What Do Women Really Want, Anyway?

<v Speaker>Women in this country have made dramatic advances toward the freedom to live the lives <v Speaker>they choose. Yet there are still restraints. <v Speaker>I think my father probably in years gone by, would never have imagined <v Speaker>his daughter could run his business, today, I'll bet he wishes I were. <v Leonard Chusmir>Society has said up till now and it still says it really. <v Leonard Chusmir>And most of the United States. That high level management <v Leonard Chusmir>jobs, powerful jobs are male jobs. <v Susan Brownmiller>Masculinity is a system designed for go to to achieve, <v Susan Brownmiller>to accomplish. That's what's respected in masculinity <v Susan Brownmiller>and femininity is designed to simply look a certain way and to exploit <v Susan Brownmiller>and demonstrate one's vulnerabilities and limitations. <v Gloria Steinem>Women are gonna be on the forefront of this revolution because we're more deprived of our <v Gloria Steinem>full humanity than men are. But men are also deprived. <v Speaker>How would you answer Freud's question? What do women really want anyway? <v Bernice Sandler>Women need to be treated not as if they were something different, but as people <v Bernice Sandler>in their individual capacities as not as the foreign and

<v Bernice Sandler>not as the outsider or not as the other but as one of us. <v Geraldine Ferraro>We're people who care about this country and we're entitled to have our say in what the <v Geraldine Ferraro>future is. <v Speaker>What do women really want anyway is made possible by that telecommunications <v Speaker>companies of U.S. West Mountain Bell, North Western Bell, Pacific Northwest Bell and U.S. <v Speaker>West Information Systems to more than 9 million customers in 14 states. <v Speaker>Nobody knows the trails better by Mountain Bell providing advanced <v Speaker>information transport services for homes and businesses by Public Service <v Speaker>Company of Colorado, a company with energy for the 80s by the Virginia Neoh Blue <v Speaker>Resource Centers Inc. <v Speaker>And by Rocky Mountain Reflections. <v Susan Kinney>In the next half hour, we are going to examine the progress women have made toward <v Susan Kinney>equality and the real basis of sex discrimination, which remains today. <v Susan Kinney>Sex discrimination has been with us since the earliest days of humankind. <v Paul Shankman>Women have been in an unequal position

<v Paul Shankman>in virtually all human societies. <v Paul Shankman>Men have larger amounts of upper body strength. <v Paul Shankman>And these are very important in war, in the hunting of large game animals. <v Paul Shankman>And culture builds on that kind of biological <v Paul Shankman>base. <v Susan Kinney>Today, qualities other than upper body strength are advantageous for human survival and <v Susan Kinney>advancement. Equality for women becomes possible. <v Susan Kinney>Women are no longer the property of their husbands. <v Susan Kinney>Women can vote and women are entering occupations previously reserved for <v Susan Kinney>men only. <v Sally Ride>I've got to read out on Delta be one. Delta B 2, Delta b three and Delta <v Sally Ride>b 4 if you're interested in them. <v Sally Ride>Sure we'd like to hear those Sally. <v Sally Ride>Figured you would. <v Susan Kinney>These new opportunities have made the most profound difference in the quality of women's <v Susan Kinney>lives. According to a recent research project. <v Rosalind Barnett>Seems to be some general tendency for men to <v Rosalind Barnett>indicate fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety, and so forth.

<v Rosalind Barnett>that gap is closing. And it's been closing, we see. <v Rosalind Barnett>And it's not because men are. <v Rosalind Barnett>Enduring less good mental health, but rather women are enjoying better mental health. <v Rosalind Barnett>And that was hard to make causal statements. <v Rosalind Barnett>The curve for that change parallels the curve women's employment. <v Rosalind Barnett>So it's a heightened evaluation of women and women themselves feeling better, <v Rosalind Barnett>more self esteem, more sense of potential. <v Susan Kinney>Now that many barriers to women's employment have been removed, many feel that equality <v Susan Kinney>for women has been achieved. Yet there are strong indications to the contrary. <v Patricia Schroeder>Two thirds of the hours worked on the planet are worked by women, <v Patricia Schroeder>according to the U.N.. <v Patricia Schroeder>They get 10 percent of the wages and they control less than 1 percent of the property. <v Susan Kinney>Today in this country, women earn 65 cents for every dollar earned by men. <v Susan Kinney>A woman college graduate earns 10 percent less than a man. <v Susan Kinney>High school graduate, a woman executive earn sixty three cents for every dollar

