Woman; 330; Controversies Within the Women's Movement. Part 2

One woman an explorer. Good evening and welcome to woman. Tonight we're going to continue our discussion of the controversies and challenges facing the women's movement. My guest is Betty for Dan perhaps the one person most responsible for today's women's movement. Betty is the author of The Feminine Mystique which is now out in a new tenth anniversary

edition and has sold over three million copies throughout the world. But if you're Dan is founder and first president of the National Organization for Women welcome to women Betty birth regret one of the things that people say we continuously underestimate is the power of the women's movement. Do you think that's true. Hoole Yes I mean and in this last year even. It's just it is growing. The identification this sense of how it's affecting people's lives that the young women you know that encountered first in high school or college are the old women who are you know doing the part time work behind the sales counter as in in the department stores. Women you meet in airports or in and suburban situations are just everywhere and I travel a lot you know around the country. It's like it's so important to them and they really do expect something are able to expect something more and give it life.

And as a result and you know they say to me they tell me about their problems and the problems are great. I mean anybody would be getting it. But they that and they say oh we've got these new problems and they're just you know or they're getting laid off or they have a whole new situation their families are divorced or they're bitter that they say and we you know and but they say you know they they they they then they go like this you do anything. But it's so important. And in the room when you know that and my new book that we're going to be kind of changed my life which is what I think they say and it has to keep gone it has to keep on and so that there is this sense of it's so much bigger than any of us with a with a recent Harris poll which said 63 percent of the American people approve of the goals of the women's movement which is to improve the status of women in the. That was an incredible amount. You know that 63 percent approved twentysomething disapprove and it increased enormously in 1970 it was only 40 to

know is that when there's a huge increase from seven hundred seventy five. They said only something something Bruce and I remember what with all of the women's organizations were doing their best thing for the women's movement. But even that increase the one that really had doubled in 70 and in the end. It made people like me feel officer and so you know responsibility like I mean and this is real this is happening and we have no right to mess it up. We absolutely have no right to underestimate the power of the will to make the changes that every woman's needs were to misuse it or to misuse it or misuse it to misuse it or to let it be co-opted or let it be ripped doc or let it be and or let it be paralyzed or let it be used even for

anyone. This is the queue's internal part trip. You know many individual women learn leadership and become leaders and in many individual women will advance professionally. We have new aspirations as a result of the womanhood and right on. That's what should happen but the women's movement is more important than any of them and more important to the that it stay with integrity its responsibility to the needs and the problems of the women in the mainstream of American society because that's where it is now. And their real problem they're not glamorous. They're just real. Like getting higher and getting laid off or because women were the last hired and they're the first fired in lots of universities and other places where they don't have tenure or companies. And then should women fight against seniority No I don't think so but then they've got to have new allies with labor unions on the you know on the real problems of the question of jobs available.

The cries of the family of it are sadly taking themselves seriously people. Does that mean that they're going to abandon their need for a lovely man home. Family Children are that no. But it means that there are real problems and we've got to deal with the reality. It seems to me there are problems from within and problems from without and that no one seems to be paying a lot of attention to the problems from within. I mean the press is paying a certain amount of attention to it. You read an article in The Washington Post or Time magazine or the New York Times and one of the things that's being said a great deal is about infiltration. And there are people who feel very strongly that women's movement has been infiltrated. There are people that feel that that's not important that they're more important problems to deal with. How do you feel about that I distrust or distrust. Anyone who is trying to gloss over the fact that the obliterated the world has in fact video footage.

So how do we know that three when we know it. I might have suspected it for a long time and have a well you know I'm not going to read it and a lot of us why they felt that way but we now know it because it's been testified in these hearings that the Church Committee and others in that investigated the misuse of the CIA and the FBI in Washington and that Rockefeller Commission has said that it was one of the target. I mean logically why wouldn't it have been the largest movement for social change that still exist in the 70s. Only when they have been completely destroyed in their every attempt being made is right. And recently someone testified that again and again the FBI said agents there were welcome back and you know all they're about is they want equality and this is their side in society and still they sent more agents in. Now we who were in it were aware a gear to get of something going wrong in it would drive us nuts because sometimes those who seem to be using the most radical slogans or rhetoric or

tactics. Would be so messing up their movement they would be paralyzed. They would be divided they would be keeping us from accomplishing the real thing that we were going. Jane sighed. And yet they would be just plain we would you know. I mean can women really be that you know that we're keep messing up this way you know I don't think they're dumb I think that we that we we emerged in this enormously powerful movement for social change and it does have big economic and political implications and therefore the forces of reaction that still control this country it still could draw its economic establishment its military establishment in much of its political establishment then they had to paralyze us involved rates go up just divert us and they didn't quite succeed in doing it. But they've they've got a lot of damage. When you were in

