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Tuesday, February 12, 1974
University Dallv Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Long Way to Go, Baby
Helmer: "Before everything else you're a wife and a mother."
Nora: "I don't believe that any longer, I believe that before we become human being, just as you are—or human rate I shall try to become one."
nora's challenge, from Henrik Ibsen 'A Doll's House,' was made nearly a century ago. Since then, women have earned the right to vote and have gained greater access to higher education and the job market. The advent of women's liberation has brought about an increased consciousness among women of their abilities to extend themselves beyond the traditional role of homemaker-wife-mother.
But in many areas of society,
Not only the challenge has gone un-
pitted
The average American woman today is healthier than she has ever been, better educated, more affluent, better dressed and more comfortable than her sisters of the past. She makes up more than a third of the national work force, although according to a Department of Labor survey, generally fewer skilled job than a man does. In many jobs she still doesn't receive equal pay for equal work. In fact, her median earnings have actually declined relative to men.
Still, she has progressed. Government agencies are making research posts. So are colleges or universities, industrial firms and
even engineering societies, long considered to be male strongholds.
Ford Motor Company now combs computerized lists of women employees for candidates to fill every new job opening. Women law school students, who compose about 10 per cent of their classes at 400 and 900 per cent at Boston University, are being hired by establishment oriented law firms on Wall Street and in San Francisco.
The effectiveness of the women's liberation movement, however, can't be measured by statistics alone. American men and women are often teach other in new ways—and they don't always like what they see.
A decade ago women accounted for 6 per cent of the nation's 260,000 doctors; today they make up 7.6 per cent of 345,000. In the future women will rise as entering the number of women increasing.
The basic goals of women's libera-
ration are favored by nearly everyone—the goals of equal pay for equal work, equal job opportun-ity and equal treatment by the employer. This practice on a consistent basis has taken and will take much time and effort.
As it says in the ad picturing a woman holding a cigarette, "You've come a long way, baby." There is no way to go that there is still a long way to go.
—Linda Doherty
Reverse Liberation
One recent development in the women's liberation movement is the attack on elementary and high school textbooks. According to the liberationists many textbooks are subtly "sexist."
It seems to me that the only rational solution is to give them what they want. If women demand equal pay for equal work, then they should have it. In fact, they ought to be paid more than men.
Women are portrayed by these textbooks as weak and helpless, needing male protection. Men are supposedly portrayed as having a wider range of career possibilities. Various women's organizations have initiated court actions and lobbying programs to get these books changed or to remove them from classroom use.
Now, I am not in favor of brainwashing our children with any kind of propaganda, sexist or otherwise, but this attack on school textbooks shows how far the women's movement has diverged from its first concern—better jobs and better pay for women. The liberationists are now engaging in sexist witch-hunts and are looking for sexists under every bed. Apparently they will not be satisfied until they have turned society upside down.
Giving women more than equal pay would have two direct benefits. First, it would stop all the fuss. I assume women are as economically motivated as men. Their economic demands satisfied, women would be less willing to pursue their more exotic demands such as reforming the language and changing textbooks.
Furthermore, men would gain the tactical advantage. If women received better pay than men, men would become the oppressed minority. Being the oppressed minority, which we men always have been, all of the moral arguments would be on our side. Men could start agitating for reform. After all these years of
being called sexist, male chauvinist pigs, men would finally be able to strike back. We could show the women that men can demonstrate, lobby and sue just as well as anyone can.
It's time that men dispel the myth of female superiority in managing household affairs. Take cooking, for example. Women seem to think that men are incapable of functioning in a kitchen. But why are all of the world's truly great chefs men? The answer is that men are better cooks. Deep down, women have always known this to be true, but they could not bear to admit it.
Another advantage that would be reaped from having men stay home is the reformation of daytime television. Men will force the networks to get rid of those horrible movies that women watch those things in the first place is absolute proof of female inferiority.
In fact, I think this reformation of daytime television has some brilliant possibilities. Instead of playing pro football games on the field, we can play during the middle of the week in place of the soap operas.
This could solve a lot of family problems. Husbands would no longer be glued to the tube on weekends, and wives would no longer be football waist for half hour during the off season, the networks could show Razquel Welch or better yet, Linda Lovelace movies.
The more I think about it, the more I am convinced this is a reasonable solution to the women's liberation problem. The women get the satisfaction of having rewarding careers, and the men get to spend the rewards. The women get to seek their own identities, and the men get to sleep late. The women get the ulcers, and the men get the boredom. All in all, it seems like a fair exchange.
John Bender
The fourteenth amendment allows a woman the right to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy, according to the decision in Dee v. Baton and Roe v. Wade.
Should Abortion Remain Legal?
Since then the states have abandoned most restrictions on abortions. The decision, however, only intensified the controversy over legal abortion and inspired bitter opposition from many individuals and religious groups.
A survey of New Jersey hospitals by the Health Planning Council in October 1973 indicated that about 50 per cent of the 109 hospitals were uninsured, and Supreme Court rulings. Many of the hospitals, it was reported, have been subjected to pressure from both pro- and antiabortion groups including protest marches, threats of economic sanctions and court decisions.