<v Susan Kinney>earned by a man in a similar job. <v Susan Kinney>Almost 60 percent of working women are still segregated in four traditional low paying <v Susan Kinney>jobs. Office work, nursing, teaching and social work. <v Susan Kinney>Obviously, equality has not been achieved. <v Susan Kinney>Equality has not been achieved because we have not yet examined the real essence of sex <v Susan Kinney>discrimination. Those deeply ingrained attitudes that lead us all men and <v Susan Kinney>women alike, to behave differently to women than we do to men. <v Susan Kinney>Those behaviors are usually invisible to us. <v Susan Kinney>Yet a major research project in college classroom succeeded in discovering and <v Susan Kinney>documenting them. <v Bernice Sandler>Even when men and women sit next to each other in the classroom, they're having very <v Bernice Sandler>different experiences. Male students get much more eye contact, which is very <v Bernice Sandler>reinforcing. It says, I'm looking at you. <v Bernice Sandler>I care about what you're thinking, what you're saying. <v Bernice Sandler>Male students get called on more often. <v Bernice Sandler>Girls and women get interrupted much more, teachers wait longer <v Bernice Sandler>for males to come up with an answer, as if they expect the male to know

<v Bernice Sandler>the answer and as if they are saying to themselves, he is thinking about the answer. <v Bernice Sandler>They wait a shorter time for women to come up with the answer again, as if the faculty <v Bernice Sandler>member was saying she probably doesn't know the answer anyway. <v Bernice Sandler>Most teachers remember the men's names more than they remember the female names. <v Bernice Sandler>And again, that says I remember the names of important people. <v Bernice Sandler>Most teachers, men and women alike are totally unaware that they are even doing <v Bernice Sandler>this. We were looking for reasons why do we keep finding all of these, about thirty, <v Bernice Sandler>thirty five different kinds of behaviors. <v Bernice Sandler>And the main reason we came up with is this devaluation, which says that women are <v Bernice Sandler>simply not as important, not as worthwhile, or not as smart, <v Bernice Sandler>not as competent. And that this message is given to women in a very <v Bernice Sandler>indirect and subtle way. The saddest thing about it is if you ask a woman <v Bernice Sandler>and you say, you know, this is treat your teacher, treat you fairly, most of them <v Bernice Sandler>will say yes, because they don't know about these behaviors and they don't see them. <v student>I've always felt very like I've been treated very equitably.

<v Bernice Sandler>The women may not notice this, but nevertheless, they're getting a message which says <v Bernice Sandler>you're just not that great. <v Bernice Sandler>And they take it as an individual message. If they see it, they don't see it as happening <v Bernice Sandler>to other women. They see this happening to them. <v Bernice Sandler>So they don't see it as a pattern. And so they wonder what is wrong with them. <v student 2>The math students that are male seem to be able to do more work on the board for <v student 2>us and things like that than the female students do. <v Bernice Sandler> Confidence in women is less in college than it is of men. <v Bernice Sandler>And moreover, for a substantial number of women, it drops. <v Bernice Sandler>So woman who might have wanted to be as scientists says well instead of being a <v Bernice Sandler>scientist, maybe I'll be a science teacher while a male who came in <v Bernice Sandler>maybe wanting to be a scientist. <v Bernice Sandler>Now, now thinks maybe he'll win a Nobel Prize someday. <v interviewer>What kind of toll do these behaviors take? <v interviewer>In energy that's consumed by the anger and the frustration <v interviewer>and the discouragement. <v Bernice Sandler>A big toll. A big toll.

<v Bernice Sandler>It means that women are exposed to more negative situations and that they're not going to <v Bernice Sandler>feel good about it. <v Bernice Sandler>Indeed, we began to think that many of the things we noticed relate to the problems that <v Bernice Sandler>women have in classrooms. They are thought of as passive. <v Bernice Sandler>They don't participate as much. <v interviewer>Is this setting really a microcosm of the society at large in our personal <v interviewer>relationships, in our families and our jobs. <v Bernice Sandler>Certainly happens throughout the campus. <v Bernice Sandler>It happens at work. It happens in life at large. <v Laurel Vander Meullen>If you go on a call in and there is a male officer, I don't care <v Laurel Vander Meullen>if he's, you know, just brand new on the force so <v Laurel Vander Meullen>many times that the general public will speak to the male. <v Laurel Vander Meullen>I've found that to be true almost all the time. <v Laurel Vander Meullen>It may be your call and you're the one doing the report. <v Laurel Vander Meullen>But as you're writing, they're telling the man. <v Geraldine Ferraro>When a man is elected to Congress, he's clothed with the presumption <v Geraldine Ferraro>of competence where as a woman when she gets elected, has the <v Geraldine Ferraro>burden to prove. And what happened down there, I just like

