- Ed EDU at the office of the Dean of Women at University of Kansas present a feminist perspective. This program provides a forum for women to speak out on issues, which concern them. Listeners will have an opportunity to participate in the program by calling the KENU open line at 864-4530. Now here's the moderator for a feminist perspective, KU Dean of women, Emily Taylor. - Good evening and welcome to a feminist perspective. I'm Emily Taylor, Dean of Women at KU and the moderator of this weekly series of programs. A feminist perspective is sponsored by The Women's Resource and Career Planning Center located in the Dean of Women's office, 222 Strong Hall. Our office number is 864-3552. We hope that through this program you will become familiar with some of the many resources available to you through our office. We are concerned with anything which concerns women and have gathered people and materials to help you with questions ranging from career planning and counseling to legal rights and current legislation to medical services for women. I hope that you will call or come in person soon so that we can find out what's on your mind and what kind of services you need. The goal of this program as the announcer has told you is to provide a forum for women themselves to speak publicly on issues of concern to them and help inform other women and men of the movement which is remaking the shape and substance of women's and men's lives throughout the world. Our topic for discussion tonight is the women's movement. What is it and why? In a sense, this is a subject that we have been discussing now for almost a year on these programs. So in a way it's a recap and also an update of what's going on. Our guests tonight, our guest panelists, are Mary Mitchelson, senior in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Casey Ikey and Janet Sears from our office, and Eleanor Virgil, a faculty wife, would that be a good way of putting it, Eleanor? - That's one way. - Both Janet and Eleanor are mothers. Mary is in school and Casey is in her first year of professional life. As you probably know, two days ago on August the 26th, we had a considerable amount of publicity about what was variously called a women's strike day and women's equality day. The president of the United States proclaimed it Women's Equality Day. This is what we would prefer to call it. It was the 51st anniversary of the passage of the women's suffrage amendment to the Constitution, the 19th amendment. So it seems to fitting tonight that we begin our program with general discussion of the women's movement. And I'd like to start by asking our panelists each one separately how did you get involved in the women's movement? What made you at first aware that there was any kind of a problem that would require a women's movement? Who wants to begin? How about you, Janet? - Well, as an undergraduate, I was in a class with some other women and I read some of the first feminist literature, "The Feminine Mystique," and "The Second Sex." And I was very interested in what it had to say. It seemed, you know, kind of an intellectual game at that point though, because I didn't really feel myself that I had ever suffered any sort of discrimination at that point, but soon after that, I was in graduate school, had been promised a fellowship, orally at that point, for the fall, and when it became known that I was pregnant, I immediately lost my fellowship to a man who did not have the academic qualifications that I did because I was told that obviously I wasn't serious about pursuing a professional career since I had the nerve to get pregnant. That was, that meant that I was going to retire and stay home forever, I guess. So then it became more of a real personal involvement than it had been previously. And since then, I've become aware of many ways in which I am discriminated against and my involvement has continued. - How about you, Casey? - Well, I can almost remember the exact day. On December 16th, 1969, I only remember that because the thing that really made me aware was a news, a magazine article. I think it was a Look Magazine and the author was Richard E Farson and I'll never forget his name I don't think. The article was entitled "The Rage of Women." And I was doing some research in the library not on women's rights or anything having to do with women at all, but I came across this article, I guess the title intrigued me, so I read it. And I found that, that he had really put into words things that I couldn't, or had never articulated to myself or to anyone else and things that I hadn't really, I had felt that they were there, but I hadn't really been able to, you know, articulate them. I can remember he mentioned in the article several ways which many women become aware of their own anger and frustration and thus become aware of the women's movement. I know he mentioned that every woman has a boiling point when she she'll be able to say to herself, now I understand what it's all about. I think that this may happen when she realizes she didn't get a promotion or a fellowship or whatever the case may be merely because she's a woman or when she is counseled to become a nurse instead of a doctor or an elementary school teacher instead of a university professor, or even when her her husband or a boyfriend or her boss may treat her as some kind of a lesser being because she's the woman instead of treating her as an equal kind of a person with equal qualifications. Mainly I think the difference between, I think the difference between women's limited roles, what they permit her to be and what women know inside that they could be are the main sources of the frustration which leads, in turn leads to women's awareness of the women's movement. - How about you, Mary? - Well, I think I begin by reading some magazine articles and then I went into some feminist literature and began reading things that I was feeling people were, as you said Casey, articulating things that I had known but hadn't really been