This blog is written in honor of Labor Day and in celebration of three women who died recently: Dolly Parton, Gloria Steinem, and Robin Morgan.
Happy Labor Day!
When you think of Women and Labor, what is the first image that flashes through your mind? It is perfectly acceptable if the first thing you think of is the type of labor that only applies to women. The Latin root of the word labor means toil, exertion, hardship, or struggle. The term started to be used to describe the act of giving birth in the 15th century. In the 17th century, English physician John Sadler noted that the uterus is an organ that defines a woman’s disposition and that women were “ordained to bring forth fruit.” Select politicians of the 21st Century continue to believe and use similar rhetoric today.
This is not a treatise against the importance of the woman as a vessel to bring forth humans. It is an explanation of how that perceived ultimate purpose, which only one sex has, has formed societal norms. In an alternative universe, the fact that women are the sex that gives birth means that they are considered the superior/ stronger gender. This is not the reality of our universe, even though the women's movement of the 21st century tried to reclaim “pussy” as a strong organ. Somehow, this act of giving life in our universe has met with divisions of stronger (male) and weaker(female) genders, differentiated women's and men’s rights, and even, for much of our history, deemed women as property, often referred to in medical literature of the day as being disabled due to their gender, and needing to be cared for by men. The fact of writing this shouldn’t be seen as extreme feminism because these are simply the facts of history that predate anybody reading this.
Because women bore and fed the children, they became the gender that cared for the children, and because they were already at home, they became the gender that cared for the sick and the elderly and for the home. The men were the hunters and the warriors. This has been so much a part of our history that it is hard to argue against it as the origin story of the human race, even without the biblical creation story. There is nothing wrong with this history of roles except as it impacted social constructs of equality and fairness. In other words, these roles are not necessarily unequal but the formulation of social norms led to inequality.
I was born in 1961. When I was born, women had the right to vote, and they had been called upon during World War II to work outside the home. In my lifetime, many women I know have been full-time homemakers. Women who stay home by choice and have devoted themselves to the care and nurture of their children will get nothing but respect from me, as will women who made other choices. Other women I know have decided not to have children and, in most cases, have worked outside the home. Some women did not have the choice whether to have children due to medical reasons, and those women have worked outside the home. Some women chose to do both. In a small sliver of households, the man takes care of the children, and the woman works outside the home. Still other women had no choice but to work outside the home because they didn’t have the financial means to do otherwise. These women either had to support themselves or, sometimes, their families on their own, or their household needs required two incomes to sustain a financially stable family existence. I believe the latter is the primary norm today.
Choice was a key word in the second wave of feminism during the seventies. Some of that was the choice around abortion. If that makes you want to stop reading, so be it, but it would be a mistake to think that choice as a concept pertains only to abortion. It was also whether you could choose not to get married and whether or not you could choose to go to college and, if you worked outside the home, whether you had any rights to decide how to spend that money.
In the last few years, I’ve heard so many young women who are angry at their mothers’ and grandmothers’ generations because we accepted the status quo of our time or are not leaving them a world where they won’t have to fight so hard for their rights.
With the deaths of Dolly Parton, Gloria Steinem, and Robin Morgan, I am reminded of how very different the world I grew up in was from the world those born in the 90s grew up in, and then, again, from the world those born today will be raised in. So, let’s talk about the world I grew up in and some key changes.
First, I want to point out how much unpaid work in the home is worth today, whether it is done by a man or a woman. There are some fortunate households where the work inside the home is done by people who do not live in that home. Hiring someone to cook, clean, and do laundry is valued at $35,000- $40,000 annually. Childcare, Elder Care, and home management, added to that, are valued by some sources at a minimum of $110,000 a year. Most households do not have extra help, cannot send out their laundry, don’t have a nanny, and can’t imagine sending their elders to a nursing home. This is the same as it was when I was a child, and it is today. Work at home is valuable.