<v Geraldine Ferraro>the other women, is had proof that I was as good by being probably twice as good. <v Susan Kinney>Do you think that there are qualities that women typically have that are psychological, <v Susan Kinney>personal kinds of qualities that limit our advancement in areas like politics? <v Geraldine Ferraro>Hey, sometimes you don't have the confidence that we should. <v Geraldine Ferraro>We worry about how others perceive us. <v Geraldine Ferraro>One moves ahead and does something, uh very aggressive. <v Geraldine Ferraro>A man does it, he is highly motivated. <v Geraldine Ferraro>I mean, I think what we have to do is is start redefining terms. <v Susan Kinney>When a woman works in a company which recognizes the abilities of women and promotes them <v Susan Kinney>to positions of power, she must often continue to prove herself to people outside <v Susan Kinney>her own company. <v Juanita Cox-Burton>The problems that we seem to run into most often <v Juanita Cox-Burton>is that if we're in a room full of men, that the men will become <v Juanita Cox-Burton>very cliquish and women then become very invisible. <v Juanita Cox-Burton>They talk to one another about whatever the issues are and that if you

<v Juanita Cox-Burton>offer something, it's as if someone else has to repeat it for it to be heard. <v Juanita Cox-Burton>It's not an offering until it comes from a man. <v Juanita Cox-Burton>We hold ourselves down. Women do. <v Juanita Cox-Burton>And we do that because sometimes we believe what we hear. <v Juanita Cox-Burton>We believe that we're less than men are because we've heard that <v Juanita Cox-Burton>over and over again. <v Susan Kinney>These attitudes and behaviors handicap women in the most fundamental way. <v Susan Kinney>They limit what a woman expects of herself and therefore strives for. <v Susan Kinney>They limit what others expect of a woman and therefore the opportunities provided her. <v Susan Kinney>But even beyond this, they have been incorporated into an elaborate code of behaviors <v Susan Kinney>which a woman must conform to in order to be accepted as a woman, to be accepted <v Susan Kinney>as feminine. <v Susan Brownmiller>Masculinity is a system designed for go to, to achieve, <v Susan Brownmiller>to accomplish. That's what's respected in masculinity <v Susan Brownmiller>and femininity is designed to simply look a certain way and to exploit

<v Susan Brownmiller>and demonstrate one's vulnerabilities and limitations. <v Susan Brownmiller>It's also a very systematic method of handicapping <v Susan Brownmiller>the female body and the female mind. <v Susan Brownmiller>I don't wear high heeled shoes because I know I can't walk as freely. <v Susan Brownmiller>I don't wear, have long fingernails that I'm constantly worried about. <v Susan Brownmiller>I don't obsess about the ends of my fingers because I use my hands for work. <v Susan Brownmiller>The big thing is, is that I don't limit my ambitions. <v Susan Kinney>Your ambition? <v Susan Brownmiller>Yeah. I think it's feminine not to admit to yourself and certainly <v Susan Brownmiller>not admit to others that you are an ambitious person, that you want things <v Susan Brownmiller>and things that perhaps are not things that women are traditionally supposed to want. <v Susan Kinney>You see these as real basic kinds of barriers for women? <v Susan Brownmiller>I think they're among the most basic, really. <v Susan Brownmiller>Even though they're not seen and they're not talked

<v Susan Brownmiller>about. If you are, say, an assertive woman, you're not going to fit. <v Susan Brownmiller>You're not going to fit. So I think what most women do is compromise <v Susan Brownmiller>in the small ways. I call it compensatory femininity. <v Susan Brownmiller>They will alter their speech patterns and their sentences that, you know, aren't <v Susan Brownmiller>up, though nod their head a lot. <v Susan Kinney>What difference do you think it makes to this society as a whole, that women have full <v Susan Kinney>opportunity to contribute what they will? <v Susan Brownmiller>The quality of medical care, dental care, legal care <v Susan Brownmiller>would go up because you'd get the best of either sex in there. <v Susan Brownmiller>Quality of plumber and plumbing would go up carpentry, painting everything. <v Susan Brownmiller>Cause, you know, the best people for the job would really be doing it. <v Susan Brownmiller>That's nice. <v Susan Brownmiller>And then we'd be facing some new very interesting questions <v Susan Brownmiller>of sex differences, which are quite profound