Mexico City did you see any manifestation of that Oh sure a Mexico City was much more obvious than there it was in the U.S. because Mexico City I mean they're the reactionary forces that were manipulating. You know use more. Tacky so that I was followed physically my life was threatened. You know many men with guns brought women in and disrupted the meeting where the women didn't get together. Basic gains the basic question of equality for women. But international NGO was a disgrace because it was an insult to women the world over. I mean it was used and misused and then finally that Zionism thing was attached to it so that the women were being used as a trial balloon to use the U.N. this agency that should have been the hope of the world that it rose out of a war that put in the gas chambers and then women used is the first the U.N. isn't it too soon to fan out a new way to present you know the Jews and

that's the final blow as far as I'm concerned. It used the U.N. against it misuse the women and it didn't do any service to the cause of international NGO but to give back to us because really only what's happening in our own country that we can really know about and you know that responsible for. Similar but more subtle things may have been going on here to divert energies from the really got economic questions everybody quality for women and they're not that difficult. You know they're and they don't imply extremist things really they just invite a whole new sense of yourself as a person whether you are whether you are secretary whether you are a stewardess whether you are a college should you know whether you are a professional in any field whether you are a high schools do you know whether you're a grandmother whether you're married or with native was

there the whole new changes in society when you really just assume barrack and women are entitled to the equal values of American society. But this was happening it is happening in the pair shows that there is enormous identification of women with the movement. But then this threatens those that have been easily manipulating women in the past you know politicians demagogues dictators Friess reactionary of the right and the reactionary commissars of the far left. They've just used to it you know they've manipulated them to buy things they don't need to vote out of their fears about reactionary forces into power to you know just step passively doctrines even be inimical to them. Now when women take their own. Responsibility for their own lives their own hard to control their destiny.

And they begin to do it by confronting the situation of their lives. We've been doing the work that's not 10 percent of people that's like 51 52 53 percent and that's a big political business. And what went on to Mexico to have messed up International Women's Year. And what's been going on this year to block the IRA or try to do the right of women to abortion or these things to infiltrate the women's movement do involve my own organization now to divert it to make it even by a slogan out of the mainstream when in fact what's happening is in the mainstream all of this. In the testimony of the women would have been infiltrated by agents. So I think it's terribly important to keep alive the women and that to keep moving on in the mainstream. So if anything it diverts paralyzes. Ron how much do you think. And I wasn't aware of this for a long time until I started talking to people like you and some other people who seem to be concerned about it.

I also talked to a lot of people who felt it was nonsense and that we shouldn't pay any attention to it. But how much how aware do you think is and I hate using this term but the average woman and woman who are not involved at the level that you are I mean how aware if you think she's dumb. Absolutely. I go I don't see I get these letters. And in this last month or two people would come up to me you know and you know they were and this is what's making me feel like I get it also if I don't have one already because I'm so worried about what to do and they have a good story and they say you know the world is what is important to them and they feel easy since something is going on. They don't know what it is. And in there is there so much. Pain here you see there the woman who it is important to us to us. We have this slogan sisterhood is powerful and it is so we don't want to.