able to express. Then I just started talking about it with my friends and also started attending some of the commission on the status of women programs here at school and became involved in that organization and took a course on rhetoric, woman's rights, read some more of the literature, and just as I got more into it, I realized that that was more and more what I was feeling and it really did have something to say that was important to me. - Eleanor? - Well, my experience is a bit different. I guess you would call it perhaps an awareness by hindsight. I went to university and got a degree, prepared myself to be an elementary teacher, married a very handsome upcoming young man who was headed for a university professorship and very quickly in succession produced two children, and all of a sudden, one day I woke up, you know, and he was off having very interesting relationships and vital experiences and I was washing diapers and not feeling terribly challenged. So I went then into a great period of frustration and I think that the end result of that was that I finally one day found out that I was a person too and began to see some of the literature about the feminist movement and the words "women's liberation" and began to make some contacts with some people who were involved in the movement. - Very interesting, huh? All of you mentioned the literature, coming across something which you read, which made you aware of it. Do you have a feeling that there are still a good many of people who just pass over what's being written? - Well, I think that the literature just articulates, as Casey said, feelings that we've all had, you know, but prior to that, maybe we felt like they were personal failings in ourselves, you know, what's wrong with me? This is supposed to be fulfilling. This is what I was supposed to grow up and be, and here I am and it, you know, it's not all it was, it was talked about to be. So I think that it helps you make the bridge from feeling that, you know, that there's something wrong with you and then it's a personal problem to realizing that it's a problem that all women face and that's a very helpful thing to find out. I think that, you know, establishes some self worth and gives you something to struggle against and some other women to struggle with. That was very important to me to find out that there wasn't anything particularly wrong with me, that this was a reaction to my sex and not to any personal qualities that I had and I was glad to find that out. - I think there are a lot of people, a lot of women that I associate with who are housewives who stay away from the literature because it scares them. They know their reality is pretty well set and they really, you know, they don't give any time or energy to the question of, am I a liberated person or is it even possible for me because immediately, you know, the kid's crying and, you know, the dishes are dirty and the floor has to be scrubbed. So I think it becomes a point out of reality for an awful lot of women who are my age and older. - To what extent do you think that the reality has actually been set for, really for anyone? - Well, I think for someone of my age or over, I'm 32, we didn't have near the freedom of contraception that we do today. And I think that's a very important factor. I think biologically, the woman was kind of tabbed, you know, in previous years. I think now, you know, this has been one of the growing things that a woman now really does have an opportunity to make some choices about that and I think that's been very significant. - It is quite possible of course, that the woman might make this choice of marriage and two children. I mean, even zero population growth wouldn't object to that, would they? - Right, and I hope the women's liberation group won't object to that. I think that's one of the real dangers that the women's liberation group faces is the possibility of a narrowing of a scope of what is within the realm of possibility for women. And I think that, you know, what true liberation talks about is a broadening scope for that. And I think a lot of housewives and people who are caught sense a great frustration because they don't feel that, you know, they feel that the women's liberation, the young movement of women's liberation does not speak to their needs. - You referred to it as a young movement. Is it really a young movement? I know many people think of it this way. How old is the movement? - Well, of course the movement started in 1848 with the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls. - First part of that, boom, part of it. Okay, so that's been what? 150 years approximately? There's some interesting speculations on the cyclical nature of the women's movement with that's what's usual, you know, it surfaces and dies down again, but perhaps it hasn't died down in any way but that there has to be a period of consolidation of gains. For instance, I've mentioned before, 51 years ago, the great movement of course, was for me, the real push to pass the 19th amendment after which there was what seemed like a relaxation, as you didn't read very much about it, but at the same time people were working and were consolidating the gains that they had made. And there are a whole variety of reasons, of course, for the resurfacing in the last decade. - When I mentioned the word young, I was referring more, not to the age of the movement, but the age of the woman who has kind of spearheaded the present movement, because that I believe really did dawn after I was out of college. I can't believe that if it had been around and there had been anything that I could have gotten a hold of, that I would have been as naive about my possibilities and my potential as a person at that time. - Where incidentally did you go to school? - I went to Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma. - And there was no one there that, no models of women who were-- - Well, there was a little elderly woman on the staff teaching homemaking, and she was