<v Susan Brownmiller>and real. And it would be interesting to see them clear <v Susan Brownmiller>without um, without the cultural overlay to really see them for what they are. <v Susan Kinney>It takes courage for a woman to break out of the narrow boundaries of conventional <v Susan Kinney>femininity to develop talents and abilities traditionally thought of as masculine, <v Susan Kinney>qualities like physical competence, strength, mastery, power. <v Susan Kinney>Anita Flores enjoys being a pipefitter for the same reasons a man does. <v Susan Kinney>She likes working outside and making money. <v Susan Kinney>She was not easily discouraged by the men on her crew. <v Anita Flores Martin>I would get all the hard jobs, real hard jobs, <v Anita Flores Martin>the jobs that nobody would want digging in the mud, digging in <v Anita Flores Martin>hard soil, jackhammering a lot. <v Anita Flores Martin>It's just that I had to prove myself. <v Susan Kinney>Anita intends to stay in this job because it pays better than what she is able to make in <v Susan Kinney>any other job.

<v Anita Flores Martin>They don't pay you for sitting down. <v Anita Flores Martin>You got to get up. My daddy used to haul trash. <v Anita Flores Martin>He used to have his own business. I'd help him. <v Anita Flores Martin>I was making more hauling trash part time with him than I was working full time as <v Anita Flores Martin>a secretary. <v Patricia Schroeder>People keep trying to treat equality as though it's <v Patricia Schroeder>a frill. It really deals with economic rights. <v Patricia Schroeder>And the economic conditions of women today are really very critical. <v Patricia Schroeder>We know the fastest growing poverty group today is female. <v Patricia Schroeder>And they tell us by the year 2000, everyone in poverty will be female. <v Patricia Schroeder>You should see what welfare mothers are. Many of them were middle class mothers who <v Patricia Schroeder>suddenly had a divorce or were left and had lots of small children. <v Patricia Schroeder>All women, because of their tenuous economic position, <v Patricia Schroeder>tend to be in this very borderline situation. <v Patricia Schroeder>As someone said, for all this, women still want to be cheerleaders. <v Patricia Schroeder>They want to be beautiful and want to be starlets. <v Patricia Schroeder>And they want to be all these things. And then they hit their thirties and forties and

<v Patricia Schroeder>reality sinks in. But it's really breaking down those old barriers of being afraid <v Patricia Schroeder>[ of being afraid] of being afraid to risk something. <v Patricia Schroeder>I also know I can go back. <v Patricia Schroeder>I remember when I went to Harvard Law School, I have friends who said nobody will ever <v Patricia Schroeder>marry you. You've just cut off your chance of ever having a family. <v Patricia Schroeder>I think that's still very real. <v Patricia Schroeder>Oh, you see testing today showing that if the top of the class <v Patricia Schroeder>at Harvard Medical School is a female, she's very upset. <v Patricia Schroeder>If it's a male, he's delighted. <v Patricia Schroeder>A woman feels that she's so afraid she's cut off all the, the whole society has to <v Patricia Schroeder>realize we're not acting very sanely when we do this kind of things. <v Susan Kinney>For a woman. Success can be failure and failure success, because in <v Susan Kinney>order to succeed in the male working world, a woman must have qualities like <v Susan Kinney>assertiveness, ambition, independence, qualities considered traditionally masculine. <v Leonard Chusmir>There's a tendency that people have, of course, to like people who <v Leonard Chusmir>look like them and who act like them.