Senator James Buckley, C-N.Y., proposed a 'right to life' amendment (S.J. Res. 119) that would define a fetus as a person from the moment of conception.
Several bills have been proposed to amend the constitution so that abortions would be illegal. The Senate has already passed a law that would deploy use of medicinal funds for abortions.
A similar bill (H.J. Res. 261) was presented in the House by Rep. Lawrence Hogan, R-Md. Both the Buckley and Hogan bills would amend the constitution so that abortions would be illegal. No stipulation is given on whether the preservation of the life of the mother
According to the Supreme Court's 7-2 arizonation ruling, which is the basis for a federal lawsuit against Texas.
During the first three months of pregnancy the state has no voice in an abortion decision. During the second three months of pregnancy, the state can regulate the abortion procedure so that maternal health may be ensured it may not limit the grounds for abortions.
defined as persons who have no constitutional rights. But the right of abortion is
During the last three months of pregnancy the state may regulate or forbid abortion except when necessary to preserve the health of the mother.
The anti-abortion movement is the latest crusade to try to subvert attempts to control the environment and maintain freedom of choice.
YES
The question remains: Should abortion be legal?
It is a prime example of how one group makes its own moral judgments and tries to impose them on the rest of society through the legal process.
The Supreme Court's decision protecting the right to abortion during the first six months of pregnancy is legally sound and morally wise. It gives individuals the freedom to make their own choices acca
The needs for maintaining legal abortion are widespread and urgent;
—Legal abortions have eliminated the
need for dangerous illegal abortions.
Disregipectible doctors or amateurs no longer have the opportunity to get rich by performing abortions under hazardous and sometimes deadly conditions. In such a case, the mother and the fetus are threatened.
- Legal abortions often protect are we or good health of the mother. If the Buckley and Hogan amendments were adopted, all abortions irrigardess of maternal health would be restricted. In this case the anti-abortion amendments should not be dubbed as "right to life" bills. They simply substitute the lives of the already living for the lives have the capacity to live. Under some circumstances a woman live without an abortion. The "right to life" amendments are revealed to be more properly titled the "doomed to die" bills
- Legal abortions diminish the flood of unwanted and, potentially, unwieldy children
- Racism is a barrier to childbirth
- —Legal abortions give unmarried women and couples the freedom to plan their life so that they may benefit fully from it and gain the right to have children. —The children who would eventually be born.
- Legal abortions provide an alternative to help diminish financial pressures on couples that cannot afford to raise children properly.
It should be noted that the need for abortions is not restricted to the freedom of the mother. Abortions are one tool which can be used in an emergency to provide a better environment for all people.
But some have argued that the fetus must be considered a person with its own set of rights. The Supreme Court decision rightfully permits the prohibition of abortions when pregnancy when the fetus is developed and is likely to be able to live outside the mother.
Before that time the fetus is only a mass of cells with the capacity for life but not a claim to it. It is absurd to try to defend the elimination of cells because the elimination of cells must be considered murder then restrictions should also be enforced on executioners of other living forms such as those who trump on grass or water in order to logic the Save the Raisin Foundation.
Further, abortion is no more an unnatural human control over environment than abstinence from sexual intercourse or the use of birth control devices. Abortion is simply the last control available after the other controls have failed.
Certainly those individuals who think that abortions are immoral or bad policy have the freedom to deny themselves the use of this alternative. And they have the right to try to discourage others from having abortions, for instance by limiting their groups. But they must not be given the power of the legal process to dictate their choices to the rest of the society.
Bill Gibson
It is difficult to define abortion as criminal because it seems necessary and convenient. It is more tempting to define it as non-criminal. There is the problem of over-population. And then, at times, there is the problem of the unwanted child who, if he lived, would be an economic and spiritual burden to his mother.
What is, unfortunately, the strongest argument is that no one knows very much about the little creature in the womb. From his point of view, it is obviously impossible to declare abortion criminal or non-criminal.
Probably it will be quite some time before medicine can demonstrate whether or not the unborn have human feelings or "soul." Meanwhile, it might be a good idea to give the unborn the benefit of the doubt. Where life is still a mystery, it is perhaps a crime against human nature to develop the habit of destroying it.
IF THERE ARE indications that abortion may, after all, be a crime, then it might be an excellent approach to perform fewer abortions and to use pills and condoms more often. At present, man is really forced to go against his sympathetic impulses. He is also asked what it is unjust, self-rightous, and cowardly to condemn what one does not know.
The pill should be overheated so that it does not make women obese, neurotic, or create dangerous clots in their blood vessels. There should be a much better pill for men. For the good of society, benign impulses should be allowed to flourish.
It is impossible to demonstrate that abortion is a crime. The operation has been widely legalized. It is the abortionist who causes it, not the woman relatively free of feelings of guilt. Abortion has been cast in the innocuous role of a mere service, which makes it seem no more dramatic than a wound on one's shoulder or otherwise—enlightened people are for it.
Under the present circumstances, the destruction of the unborn is quite easy for many people to carry out in terms of their own conscience or in conscience-easing reasons why this is so.
