourself solely to the problems of middle class, college-educated women. This approach was one of the shortcomings of the suffragette movement....Working women, especially Negro women, labor not only under the disadvantages imposed by the feminine mystique, but under the more pressing disadvantages of economic discrimination. To leave them out of consideration of the problem or to ignore the contributions they can make toward a solution, is something we simply cannot afford to do. (Horowitz, p. 22)

Ms. Lerner is right, of course, because feminism and the "feminine mystique" are somewhat limited in the original scope of Ms. Friedan's book She was a college graduate, and the women she interviews in the book are all college graduates, or at least have attended college for a period of time. Surely, the "mystique" of being a model home maker is something African-American women of that period could not recognize.

There were, and still are, few "working class" women working in the forefront of Women's Lib, the ERA amendment movement (which failed) or any other attempt to provide equality for women socially as well as economically. There are a few minority women who have been spokesmen over the years, principally the late Barbara Jordan, Congresswoman from Texas. But then, she was a college graduate herself, and could not truly be a spokeswoman or a role model for the undereducated, or uneducated black women in America who worked as maids, waitresses, janitors, and other menial occupations, only to come to a house emptied of any dominant male.
"The controversy and conflicting objectives that surround feminist theory...have been further complicated by critiques of 'white' women of color who argue that the experience and objectives of members of society who are marginalized by race or class are not well represented in the conceptual framework of feminist theory." (Goldberger, p. 8)

What is missing, even in Ms. Friedan's books, discussion about feminism and the redundancy of "mystique" is that there are not sufficient socializing institutions "that communicate to young girls how womanhood is to be defined., how and what they are to know, and how they are to make choices in their lives." (Goldberger, p. 4) One of the problems is that there must be a differentiation between feminism and femininity.(This is unfortunately true in much of the make-up of the National Organization of Women - NOW- which has many of its most vocal leadership avowed and open lesbians.) Feminism should be defined merely as a movement to achieve equality in all aspects of human life- social, economic, psychological, social. Femininity is merely a differentiation in character and behavior, even in physiological differences, between the genders. The cynic would say Feminists are strident. Femininity is complaisant. Feminism is activist. Femininity is passive, but not in an unpleasant sense. "In her classic essay, 'A gender diary', the critic Ann Snitow (1992) writes of a 'central divide' among feminists about the value of femininity. She contrasts two women's responses to feminism. 'Now I can be a woman,' says one who feels she need no longer pretend to be a man. 'Now I don't have to be a woman any more,' says another who counts on feminism to free her from the constraints of gender." (Goldberger, p. 257) The goal of the second woman is for her voice to be heard in a society where gender makes no difference, while the first woman seems to want to "maximize" or even celebrate gender differences.

Maximizing those differences makes Friedan squirm, as she writes: "Why is it never said that the really crucial function, the really important role women serve as housewives is to buy more things for the house. ...The perpetuation of housewifery, the growth of the feminine mystique, makes sense (and dollars) when one realizes that women are the chief customers of American business." (Friedan, p. 206-7) She makes fun of business and advertising executives mounting a multi-billion dollar campaign to keep women in the home, or at least, to make them have careers at home. Education, these moguls feel, is ruining shopping.

In addition to education as a bane to American business, the feminine mystique, so Friedan claims, is responsible for having created a whole generation of "passive" children. "I do not think it is a coincidence that the increasing passivity - and dreamlike unreality- of today's children has become so widespread in the same years that the feminine mystique encouraged the great majority of American women...to give up their own dreams, and even their own education, to live through their children." (Friedan, p. 288)

Of course there have been enough novels written about how badly this sometimes turns out: the boy who grew up to be a bad businessman, because that was his father's wish, instead of a great violinist, which was the boy's, or the boy who ended up in a mental hospital to frustrate his mother's dreams of becoming a great violinist. This doesn't mean that every mother's son grows up to be the star of "Psycho". It also doesn't intentionally turn the mothers into hunters for a bottle from which they could release a magical genie.