<v Leonard Chusmir>And since men do the hiring, the tendency is going to be normal to hire people <v Leonard Chusmir>who look like them and who act like them. <v Leonard Chusmir>A woman has a degree of sexual conflict because society has set up <v Leonard Chusmir>till now and it still says it really in most of the United States that <v Leonard Chusmir>high level management jobs, powerful jobs are male jobs and that <v Leonard Chusmir>if a woman wants to enter that field, she is perhaps less of a woman. <v Leonard Chusmir>And that obviously is disturbing. <v Leonard Chusmir>That's a lot of difficulty to overcome there. <v Lynne Hufnagel>You realize this is a felony. This is serious business. <v Lynne Hufnagel>Have you ever been treated for any mental illness? <v Lynne Hufnagel>I've even had attorneys call me sir. <v Susan Kinney>This conflict between femininity and power, between femininity and many <v Susan Kinney>enabling human qualities causes some women to restrain their development. <v Susan Kinney>Those who choose to advance often pay a price in their personal lives. <v Arleen Arnsparger>You have made a choice not to marry, at least to this point.

<v Lynne Hufnagel>Not sure that's a choice. It is a situation. <v Arleen Arnsparger>What about the men that you go out with? Do you? <v Arleen Arnsparger>Are they intimidated by the fact that you're a judge? <v Lynne Hufnagel>Oh, I think probably. I spend the entire day <v Lynne Hufnagel>being strong and being decisive and <v Lynne Hufnagel>those kinds of characteristics don't go away. <v Lynne Hufnagel>Just because it's private, personal time. <v Susan Kinney>A study of women in very high level management jobs shows that only 41 percent <v Susan Kinney>are married, while 95 percent of men in comparable jobs are married. <v Susan Kinney>Those women with the strength and courage to develop the full range of their human <v Susan Kinney>potential, despite all the pressures to restrain it, offer the promise of a new <v Susan Kinney>approach to our most difficult problems. <v Lynne Hufnagel>And then the third thing I was going to order was that you get a job but since you have <v Lynne Hufnagel>done that, you don't have to worry about that. <v Lynne Hufnagel>Just keep it and don't do something stupid

<v Lynne Hufnagel>like this again. There is a way to get help. <v Lynne Hufnagel>If you can't afford your rent and can't buy food for your children other than <v Lynne Hufnagel>burglarizing places. <v Susan Kinney>What about women in politics? <v Susan Kinney>How important is it that women really advance in that? <v Geraldine Ferraro>I think extremely important for both for the country and <v Geraldine Ferraro>for women. Let me deal with the country first. <v Geraldine Ferraro>It has been said that we bring a different approach to problems. <v Geraldine Ferraro>If you go the same route toward a problem and are unable to solve it. <v Geraldine Ferraro>You're up against a brick wall, you turn around saying, well, what am I gonna do? <v Geraldine Ferraro>A woman might be able to give you an alternate means of getting around that wall. <v Leonard Chusmir>They're also bringing a value that American industry is starting to realize is very <v Leonard Chusmir>important, and that is the value of human resources, the value of sensitivity, <v Leonard Chusmir>the value of understanding that workers are not machines, but workers are in fact <v Leonard Chusmir>people, they are individuals.

<v Leonard Chusmir>Japan realized this a long time ago and one of the reasons for their greater productivity <v Leonard Chusmir>is because of their greater understanding of the value of human beings at work. <v Juanita Cox-Burton>As a boss, I would characterize myself as strong <v Juanita Cox-Burton>as one who believes that my people can perform <v Juanita Cox-Burton>and outperform themselves. <v Juanita Cox-Burton>I believe they're better than they think they are. <v Juanita Cox-Burton>And I leave them with the opportunity to prove that. <v male worker>The difference with the woman, as I think I felt more drawn out, more <v male worker>at ease with myself, more willing to take risks <v male worker>and doubt less. <v male worker 2> It seems like the women bosses I've had are more interested in my development <v male worker 2>and working with me to do a better job where I think that's harder for men to do that. <v Jean Baker Miller>I see women as being the people <v Jean Baker Miller>that had had been assigned to carry for the whole society. <v Jean Baker Miller>The connections between people.

<v Jean Baker Miller>The whole network of relationships <v Jean Baker Miller>that is essential in any society for men and women and children. <v Jean Baker Miller>And that it it's only within relationships that anybody develops and grows. <v Jean Baker Miller>I mean, nobody grows in isolation ever. <v Jean Baker Miller>This sensitivity, this understanding, this interest in understanding <v Jean Baker Miller>and knowing others' feelings and so on is a very valuable thing. <v Jean Baker Miller>And if women can keep it he-, seeing the value of what they themselves <v Jean Baker Miller>are doing and really admitting the <v Jean Baker Miller>value of that, we can bring that sort of whole context of life, <v Jean Baker Miller>that mode of living for it, for everybody. <v Jean Baker Miller>We will have done a tremendous thing. <v Jean Baker Miller>So while I think women have to participate in all realms of life <v Jean Baker Miller>and policymaking. <v Jean Baker Miller>But if we do it by imitating men, we'll be losing a great

