Conference turris::womannotes-v3

597.0. "The Glass Half Empty" by CADSE::FOX (No crime. And lots of fat, happy women.) Thu Dec 27 1990 08:04

Anna Quindlen writes a regular column for the Op-Ed page of the 
New York _Times_.  My brother, pitying my _Times_less state, frequently sends
me her columns.  Today I was able to come to work early to enter this one in.
Like Quindlen, I also have a daughter.  I know what *my* New Year's resolution
will be...

Bobbi

		The Glass Half Empty
		   by Anna Quindlen
		 The New York _Times_ November 22,1990  Page A27
		Reprinted without permission

	My daughter is 2 years old today.  She is something like me, only
better.  Or at least that is what I like to think.  If personalities had
colors, hers would be red.
	Little by little, in the 20 years between my eighteenth birthday
and her second one, I had learned how to live in the world.  The fact that
women were now making 67 cents for every dollar a man makes -- well, it was
better than 1970, wasn't it, when we were making only 59 cents?  The
constant stories about the underrepresentation of women, on the tenure
track, in the film industry, in government, everywhere, had become
commonplace.  The rape cases.  The sexual harassment stories. The demeaning
comments.  Life goes on.  Where's your sense of humor?
	Learning to live in the world meant seeing the glass half full.
Ann Richards was elected Governor of Texas instead of a good ol' boy who
said that if rape was inevitable, you should relax and enjoy it.  The
police chief of Houston is a pregnant woman who has a level this-is-my-job
look and a maternity uniform with stars on the shoulder.  There are so
many opportunities unheard of when I was growing up.
	And then i had a daughter and suddenly I saw the glass half empty.
And all the rage I thought had cooled, all those how-dare-you-treat-us-
like-that days, all of it comes back when I look at her, and especially
when I hear her say to her brothers, "Me too."
	When I look at my sons, it is within reason to imagine all the
world's doors open to them.  Little by little some will close, as their
individual capabilities and limitations emerge.  But no one is likely to
look at them and mutter: "I'm not sure a man is right for a job at this
level.  Doesn't he have a lot of family responsibilities?"
	Every time a woman looks at her daughter and thinks "She can be
anything" she knows in her heart, from experience, that it's a lie.
Looking at this little girl, I see it all the old familiar ways of a world
that still loves Barbie.  Girls aren't good at math, dear.  He needs the
money more than you, sweetheart; he's got a family to support.  Honey --
this diaper's dirty.
	It is like looking through a telescope.  Over the years I learned
to look through the end that showed things small and manageable.  This is
called a sense of proportion.  And then I turned the telescope around, and
all the little tableaus rushed at me, vivid as ever.
	That's called reality.
	We soothe ourselves with the gains that have been made.  There are
many role models.  Role models are women who exist -- and are photographed
often -- to make other women feel better about the fact that there aren't
really enough of us anywhere, except in the lowest-paying jobs.  A
newspaper editor said to me not long ago, with no hint of self-consciousness,
"I'd love to run your column, but we already run Ellen Goodman."  Not only
was there a quota; there was a quota of one.
	My daughter is ready to leap into the world, as though life were
chicken soup and she a delighted noodle.  The work of Prof. Carol Gilligan
of Harvard suggests that some time after the age of 11 this will change,
that even this lively little girl will pull back, shrink, that her constant
refrain will become "I don't know."  Professor Gilligan says the culture
sends the message: "Keep quiet and notice the absence of women and say
nothing."  A smart 13-year-old said to me last week, "Boys don't like it
if you answer too much in class."
	Maybe someday, years from now, my daughter will come home and say,
"Mother, at college my professor acted as if my studies were an amusing
hobby and at work the man who runs my department puts his hand on my leg and
to compete with the man who's in the running for my promotion who makes
more than I do I can't take time to have a relationship but he has a wife
and two children and I'm smarter and it doesn't make any difference and
some guy tried to jump me after our date last night." And what am I
supposed to say to her?
	I know?
	You'll get used to it?
	No.  Today is her second birthday and she has made me see fresh
this two-tiered world, a world that, despite all our nonsense about
post-feminism, continues to offer less respect and less opportunity for
women than it does for men. My friends and I have learned to live with it,
but my little girl deserves better.  She has given me my anger back, and I
intend to use it well.
	That is her gift to me today. Some birthday I will return it to
her, because she is going to need it.

    My duaghter is 21.  Four years ago she was sexually harrassed at work
    and the management told me that they believed it happened but I was
    blowing it out of proportion.  And I could no longer tell myself that
    things were a lot better than they had been for me when I was her age. 
    Better but not a lot better.  And I kept hearing Shirley Chisolm tell
    us (at the Sr. Women in Manfg. Forum) that we owed it to our daughters
    to continue to fight to make things better.  And I lost my complacency
    and got my anger back.
    
    Stacy will have it better than my generation but both she and I will
    have to fight to be sure that her daughter (should she have one) isn't
    still facing the same battles.  What worries me -- not about Stacy
    because she's already learned to be angry and she's a fighter -- is how
    many of the women of her generation seem to think that there's no need
    to fight anymore; that the discrimination is no longer there. 

Bobbi,

Thanks for entering that. and good of you to have a brother who
attends :)

Have been reading Helen Deutch's autobiography this weekend. She
was one of the original psychoanalysts who trained with Freud and
is a major figure in the development of the theory and
training of psychoanalysists.

Deutch was born in Poland in 1884 or 85. She was lost 
after grammar school -- because in her large city, there
were only highschools for boys. She studied on her own
and passed the exams for university admission.

Now, 105 years later, things are better. It's a fight
worth continuing. The best, like your daughter, will help
continue it. 

She has one major blessing on her side: Her Mom.  Meigs

    Thanks for posting this note, Bobbie. My daughter is also 2. She has
    a sense of humor and a sense of spirit about her that is very special
    to me.
    
    Kate
    

    Thanks... it brought tears and anger.. My Emily is also just 2...