not noted for anything terribly exciting, so I steered clear of that. - In a recent New York Law Review, there was an article called "Discrimination by Law" that began I think in a very interesting way. I'd like to quote a sentence from it. It says, "women's liberation is a slogan, a challenge, a movement, a threat, a cliche, an enigma, or something else depending on who you are. It's not surprising that women's liberation connotes different things to different people. Their perceptions of it reflect differing social and cultural backgrounds and varying levels of sensitivity to the disadvantages inflicted on some members of society solely for being female." I thought it was an interesting beginning because all those things, I'm sure we've all heard a slogan, a challenge, a movement, a threat, a cliche, an enigma. So much does depend on where you are, the period of time, what your background is. For instance, I would have to take exception to your ideas at the recent resurgence of the interest in women's movement was from youth. I think this is true of the radical element, but actually the people you've mentioned, you have Betty Fordan for example, is a middle-aged woman. All the founders of the most responsible women's organizations are just that. In fact, it's been one of the disadvantages of trying to bring youth into the movement with great many people saying it's just for well-educated middle-class middle-aged women. That's it's really, of course, not just for anyone and by now all classes and all ages certainly have joined, each with their own perspective. I take it that the women's movement has made something change in your lives. Would you like to comment on what kinds of changes have occurred as a result of your awareness of the resurgence of the women's movement? - Well, I think something in my life that alludes to something that Eleanor was mentioning is the idea of parenting as opposed to motherhood. You know, I really have changed my attitude in who is responsible for the nurturing of the child. And I think it's an, it can be an enriching experience if both parents are actively involved. I think it can enrich the kinds of experiences that men have in turn in their assuming more responsibility and freeing some of my time to explore the kinds of things. So I think the tremendous responsibility I felt in the early years, the first two years at least of my daughter's life, I went to be everything to her, that that was my area of responsibility to nurture and provide all the kinds of experiences for her to now feeling I should share that equally with her father and pushing very much to see that that happens. I think something that I read recently an article called "Cutting Loose" talks about that women's liberation is really personal liberation and it's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. I think that that's really hard that so many of those attitudes are so ingrained that you just have to constantly recheck what you're doing and make sure that it's not based on tradition and things that were taught to you by parents and expectations that really are based on your feelings or rationally. Because often times I would find myself, you know, once again, assuming a total responsibility not because Kelly's father didn't want to do that, but just because for years, that's what I've been taught and in times of crisis, I would, you know, once again move in and feel that whole responsibility. So I think that that's one of the places that the women's movement has affected me. And I'm still working on making sure that my own attitudes and feelings are ones that are more rationally based than what I've been taught over years and years, you know, Terry Lee dolls and Barbie dolls, and, you know, all kinds of preparation for my role as mothering. - Didn't you also, Eleanor were married and had children at the time, you said you became aware of what kind of change did the movement make in your life? - Well, I think that it's run the gamut from, you know, a real freedom and a real finding of myself and finding a real okayness about that to the other end of being very frustrating and a very frustrating painful experience because of the reality of the situation. You know, my situation was pretty well defined and to take, you know, to hear this, hear the idea and the scope of what's possible when your role is already set presents some sort of a crisis because if you tried to take it up a bit, you really put in jeopardy the relationships you have already set up, the roles that you have worked for, you know, 10, 15 years to establish, and they're very comfortable roles and they're happy roles, and so, you know, it becomes frustrating. - Eleanor, I think the same kinds of frustrations can develop even if you don't have an established, you know, role playing situation, like a marriage or something, because I know that in one way, women's liberation has has heightened my awareness of the different choices and variables that are really involved in women's lives which they need to take advantage of. And I think that women aren't really taught to plan for their future. I mean, like we've been saying before that they kind of go along and accept this, you know, predetermined future of marriage, motherhood, whatever and they're not taught to really look beyond that. And there's, you know, there's kind of a big, I know that that say, when I was a freshmen, it was, and I know that many other young women, you know, felt this way or thought this way too, that, you know, you assume that you would get married and have children as soon as possible or wait a year or something. And then, you know, after that was kind of a big void. It was just kind of rosy colored and that was about it. And there wasn't, you know, you couldn't define anything in that except that it was supposed to be a good ending. And I think it's given me, you know, it's made me feel good to know that I can more freely define what my future will be or that at least I have some choice in