<v Jean Baker Miller>opportunity. <v Susan Kinney>Tell me what you mean by this concept of the real world. <v Jean Baker Miller>It's as if men said, we'll tell you what's the real world. <v Jean Baker Miller>This is the real world. The world of work outside the home. <v Jean Baker Miller>The world of politics. The world of power. <v Jean Baker Miller>The world of wars. <v Jean Baker Miller>And women are sort of not in the real world. <v Jean Baker Miller>The world they were in were in the world of developing people. <v Jean Baker Miller>Now, I think, again, that's the kind of definition that really is backward <v Jean Baker Miller>or upside down. What matters is how people develop <v Jean Baker Miller>and can be made productive and satisfied. <v Susan Kinney>As more and more women have moved into the man's world of work outside the home, that <v Susan Kinney>traditional women's work of developing people may have been even further devalued. <v Debby Ross>I find that I'm not quite as interesting when I go to business related functions with <v Debby Ross>Brian. I sort of seek out the other women who are staying home with their children <v Debby Ross>because I really don't have that much in common with somebody who is working. <v Susan Kinney>Working in the home is not considered working even by other women working there.

<v Susan Kinney>Women engage day by day in the activities that develop our next generation. <v Debby Ross>Sometimes I do feel sort of insecure. <v Debby Ross>I can remember having to pick them up one day downtown and he was at some kind of a <v Debby Ross>reception and I could look in the window and see all these women dressed in their suits. <v Debby Ross>And all I was thinking about was what a great mom I was because I had made jello that <v Debby Ross>day. And that's sort of upsetting to me when I started thinking about how important that <v Debby Ross>Jell-O had become in my life. But everyone liked it, so it was fine. <v Debby Ross>It was a big deal for my kids. In the back of my mind, I always think that I'm doing what <v Debby Ross>is right for my kids. <v interviewer>When you're at a social gathering with your husband and someone comes up and says, <v interviewer>what do you do? What do you say? <v Debby Ross>I usually say I'm retired right now and that I'm staying home with my children. <v interviewer>Do you ever feel defensive when someone asks-. <v Debby Ross>Very. I do. <v interviewer>Is that why you say retired? <v Debby Ross>Yeah. I mean, sometimes I want to say, you know, I work. <v Debby Ross>I had a career I earned. In fact, there was a time when I earned more money than my <v Debby Ross>husband.

<v interviewer>When you say that you're retired and that you're home with your kids, do you ever get the <v interviewer>sense that the person you're talking to sort of loses interest entirely? <v Debby Ross>Uh huh, absolutely. <v interviewer>What do they do? <v Debby Ross>It's very nice meeting you. I think I'll go have another drink. <v Ruth Hubbard>I see no reason why a woman staying at home and <v Ruth Hubbard>taking care of a family of kids should not have a great <v Ruth Hubbard>deal of self respect because that's very hard work. <v Ruth Hubbard>I think in many ways it's a lot harder work than what I do in the laboratory, but it's <v Ruth Hubbard>work that doesn't get much respect in this society, that doesn't get <v Ruth Hubbard>esteemed very highly, and women tend to be apologetic about it. <v Ruth Hubbard>So my my feeling is that it <v Ruth Hubbard>is important for women to respect <v Ruth Hubbard>ourselves no matter what we do. <v Ruth Hubbard>And to the extent that the society doesn't let us do that, <v Ruth Hubbard>I think we need to counteract that.

<v Ruth Hubbard>I really don't think that we do women a favor by <v Ruth Hubbard>putting the token Supreme <v Ruth Hubbard>Court justice or physician or <v Ruth Hubbard>whatever up there as the thing to aspire to. <v Ruth Hubbard>I think whatever it is that women are doing merits respect. <v interviewer>Tell me about your ideas. As a biologist on the impact of living <v interviewer>in this society on women's lives. <v Ruth Hubbard>I think it's a very tough society to live in, for both men and women, but tougher for <v Ruth Hubbard>women. I think hav- having your work and your personhood <v Ruth Hubbard>devalued as much as women's work is is difficult <v Ruth Hubbard>being made to feel inadequate. <v Ruth Hubbard>I mean, the fact that so much of this society's <v Ruth Hubbard>pressure and and if you wish income <v Ruth Hubbard>comes out of making women feel that our bodies