Women's Liberation:
Unfortunately, women who are carrying an unwanted child should ponder a number of things. Can it be demonstrated that the woman we see in this section what circumstances does one have the right to go ahead? Does the situation in which abortion finds itself in American culture help paint a guilt-free picture of what it may be? Is abortion good karma for man?
Jerome Lloyd
By CHRISTOPHER WEBER
Movement Reflects Social Change
One of the things I find exasperating about Women's Lib is that too many take it for The Movement, instead of just the tiltteal white foam of the wave that is coming from the ocean. Foaming crest can be exciting and useful, but the wave was there a long time before it.
Women's Lab is not the Movement. It is a movement, just another factor in the mounting social change that is already so much a part of our world that some of its startling offshoots get buried in the back pages of the newspapers.
What I call The Movement is that which for more than 50 years has been carrying women—though not without their own efforts into the brotherhood of men. What is now known as "Women's Lab" is just the most visible aspect of it.
The Movement is more my mother's than women's liberationists. She has worked almost as far back as I can remember, always as a telephone operator, not for fulfillment, nor for economic survival, but to advance.
How else would she make it in one generation from daughter of immigrant parents to mother of college graduates? And get a house and car besides?
THERE WERE A LOT of working mothers like her where I grew up on the southwest side of Chicago, sales clerks and secretaries and what not. How relatively remote was Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" came out while I was in college.
Back in 1960 only about one in three mothers worked and, apparently, they did
Griff and the Unicorn
by Sokoloff
not live in suburbs that Friedan mined during the '80s for much of her material. Today, more than half of our nation's mothers work before their children are 18, and most of the mothers with children under six, and the suburbs are not of an exception.
The movement is just another trend in our nonstatic society, a society seeming to change so swiftly that professors such as Alvin Toffler write books with titles like **Future Shock**. The trend may not be as influential as Toffler thinks, but it probably has gone too far to be reversed or significantly shifted far beyond a horrid wrenching of our society.
The causes are a group of push-pull factors that interact with each other to produce, among other things, "Women's Lab." The major ones include:
"Sister work weeks: In the days when men worked 10-hour days, six days a week, they hardly had time or energy to do much more at home than eat, relax a bit and sleep away; they are much more available women whose household tasks.
"ALIENATION"? For a variety of reasons, but especially because brute strength is now a minor factor in survival for most people, a man's role is less sharply defined than ever; since he is less sure of his place, a man can be more open to mutually accommodating changes in his role and that of any woman he marries.
Linked to that is the rapidly weakening influence of society in determining the role of an individual man or holding him to it; the ability to take care of himself today may be 1,000 miles away, as mine are, and there is little they can say or do about how their offspring live. That is a long way from the close-knit, slow-changing villages of most of our not-so-distant ancestors.
A third relation factor peculiar to the U.S. is the cultural churning we are subject to; we are the only country where people of different cultures come together, usually in great numbers, and have to get along as best they can. That kind of constant shaking up of culture through accommodation and re-education has made loose traditional male and female roles.
MORE EDUCATION: Increasing numbers of men and women are going to college or through other post-high school education. Expose enough of any group to understand the differences in some changes in attitude. My mother was marched out of high school by her parents
because "it was a lot of foolishness." She never left the south side of Chicago and married in her late 20s. My sister spent her junior year of college in Spain, lives and works in Toledo, Ohio, and at the prime child-bearing age of 27 remains single.
Smaller families: Or, as it used to be called, the post-pillage a matter of freedom of choice now that a wide range of contraceptives are available and there is all too obviously no economic interest in having a child. We should not with no in-laws about to order your life.
ECONOMIC NECESSITY EXPECTATIONS: Once it was enough to have food, shelter, clothing and the seventh day off to thank God you had a job. Then you had to thank God you had a part of our economic heritage—radios, cars, television sets, washers, dryers, air conditioners. It is no surprise in hindsight that the number of working wives went up, the number of children went down and the number of adults edit more than doubled, from 1960 to 1970.
The net result of this is the freeing of women from their traditional role through factors that push them out, such as real or perceived economic need; factors that pull them out, such as more education, and the ability to participate in life to be pushed and pulled, such as the pill.
SOME OF THE TRENDS that contribute to or result from this wave of change can be read in Census Bureau reports and similar statistics. What is happening is not just a random occurrence, but the effects of which Friedan and others after her spotted. Statistically, we know this;
1. More women work each year.
2. More and more of the women going to work are married, and more and more often the married women are of prime child-bearing age (25-34).
3. There is an economic advantage to that.
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4. Women still get the short end of the employment stick. Nationally, the increasing numbers of women going to work seem to be entering the lowest-path fields.
The median income in 1960 for working couples was $6,900 nationally, or $1,380 more than that of couples in which only the husband worked. By 1970, working couples had a median income of $12,270, or $2,972 from couples in which only the husband worked.
In a sense, then, The Movement is inevitable because of the economic and social causes that it springs from, but for lack of adequate research about it no one knows just how it is going or whether the direction is a good one. More information and understanding is needed to ride the wave, rather than be swamped by it.
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