the matter, you know, I'm not going to just fall back on some typical roles that, you know, many other women have done, but it's also heightened frustration because I've become aware of many of the drawbacks that are involved in the discrimination and things like that that are involved in making those choices too. - Well, that's true, I know. And that speaks from your experience as wife, the other speaks from mine. That's, you know, we all have gone to it from where we are, like-- - Yeah, right. - Yeah, Casey, I relate to what you're saying so well, that's what the movement has really done for me is made me stop thinking about my future more and I think of myself more as a whole person now with something to offer rather than just waiting for a man or waiting to get married and have a family that's the only thing looking forward. Now I can resist what my mother said, to keep me that I should get an education so that I have something to fall back on. - It's like the passive role in, you know, a live role too, not, you know, you're waiting for this, or you're waiting for that, you're not actively doing anything to-- - Just the now. - Yeah. - I have more charge in my own life now. - You don't agree that the cliche about the, having a choice, how's that go? Make a problem, creates a problem is true, as long as you feel that there aren't any choices, life is fairly simple no matter how frustrating it may be. You also have all commented on something without exactly saying this, but the same things that you're saying now concerning this, what some people are calling scripting, teaching roles and certain roles appropriate for certain people, it's just as true for men as it is for women, you know. - Oh, definitely. And all these written kinds of relationships about what you're talking involve them just as much and certainly are no easier for them than they are for women. I think it's sort of important to recognize, at least among the responsible elements in the women's movement. It really, it shouldn't even be called the women's movement because it is very human moment and it does involve everyone, men, women alike. - Yes, I think just as some of us have been uncomfortable with the passive role or waiting for someone else to define our lives, there are men who were very uncomfortable with having to be aggressive, bread-winning lot. You know, I think there are personal differences among people and, you know, and some people are more comfortable being more active and aggressive and others are more comfortable being passive and hopefully the movement will allow those decisions to be made on the basis of individual people and not so much on the sex of the people involved, because I think it would be just as much of a burden, you know, to know that you always had to be the aggressor. You always had to, you know, know for the rest of your life, you were not only supporting yourself, but whoever, you know, decided to hook up with. It's a live spring, then. That seems like a very weighty thing to-- - That's right and, you know, that's one of the potential problems of what's called, as I see it, as what's called the women's liberation movement because I tend to see some of the elements trying to negate or devalue the feminine roles and opt for things that have been traditionally masculine. And, you know, that is about a mistake as it is, you know, to have what what's been in the past. I mean, that would be equally, you know, that would be denying a lot of the value of the feminine essence, which I think is an important carry over in the liberation of, you know, humans because it's there and I don't think it needs to be or can be denied. - I think that is especially true when you talk about the nurturing role with children that that's something that, you know, I hope has expanded to men and not that women are not going to deny that. That's something that some men will do well and some women will do well and people will make individual decisions about that hopefully. - Is there any danger that when we talk about the feminine role, as you're a participant in essence, that people might believe that you're saying that there's something innate which is feminine and innate which is a masculine in terms of the kinds of choices that people can make or should be able to make? As defining what's feminine and what's masculine defined? Or how's it been defined first of all, I guess we might talk about. - Well, I think so some of the things have been mentioned that nurturing is certainly been defined as something women are better at than men, being passive, being more emotional, caring more about relationships and personal life, those kinds of things. But I think if you examine cross-culturally the kinds of characteristics that we define as feminine in our society are attributed to men in other societies, so I haven't seen any evidence that any kinds of human characteristics are innate. - I would say it was a definition by experience, rather than innateness. - I suppose that we haven't done in the course for our discussion so far really defined what we consider the women's movement to be in a few minutes before or conversation break, would you want to talk about that a little bit, to give some definitions, for example, what does sexism mean to you? We hear a lot about sexism. People are accused of it. - Well, I think it's someone's showing that they have predetermined attitudes about another person and the attitudes are determined by that person's sex and the things that Janet was just talking about, women being passive and this kind of thing are very much tied up with sexism. - Just non-supported assumptions about the characteristics or the capabilities or the interest or the goals or the social rules that people should play solely on the basis of sex differences. So many times when people are talking about men and women and make it sound as if all women have a set of characteristics, all men have a set of characteristics, and no one bothers to justify or to support in