It is terribly difficult for any of us even if we have the proof spread out right here that somebody that is supposedly vulgar in the name of the N word is a CIA agent. Even if we that proof spelled out it would be just terribly difficult for us to face it in our gut because we phase in or that you don't face something you're not but you know what I mean to come to grips with it because it means that we've got to revisit the whole new security when we've been in secure the woman's womb and it's up there we have to recognize even the world we have to take responsibility for it's just not going to happen you know it's been really it's just too much of a big business. It's too much to be invoked or it trust is an automatic just because the woman is a woman. Women have are can be misused but trust has to be earned and it's our responsibility to say this rule and again continue to have your Betty Friedan and you started it all and you're getting the pressure now

to do something from the people who who feel as you do. Do you know what to do. We don't. I do. I feel the same conflicts. You know you all of us here. I know how important it is. I mean you know I might personally want to think about a lot of the things you know and move off and say I've done my bit and I know that my God it's you know it's not only my baby but it it's all of us. And it's it's Jane moderates like Jane general. And and we cannot let it die. And also I know more than any of you all you know it maybe but a lot of how very big it is how much bigger it is that any of the artists that are called women's lives have begun to doubt how absolutely essential the identification of women with a woman is in every walk of

American life whether you call it you want to use words like class and middle class sure most American women a little red white and black and brown and old and young and gray haired and you know junior high end little girls in Little League and. We're getting your boys in the women are having children and women have new aspirations in school and in women who are housewives lose hundreds of years of boredom and are slowly waking up to the fact they've been living in a very security and yet what what what changes after you everybody in the world is who it is is it in yet. Now what are we going to do. I mean I would get it. OK I heard that. Not heard I read in TIME magazine at the Time or Newsweek that you had a meeting in New Orleans with some other women. And there's been a lot of rumors about that meeting secret meeting to start a new organization that would want to clear some of that. It wasn't that.

Well then you might say that the crisis and the real questions that are agonizing over the woman's right now if they have any sense they're going to be agonize in my opinion. We can't just brush it under the table until it became public with the defeat of the area New York and New Jersey that came in the same period of time as the takeover of the now organization which I helped start. By a group that had publicly committed itself to take the organization out of the mainstream into the revolution whereas most people would feel that the revolution is really what we're doing to change the mainstream so that this obsolete kind of rhetoric of a of another era and the tactics that go out ever that upset people then there was a so-called strike against the system which was one week before it came up on the ballot and it didn't even work it wasn't even well-organized enough to be that. And at the same time as real women are being laid off and nothing energies were being

diverted that were being diverted where were not nice on the economic problems the real women that you know that the women are the movement's responsibility and the political responsibilities of getting re finally ratified by 76 that's there. Well. None of us want to face the ugly reality that the ruling party obliterated that something is happening to destroy our major organization. I have dealt with some pride of motherhood perhaps but now the upstart and I still have enormous faith in the members of now in the 700 chapters in the suburbs and City of this nation that they are still in the mainstream and they are still committed to the real problem the real goals of women who want to quality and they want it. Really they don't want to just in terms of rhetoric. So the problem is harder to face the fact that the organization may have been co-opted infiltrate and taken over and being destroyed with the reality with also your loyalty

organisation with the senses. What we have and it's been the main we have and yet you face this fact that if the polls showed that nearly three fourths of those voters out there supported it and yet you haven't even given there was enormous amounts of money spent by the enemies of legal rights I'm really in New York and New Jersey an enormous amount of money that we don't know where it came from spent in infiltrating the Philadelphia convention and now to keep its energies diverted on non-essential question what do we do. What do we do. You know like they're asking. They're coming to me. I don't want a story to start another organization in the ME GO TO Now if there's any hope of saving you now as a maid she will be his agent but my commitment is to deliver to the country or to the world is moving into the memories of now as there was the will to do it. And in him is just an easy urge

and the feeling we have to have the will to do it IDs Ebony's it we can't let it be destroyed and we have to keep moving forward and out into the mainstream and not let our energies be paralyzed and internal. Made up is our power struggle and that's what's worrying me you see. OK that's really happening isn't there in us and it's still happening you see. How do you get PR there how do you try and stand the polarization. How do you how do you use the how do you meet the needs in it is it was of the women and men you know because it isn't just women it's a man to more and more supporting it but the dramatic increase in the last go to Harrisburg the dramatic increase in the last five years is that in the consciousness of women that we have done their job.