<v Ruth Hubbard>are all wrong, that we have to spend lots of money <v Ruth Hubbard>and time in order to make ourselves look better, <v Ruth Hubbard>be a different shape, have different color, hair, have different color <v Ruth Hubbard>skin, have different color... <v Ruth Hubbard>Everything is bad for our health, both because lots of the gadgets <v Ruth Hubbard>that we use and the trick diets that we employ are bad for our health, <v Ruth Hubbard>but also because just feeling that there's something wrong <v Ruth Hubbard>with you all the time and that you ought to be different from the <v Ruth Hubbard>way you are is bad for your health. <v Ruth Hubbard>Women are the ones who are supposed to look good and good <v Ruth Hubbard>being defined externally rather than internally. <v interviewer>Does the science of biology have some distorted views of women? <v Ruth Hubbard>Yes. Women are described as nurturing, <v Ruth Hubbard>as weak as natural

<v Ruth Hubbard>people to take care of others. <v Ruth Hubbard>If I had to put my finger on what is, quote, natural <v Ruth Hubbard>for people, it's that we are incredibly adaptable. <v Ruth Hubbard>I think there are some women and some men who would be <v Ruth Hubbard>who could be good at most anything that needs to be done. <v Susan Kinney>Women are encouraging each other to discover this potential. <v Susan Kinney>In Denver, there has been an effort to encourage pride and support across the whole <v Susan Kinney>community through a series of events focusing on women. <v Judith Hensel>We want to reach all women crossing socio political, ethnic and professional <v Judith Hensel>lines. If women continue this kind of thinking, <v Judith Hensel>there is a stronger base for women everywhere. <v Susan Kinney>What particular things do you think can be done by yourself, by other people to really <v Susan Kinney>mobilize the spirit of women? <v Gloria Steinem>At an individual level, We can, for instance, <v Gloria Steinem>utter some fairly revolutionary things like pick it up yourself

<v Gloria Steinem>or them what eats can also cook. <v Susan Kinney>What's the point of the whole movement? <v Gloria Steinem>As long as we have these ideas of of a, that are <v Gloria Steinem>our genital somehow dictate our brains, which fundamentally a crazy idea. <v Gloria Steinem>Men are in a prison of a masculine role, too. <v Gloria Steinem>Now, it's true that the masculine role is a much bigger, more commodious role <v Gloria Steinem>in much more room to move around and so on and so on. <v Gloria Steinem>But it's still a prison. I mean, it may have wall to wall carpeting and people serving <v Gloria Steinem>you coffee, but it's still prison. <v Gloria Steinem>It's as if you took all of human qualities and arbitrarily <v Gloria Steinem>said, seventy five percent are masculine. <v Gloria Steinem>Twenty five percent are feminine. <v Gloria Steinem>Women are going to be on the forefront of this revolution because we're more deprived of <v Gloria Steinem>our full humanity than men are. But men are also deprived. <v Gloria Steinem>We have a sort of idea that at a minimum, we would like to have sided societies <v Gloria Steinem>that don't dictate whole human futures because of this one little element of sex

<v Gloria Steinem>or race. <v Susan Kinney>So it's really another step in that search for freedom that this country was founded <v Susan Kinney>on. <v Gloria Steinem>Yes, it is. I mean, for your freedom turned out to be quite a contagious idea. <v Gloria Steinem>And though they wrote the Constitution for white males who <v Gloria Steinem>owned property, period, <v Gloria Steinem>we've been steadily saying, hey, wait a minute, you know, what about the rest of us, <v Gloria Steinem>ever since. <v Speaker>[indistinct chatter] <v Speaker>What do women really want anyway is made possible by the telecommunications <v Speaker>companies of U.S. West Mountain Bell, North Western Bell, Pacific Northwest Bell and U.S.

<v Speaker>West Information Systems to more than 9 million customers in 14 states. <v Speaker>Nobody knows the trails better by Mountain Bell providing advanced <v Speaker>information transport services for homes and businesses by Public Service <v Speaker>Company of Colorado, a company with energy for the 80s by the Virginia Neoh Blue <v Speaker>Resource Centers Inc. <v Speaker>And by Rocky Mountain Reflections. <v Speaker>This broadcast is a special presentation of KRMA TV Denver.