any way, this kind of assumption. It's just built into the culture that these things exist. - It's not only, it's assumption, but also it has to do with with expectations because, you know, it's like the self fulfilling prophecy. If someone expects a little girl to be or to do certain things, and that's, you know, what she's going to try to be and to do in order to get the kind of feedback that people need. So it's more subtle than just kind of someone making an assumption about you, but if someone makes an expectation that you're to act a certain way, I think it reinforces it even more and just kind of carries on the same thing that we've been talking about. - That is the reason that it's so easy for people to make these unjustifiable assumptions because they do see, as you're saying, that it's built into the whole system. What are the kinds of rules that each one of us is expected to play. So we'll pause now for a moment for station identification. - Most radio stations, you just tuned them in and you know what you're going to hear. A rock station, a top 40 station, a middle of the road station, a country station, but KENU provides programs other stations don't have. A different kind. - From the public radio service of the University of Kansas, KENU Lawrence. Here again is KU Dean of Women, Emily Taylor. - We're going to continue with our program tonight by talking about some of the things which women would like to see changed in a variety of areas. And it might be desirable for us at this point to, in light of our previous discussion, to comment on the subject of discrimination, because it's one thing to talk about the characteristics which people have or that other people believe that they have, and quite another matter, no matter how many differences that there may be and actually no one knows at the present time very much about these differences other than the perfectly obvious ones, but when we talk about discrimination, when people talk about discrimination, they're using this term usually in one of two senses. One of it is in, one way is in a generic sense which simply connotes different treatment of individuals solely on the basis of their sex. Simply treating them differently, either because of, regardless of the reasons, whether it's law or custom or what have you, Then there's the majority of sense of the word discrimination denoting those situations which inequality of treatment is designed to benefit one sex to the detriment of the other. And in our society, we certainly have examples of this form of discrimination, both in terms of men and in terms of women. A case in point, for instance, as far as men are concerned, the custom of the courts to almost automatically award the custody of children to the wife regardless of whether the wife or the husband would be best suited or the interests of the child that would be best cared for by doing it the other way, or the use is still made in some places on the basis of alimony although this is changing. And of course, I'm sure we can all think of lots of examples where the opposite is true. So I'd like to ask what from your experience, you people on the panel, which for those of you who have just tuned in, Janet Sears, Casey Ikey, Mary Mitchelson, and Eleanor Virgil, what kinds of things do you feel that women would like to see change in the area of education and incidentally, before they begin that, our number here is 864-4530 and we would welcome any questions or any comments that any of you would like to make anywhere along the line. 864-4530. Please feel free to call in with questions or with comments. And now let's look at for a moment specifically at the area of education and tell us what you would like and what you believe other women would like to see change in the area of education. - Well, that's, it's really a wide, a wide topic. I think the first thing I guess that comes to my mind is in the area of counseling and counseling young women or high school women, I think I've mentioned it before about how I first became aware, of one of the examples that the author of that article gave was that women are counseled to be nurses instead of doctors and school teachers instead of college professors and things like that. I think that I'd like to see high school counselors and any person that has something to do with directing a woman student or a girl into certain areas of study, I think that they should take a second look at what they're doing. - I think that's right, but I think, I think that's going to be important, but I think we're gonna have to start sooner. My daughter came home from school today and her best friend's girlfriends are all excited because they got over to junior high, seventh grade, and they are in the home keeping class or housekeeping class or whatever it was called, I forget. And everybody needs an apron and, you know, and I think that in the first grade readers, you know, it's the little girl with the nursing uniform and the man has the thing on his head that's taking, you know, that's looking into the doctoring aspects. So I think what you're saying is very valid but I think it's going to have to start a lot sooner and it just speaks to a real drastic change in social patterns. - Right. I agree. I think that all the textbooks should be, you know, what do the car companies do, recall? - I think that the movement of the Black American speaks a lot to the women's point of view because, you know, they've been saying these kinds of things for a long time and I think that we're beginning to realize how important that is and that-- - I heard a conversation today from two young men who just started to junior high school and were in a class called something about construction. And I asked them how many girls were in it. And they said the girls were all taking a real interesting course in cooking and I said, well, why didn't any of you boys sign up for it if you think it's a more interesting? And they said, well, we'd be the laughingstock of the school. So what