Over the past fifteen years, a subtle and devastating change seems to have taken place...a new and frightening passivity, softness, boredom in American children." (Friedan, p. 282) In the years after the book's publication the change may well have been reversed, with "soccer moms" now more active in promoting the competitive spirit of their children. But, again, this is a transference, with the mothers seeing in their running, sliding, throwing, goal-kicking children a freedom they never enjoyed. Whether they could have, is another subject altogether.

This brings up the dichotomy of feminism versus motherhood. Can you have one without the other? Can they co-exist? If feminism is thought of as strident (and many cynics point to Betty Friedan' s not attractive features as proof) then how does this stridency, this "rough-around-the-edges persona match the Norman Rockwell ideal of American motherhood? Perhaps what is needed, some thirty-seven years after publication, is a redefining of the 21sdt century's "feminine mystique" and how it fits into today's society.

Feminism is a fear of being left out. It is the male habit, hard to break, of men retiring to the "smoking room" after dinner, leaving the wives to clean up, chatter, and knit. Feminism, it would seem, salutes the men who become "house husbands" so their wives could find gender equality in management. However, the feminist who demands and obtains equality with the male (especially in the business world) is then regarded as "being one of the boys". "Says Elaine Chin, Vice President for Prime Time Planning at ABC who wears Brooks Brothers jackets: 'what man would listen to me if I wore dainty clothes? I've got to boss these guys around.'" (Auletta, p. 310)

A look at today's television- which is regarded as a "family entertainment" medium, finds that women are not "one of the boys". "The status of women has hardly improved in TV land...37% of prime time characters are women...68% of TV shows have no women as producers...and 72% have no female writers." (Lauzen, p. 79) Of course, there is Oprah Winfrey, but she seems to be regarded more as an icon rather than a woman.

There is another serious problem with feminism: It discourages the elderly woman, who is no longer like her ancestor, bent over, wrinkled, shuffling along, missing teeth. "Life after fifty or sixty (for women) is another country, as different as adolescence from childhood....Feminism has failed to recognize women beyond family age as a center of activism, and feminist theory." (Steinem, p. 251) In other words, feminism seems to have been designed for those women just starting out in life, or still young enough to be able to withstand change. It seems inappropriate to leave out the older women as "over the hill" and non-persuasive in feminist theory.

The fact is that older women are generally thought of as useless and not role models for younger women who want to experience a sense of equality. It is exactly the older women whose life experiences could help explain why equality is not a meaningless passion, but a worthwhile goal for any woman who feels that she deserves more than being, as Simone DeBeauvoir entitled her book, "The Second Sex". (she wrote her answer to "What is a woman?" by saying "I am")

One can look at various news stories in papers and magazines currently, and see very little about the continuing efforts for "legal" equality for women, Affirmative action was supposed to equalize opportunities for minorities and women, but it has not really worked. Women CEOs are still a rarity. Writing has slacked off. Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan are busy working on other projects. NOW, as was mentioned earlier, had become a preserve for militant lesbians which, to the majority of women, was the worst possible scenario.

Perhaps Friedan's closing chapter, dealing with self-realization, has been achieved. There are more two-worker families, more women in the work-force, the glass ceiling, while not totally shattered, has severe cracks in it. statistics now show that women do not drop out of school to marry and bear children. In fact, they are marrying later in life, and restricting the number of children often postponing childbirth in favor of a career.

Friedan says, in her final paragraph: "Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves?" (Friedan, p. 378) Still, just as DeBeauvoir's mysterious answer to "What is a Woman" turns out to be "I am!" just what is the "themselves" that women want to, or can be? There are,. Surely, a number of Sally Rides in the country, Look at science fairs and see the growing number of female participants- and winners. Hardly a little girl, when asked what she wants to grow up to be, now responds with "A mommy!" The point is that feminism may have succeeded despite itself and its strident manners. Perhaps it is the entire social society that has changed, and not so subtly, from a male preserve to equal opportunities for all, reagrdless of gender.