Let’s say, however, that a woman wanted to work outside the home in the 60s. In the year I was born, some states had “protective laws” like child labor laws that limited the time of day, the number of hours, and the types of work a woman could do. It was not so much a question of equal pay, as it was if the woman was allowed to work. There were no laws protecting a woman if a company had policies against hiring married women or terminating an employee should she become pregnant. Sexual harassment wasn’t even a term in the 60s, so women had to tolerate a lot from men if they decided to work or had to work. While men couldn’t forbid their wives from working, they could beat them if they wanted. If the woman wasn’t hospitalized or didn’t require stitches, then a husband faced no penalties. They could also rape the wife because the court didn’t recognize the right of a woman to choose not to have sex on any given night. There were no shelters for battered women. In this way a man could use violence to prevent a woman from working. While women had the right to keep their wages, in some states they were unable to open bank accounts, establish credit, or take out loans to purchase a vehicle or a home. Divorce, you say? No-fault divorce laws did not exist, and so if a man didn’t want to get a divorce, the woman would have to establish extreme cruelty, which, if there were no stitches or hospitalization, beating would not have been established as cruel. This is the world into which I was born.
Gloria Steinem had a significant impact on changing all of this, as did Betty Friedan and others. Laws changed. Lawsuits occurred that codified the law. Social norms changed, and television, movies, and songs all played a part in that (thinking of 9-5), but it didn’t happen immediately. I could do a timeline of laws and events, but we can all Google or ask A.I. So let me personalize it for you.
Sexual Harassment became an actual term in 1975. In 1976, when I was 15, I took a weekend job as a motel maid. The maintenance man was in his 70s and working part-time to supplement his Social Security. He used to follow me into rooms, telling me how beautiful I was and offering to buy me a car if I “dated” him. I hurried through the rooms and was fired. When I explained what was happening, I was told that he meant no harm and was clearly more valuable as an employee than I. In 1979 I worked part-time as a waitress. My 30-something-year-old married boss used to ply us with alcohol and then try to seduce us. He used to drive me home and once pulled over and tried to do what he should not, and I stopped him. When I told my mother, she said she thought he was a handsome man. When I was married, I was the breadwinner for our family, supporting my husband through his undergraduate and graduate degrees. My income fully paid for our single vehicle. When we divorced and he decided to keep the car, I had to have him co-sign with me so I could get a vehicle loan. His earning history vs. my earning history was irrelevant. That was 1995. That’s the life I have lived.
To young women,
You are right. We are leaving an unfair and unjust world, and you have to fight like hell to keep what has been won and to further the work. You are right. My generation accepted things that by today’s standards would be unthinkable.
Spousal abuse and partner violence still exist. It is not prosecuted as often as it should be, and too many women die, but the VAWA Act of 1994 has changed things significantly, so we walked in the right direction.
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 didn’t immediately change things, but subsequent lawsuits and expansion did. Women are no longer required to have their husband co-sign a loan if they can qualify on their own. Lenders cannot require women to sign that they will not become pregnant during the life of the loan. Still, women business owners have a harder time getting loans, but we're walking in the right direction.
Yes, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 added gender at the last moment, due to opponents of the bill who hoped it would kill it. The EEOC Guidelines on the protective laws were not well enforced for years. It took years of litigation for a woman who could meet the physical or mental challenges of certain professions to be included in them, but it did change things. Oh, we need to do so much more, including expanding child-care resources and working on family caregivers' right to wages for the care provided to elderly and disabled family members, but we walked in the right direction.
The state laws allowing for irreconcilable differences or no-fault divorces resulted in a dramatic reduction in suicides among married women almost immediately as they were implemented. We ran in the right direction.
Oh, there is so much to do. I am sorry that the women's march didn’t have the results we wanted or that no woman has been elected President, but we elected a woman vice president, two women ran for President as major-party candidates, and women are on the Supreme Court and hold governor seats. We walked in the right direction. If you are saying, yeah, but we have a President who…. I know. I know.
Young Women- It is so important that you know how far we've come and that you understand how feminism is maligned as anti-men or anti-childrearing as a way to keep further rights from being won.
Young women, you need to understand how hard these issues were fought-some by badass women journalists and activists and some by gentle, Southern female entertainers. I’m not saying in any way women shouldn’t have children, but simply seeing women become successful and honored who didn’t have children sets an example of choice. One of the things we should be fighting for, by the way, are wages so a single income could support a family so co-parents could make labor division choices equally. That’s pro-family.
Now we might not be walking - we might be planting our feet in the ground to keep the progress from going away, but you will walk forward again. Someday the next generation will say, “What were you women thinking, and why did you accept the status quo?” Just, please, keep on walking in the right direction.
And let’s honor those strong women ancestors who got us this far.