does it tell us about that? Here are two junior high school boys who would like very much to be in the cooking class, who kind of pride themselves, they already think they're good cooks, as they told me, and they'd like to learn more about it. This of course should not be discouraged in any school. Why would it be? - Well, I think it shows that the things that women have traditionally done are devalued. You know, are inferior kinds of things and no red blooded American boy wants to be identified, you know, with cooking and sewing and showing interest in these kinds of things that would make him the laughing stock. So I think that that says-- - Now, your two red-blooded American boys isn't saying anything? How do you know there aren't more? - Maybe they aren't devalued or something like that, maybe it's just that they're obviously different, you know, that's the real hangup. - Well, I think it's true that the women's jobs and women's occupations are traditionally kind of the less-- - Well, I, you know-- - Like the job of librarian was traditionally a women's job until now, it's becoming more scientific, and now more and more men are going into the field. - Right, that is true. - But in this case, it's probably due to the guidelines of the school because when you're in seventh grade, I don't think you would feel like confronting the administration or anything about some kinds of guidelines for the classes. - But now my option for that is, and I, you know, this is just my personal reaction, and I don't have to face it for another year 'cause she doesn't go to, she's not quite ready to junior high, but I said to my husband, I said, my daughter doesn't take cooking or housekeeping. That's for sure. If I have to go fight, she's not going to be in that class, you know, when she gets to be 22 and gets hungry, she'll be able to read, she'll be able to cook. So I just, you know, that's not where my daughter's going to be, which in a way is discriminatory toward her, but it's, you know, what we have to work with, so. - Well, I think it's especially important when the young person is, has said that he or she, you know, wants to be in the world of construction class or whatever it is, or wants to be in a cooking class and yet, you know, it feels like there's going to be so much pressure against it that they can't possibly do it and that's so limiting right there. That's a good example of how both, you know, boys and girls are limited. - And there have been a number of interesting cases. It's really too bad that they said that so many of these things have had to be settled by the courts. But there have been a number of cases now where exactly the same thing has happened, that you're just threatening, Eleanor. Where schools have been forced to open other classes on a choice basis rather than continuing this scripting process of teaching children that their role is going to be whatever the process started out, that they're going to teach them what it means to be a man or a woman. We had one, two years ago in the state of Idaho which required the home economics for graduation from high school. And this of course was bought through the courts and there's no question of the illegality of an essential requirement for one sex only. And of course, I'm sure everybody is aware that we're not saying there's anything wrong with home economics but rather that there's something wrong with forcing one whole sex into this and keeping the other sex out of it. What else would you like to see changed in the area of education? We talked a little about college and about the process starting much earlier than college. - I'd like to briefly go back to the textbooks again. I think that, and with the Black American movement too have demanded that the Black American's role in history be recognized and I think that that women's roles in history should be recognized and studied as you know, along with every other aspect of history. I think that it's really left out. You can look through any history book and see that. - How about the teachers? At what point would you have both sexes represented among teachers? - The very beginning. - As soon as the child goes to any kind of school, there should be both men and women. - And of course, one way to ensure that is to upgrade the salary scales for teachers, pay them, you know, pay them equivalent salaries for other kinds of professional work and then you're going to attract good intelligent men who are interested in a vital role. - And good intelligent women too. - That's right. - This, what about the inequalities of salaries in the educational world between sex? - Well, it's a reality. - And a reality which of course should be changed. And there are sufficient laws now to permit this to happen but they have to be fought. We're still at the point where these have to be fought pretty largely through the courts. Although there have been some changes, no desirable changes made in this area. - There are also the positions that you, when you see in all your junior high schools and grade schools and high schools even well, and now it's onto, college. Also the principals are all men, or the chancellor's always a man and then all the teachers are usually, in the lower levels at least, are women. And that, you know, of course provides, you know, some kind of set up role model. So I think we need a lot more women in those authoritative positions, you know, too in the school system. - And I think another area of change that is starting to happen, if you look at the statistics at the med center last year, you can see changes and that's admittance to professional school based solely on qualifications of the applicants without any quota system for sex. In medicine and law, there has been a great push to look at the qualifications of the individual and not with regard to what their sex is, but there's a great deal more that needs to be done, but last year at the med center, I believe 47 in the new 200 some admittances to the med center were women, whereas