However, before celebrating true gender equality, one should look back again at Ms Lerner's letter and her complaint that feminism is passing African-American (and by inference other minority) women by. There are few minority women who have made it to, or near, the top in American business- in advertising, in magazine editing, in publishing romance novels, and certainly in the movies , on records, and on TV. But, even on television, there are still many blanks which seem reserved for white women- very few minority anchors (except in those metropolitan areas where viewers need to be attracted- areas like Los Angeles and new York, Houston and Phoenix. What's more, the decision makers and producers who hire minorities- or don't hire them- are mainly white, with the obvious exception of Spike Lee. There are no major leaders of any woman's movement who is black or Hispanic, even though there are some high-ranking minorities on Clinton's Cabinet, and, until her defeat in 1998, there was a black female senator from Illinois. Yes, there are two women on the Supreme Court (but their pol9tics tend to cancel one another out).

So, where is this new mystique found? Try the Internet. "Ellen Pack believes a woman's place is on the Internet. 'You're going to see women driving online commerce, and even potentially usage, says Pack, founder and vice president of Women.com Networks, the No,. 1 women's web site." (Hammel, p. 1) Rosy as this prognostication is about Women.com,. and a second women-oriented network online, Ivillage,com., both companies are losing money by the millions. It may be start up woes, it could be lack of interest and patronage by women. Ivillage, despite so much red ink, has filed for a $46 million IPO, figuring that it can draw advertisers, merchants, and other money-making activities that appeal to the "liberated" woman.

These women that are truly liberated are not likely to spend much time on the computer, except for working with other business associates the world over. The fact that there are fewer home-bound women, spawning latch-key kids, postponing any children at all, has also caused the drop in ratings for the Home Shopping networks, because- except for the elderly and those who truly want to remain housewives, the number of viewers has continued to decline.

Is there one area where feminism has struck out? The Catholic Church for one. While there are fewer and fewer nuns, the possibilities of women becoming priests will not happen- certainly not as long as John Paul II and his expected-to-be conservative successor, are in charge. There are some militant feminist Catholic women who are still petitioning their Church for renewed consideration. Other churches have relented there are now female rabbis in Reform and even a few Conservative congregations. Episcopalians have opened the gates to allow some women to offer the sacraments. There are a few black women in the Southern Christian Leadership scene The Evangelicals and the ultra conservative Christian right are resisting, as is, of course The Mormon Church.

Women have indeed come a long way since 1963 and Betty Friedan's "Feminine Mystique", but as she would be the first to admit, some of that mystique lingers, and until it is totally erased from modern society, there will be women who believe that they are the second sex, and that God did not create woman, and take a rib from her to create Adam. Friedan's message that is still pertinent and relevant is that a woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man's advance in the professions, but by refusing to compete with men at all.

Feminism is not competition with men, any more than it is competition with other women, Its theory is simply to eliminate the historical barriers that have intimidated women from seeking to reach the top of whatever they want to do, and wherever they want to do it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Auletta, Ken: Three Blind Mice: How the Networks Lost Their Way (1991) New York: Random House

Friedan, Betty: The Feminine Mystique (1963) New York: W.W. Norton & Company

Goldberger, Nancy, Tarule, Jill, Clinchy, Blythe, and Belenky, Mary (editors): Knowledge, Difference and Power (1996) New York: BasicBooks

Grendon,Felix: "Feminism" Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. 11

Hammel, Sarah: "Online Feminine Mystique" US News and World Report online, March 1, 1999

Horowitz, Daniel: "Rethinking Betty Friedan and the Feminine Mystique" American Quarterly Magazine online at: www.www.muse.jhu.edu/demo/American_quarterly/48.1ho

Lauzon, Martha: "TV Land and Women" MediaWeek Magazine, Nov. 18, 1996

Steinem, Gloria: Moving Beyond Words (1994) New York: Simon & Schuster