You know I don't think that's reversible going and I'd say well all right. You know they get destroyed. One organization or another in the movies will still go on because it's here. But the organization is important too we know that you know. So what do we do. What do we do. My thought had been something like You asked me about the thought of you know I mean you know no I don't and I got regrets what happened was that after Philadelphia down after the defeat of the air raid they some people. Of the newly. You know very concerned and they came to see me with questions like this. And and they wanted I have not been involved with the internal organizational struggles or problems of now as long as it was committed to the stated purpose for which I organize it you know the full equality for women to fully equal partnership with men and to take action to bring it into the mainstream. You know I didn't I

don't I mean I've been doing my bit like riding electric in teaching and I have leaders there with the organization about. But they came to me with a sort of S.O.S. And so. Will you be in the middle of the country next and so I said I was going to give his lecture to others which I did like you to run and they said will you come a day early and if we meet you in ever it was discussed all this. Some of them came and we just discussed these problems in the crisis or what we thought it happened. What did we get in some of them. There were from a independent sort of group now and they were concerned with what's going on within the organisation now and says I don't know all that much about that. I was more with the larger questions. And the fact that it leaked out to the newspapers and it such a fuss was made about it. Well first I was. Sort of amazed by that and then I thought

well look it is important to the women of America. It didn't just totally get it was on the front page of The New York Times. I know and you know why because it's big it's really it's a very big job that a company or corporation could move into rip it off to sell something or to move in to block it to keep from paying women certain wages or pigeon runs or whatever but it's a big political phenomenon that. Political forces reactionary ones might want to block because it could otherwise that change the whole political bludgeon here and other people for just little power trips might want to you know rip off co-op. But is there a rule of this that it's unprecedented. We ourselves don't really understand it fully about you know like where. But he didn't already have it. The fact that that was Lives

are changed are facing new problems. See that's what 0 3 that we have the responsibility to them and therefore I'm getting mad. You know like I'm really getting me out again or getting mad at ourselves for for letting ourselves be we paralyzed. Are you interested in feedback. How acceptable are you I mean how accessible do you want to hear. Look I care. I don't know what to tell you the honest truth. I have seen there's so much ripoff and so much go up to so much. Manipulating differences. Manipulate your differences. I'm terrified of taking any step that will exacerbate differences in air yet I do not think that weekend denies the reality that our movement that people are trying to destroy our world and blew it when we need it most and when it's a war is so

enormous It's nearly three out of four of the people of America. What is wrong with us that we're not using this support. You want people to tell us that we're not could you give me a right to do you happy to forward anything no but look like what should we do. Should we try to use the year 76 to somehow dedicate ourselves to get that Equal Rights Amendment. For one thing I do not buy for one instant that there isn't that majority vote. Let's figure out how we get in every community. Well I don't care what organization you're member of IF YOU SAY WE ABOUT THE with you and I know that's most of America how we can have retreats and advances advances toward the mainstream in every community with where the existing organizations or with or without them are bringing them all together or whatever but without getting into these silly rhetorical squabbles or power battles you know and say get your item

it ratified in 76 deal with the fact that women are being laid off. Deal with the new crisis in the family. And what are we going to do to move on with a woman really and not let it be destroyed like the other movements of social change have been done in America. If you got any ideas about that and if you're interested in a movement to say that with out getting sucked up into any new diversity thing I'd like to hear it. I hope you get some response. I really do hope women that you know how they feel because obviously it's a problem. Another thing we only have minutes a couple of minutes left. The Harris Poll one minute left the Harris poll indicated that people are much more interested in the issues and practical advice than the rhetoric and it's important. The real problem see women rhetoric that tries to make a woman of the class oppressed by another class the minute. Men are interest to the new problem. Our man isn't even the enemy here.

But the real problems are the ones that we are not sufficiently addressing the problems of women who work because they have to. And that's most women they work because they have to earn the money for the family or for themselves. And the problem of the women that have been to housewives and. You know they may lose the security of a man who's been supporting them because you know divorces are happening you know all over the place or. You. Have your bigger job or yours are over. Move back into a very competitive world other than what bases and they're afraid. Well we'd be kidding ourselves if we did it that we're afraid to. I mean changes how to deal with all the fears that we also have. If the changes that brought about an end except also our needs are needs for our needs for life our needs to govern even people are right but do we love our kids and our husband or get along alone or have homes or have been a lot of the Time War.

It's hard life for all of us and that's what we do thank you. Thank you for watching and good night. Produced by w any which is and was founded by a public television station and the Public Broadcasting. It.