four years ago, there were seven in the incoming class. So, you know, this is changing tremendously. - Do you know why it happened in medicine sooner than some other professions? - Because we need more doctors. - There's another very good reason too, and that was the health act, which forbade discrimination and threatened the withdrawal of federal funds without which no medical school of course could operate unless they discontinued the quota practices. I'm afraid I'm not as sanguine as you are concerning all the professions, but certainly it started there and now there are a sufficient number of laws about which of course we'll have some special programs to prevent this in other areas as well. Anything else in the field of education that the women's movement would like to see changed? Occurred to you? - Well, I can think opportunities for fellowships, of course. Fellowships and scholarships need to be opened up to women. There are a number of fellowships now that are open only to men for no apparent reason that I can see. - And this would of course get into the area of athletic support at universities. Many men get through their undergraduate years on athletic scholarships, a tremendous amount of funding is available for this and there isn't an equal amount of funding for scholarships for women, and this should be equalized. And also veterans. Many men get through college on veterans benefits and this will change as the armed services change, but we need to find ways to equalize this in the meantime where women have that kind of support available to them. This year on KU's campus, one third of the men on campus are receiving some kind of benefit from the armed services and I think there's a tremendous amount of inequality in the kinds of scholarship and financial aid available to women. - While the argument concerning the draft and connection with the equal rights amendment hinges very largely on very far out possibilities, such as the swamps of Vietnam and the mother with the machine gun. The real issue is the fact that for many, many years there's been a very small quota of women even accepted into the armed services. So that whole vast numbers of people were prevented from not only this kind of benefit, but many, many other kinds of benefits that came from being in the armed services, such as learning a trade. It was the thing which raised many ghetto boys out of the ghetto and kept ghetto girls right there, because we will have a number of programs on the subject of education and affirmative action programs, let's go on to the general area of economics since this is just an overview of the entire women's movement, what kinds of things would women like to see changed in the area of economics? - The first thing that comes to my mind is equal pay for equal work, which seems a very simple kind of, and just demand if you will. - I think reequalizing the benefits under social security. Women pay equally into it over the years, but at the time of the benefits come due, there is very definitely a discrimination on sex and that needs to be changed. - And there are discriminations on sex the other way too in the social security system. Again, all based on the assumptions that people make about the men and women. - About who's supporting who. I think very definitely this would need to be changed. I think the internal revenue code can also be changed to provide deductions for childcare as a business expense. I think that will be very important to many working couples or working mothers. - I think the era of economics is one of the things that was kind of a drawback to a lot of older women who are trying to get out or women with children in particular who are looking out to the field of liberation. Really, it becomes kind of impossible for them unless they have some bit of wealth is what it comes down to to provide substitute care and things, because without the benefits that you mentioned, Casey, it really becomes a big hunk out of your pay. I've gone to work while I had children at home and I really came out just barely ahead, but, you know, I did it for myself, you know, and that's unfair. - And then they have to think of the many millions of women who have to work to even raise their pay to the poverty levels and then, you know, so much of it goes back to the childcare. - A great majority of women are on welfare and what are known as the working poor, who even though they do have jobs, are not above the poverty level as set by the Department of Labor, that the vast majority of these poor people are from families headed by a woman. So the whole field of job discrimination, 'cause there's really more than equal pay for equal work, because if two people are doing identical jobs, very often it would be difficult to prove that they weren't getting identical pay although there've been some interesting court cases on that too, but there are all kinds of techniques. For instance of calling, for two people doing exactly the same job and one has a clerical title and the other one has a research assistantship. So that the title itself is no longer considered a viable excuse for discriminatory pay scales. How in the field of legislation? Of legal action? What changes are being proposed by people in the women's movement? - Well, I think you mentioned earlier about assigning custody in cases of divorce. That's an area that it may be based on custom mostly, but that's certainly an area that when a man tries to fight that the courts very often will find laws and reasons to give the the children only to the mother. So I think this is an area that needs, where the courts and the laws need to change, where the the personalities of the individuals are looked at and to see who could provide the best environment and the best nurturing care and not based on sex and other laws having to do with the rights of married women. I think that as long as you remain single, that you're not really discriminated against in a way that you are once you're married. You really give up a lot of your rights to own property, to do a lot of things. - To establish businesses-- - To get loans, to get credit. Those are all areas that where a married woman, loses a lot of her rights to participate in the society that definitely needed to be changed and are being challenged especially related to credit and loans. - What's the, I know some women who would dispute that on the grounds of a single married old, but what you're saying is undoubtedly true, but in recent testimony before a congressional committee, women, career women, single career women, one with a salary of $40,000 a year, and who had always had a very good job described times when she'd been denied credit because there was not a man who could co-sign with her. So it was very deeply embedded in the culture. These same two lawyers who wrote the article for the New York University Law Review, the conclusion to which they came was that the record of judges range from poor to abominable in the whole area of sex discrimination and formed a great contrast to their attitudes toward race discrimination. So it's an article that I would highly recommend to those who are interested to read. - I think another area where I'd like to see the laws changed is access to the right to control your reproductive life. I think that there are many single women who are still discriminated against in trying to obtain contraception and that this is an area, or to obtain therapeutic abortion, that this is an area that is changing rapidly but there are still only 12 states with what are called reform abortion laws and many states which do not allow a physician to dispense contraception to a woman under the age of majority, unless she is married or has parental consent. Both of which, you know, really take the right of that woman to control her own body away from her and give it to some other person, so-- - And since these are based on state laws, as both of our national political parties have pointed out to us, we're willing to take a stand-- - It's a hard banner to carry. - Yes, it is. - The, in most of the states, of course, the married woman is no better off than the single woman in regard to therapeutic abortion. What about the field of politics? What changes need to be made there? - Well, of course, one thing, we just need to have more women going into the field of politics. It's been traditionally a man's field. You can look at that national House of Representatives and the Senate and you see 13 women, which is abominable when there are 435 and you consider 53% of the population is women. - And one out of a hundred senators, don't forget her. - Right. - This is some of those combined their jobs because their husbands died too or anything like that. - Heard the last one did, there are two-- - We have two now, that's right. And the last one did, and of course that's how Margaret Chase Smith first entered the Senate-- - THat's right. - Many times on her own since then, but certainly it's a very poor showing overall and in comparison to any other industrialized nation in the world and as a matter of fact, even some of the nations that couldn't even be considered industrialized at present time. Those in addition to attitudes about which you previously spoken are the major areas of that one, we're trying to outline the various aspects of of the women's movement, and of course, this is a only a surface treatment of other kinds of changes which the women's movement would like to see made. However, in the course of our programs where we deal very specifically with all of these areas and with straightening the others as well the question of publications, of organizations, of how people become involved and how they become informed. We have only a moment or two left. I'd like to announce that our next week's program will start a series of four programs on universities and on affirmative action. This is a term with which we have all become familiar. It's not always very well understood, and that we hope to bring to this program a number of very knowledgeable women who will discuss what's happening in universities, discuss the laws that have already been passed, the implementation that is expected, and what will have to be done in order to deal with this problem. The first program, next Monday night, we'll deal with women in universities and overview. And this will be followed by three programs which will deal specifically with affirmative action requirements and plans, including those of the University of Kansas. Following this four weeks series, program topics will be quite diverse. Some of these are, we'll deal with a group daycare in Lawrence and other kinds of daycare that are available and which should be a choice of parents, the family in transition, tax on women, how to stop rape, alternative lifestyles, a male mystique, double jeopardy, black and female, and a good many other subjects of similar and diverse nature. I'd also like to announce that we would be happy to announce in this program any meetings or programs which deal in any way with the women's movement. If individuals are interested in forming a group whether that group is just an informal gathering of women who wish to discuss the problem, or of men, or a formal group, we will be glad to facilitate your efforts by announcing your meeting on this program. And in addition, the Women's Resource and Career Planning Center is located in the Dean of Women's office can help by providing resource people or speakers for your group. We have one announcement tonight from the Women's Coalition of an orientation meeting which is going to be held at 7:30 on Thursday night in the Women's Center in Wesley, in the Wesley Foundation Building. Thank you very much for joining us tonight, we hope that you will continue to follow these programs and that you will call either during the programs or at any other time. Just call our office with any comments that you care to make or with any questions for which you're seeking answers. Thank you again.