Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    I was supportive of things like ... oh drat what was it called - I
    can't remember the acronym - RICA?  something like that - I heard about
    it around 1981 in Massachusetts - it helped women to take courses so
    they could support themselves (and their children?).  
    
    I think the feminist movement is trying to work on so many fronts that
    the most obvious battles are often seen as the only ones.  Also, I feel
    that the feminist movement often attacks those things it feels it can
    change most readily (if any change at all can be said to be made
    readily, given the sluggish inertia society has become).  Perhaps it is
    self-serving (feminism) because poor people don't have TIME to be
    active in the movement, and hence may be overlooked.....
    
    Oh, by the way, that educational program was canceled by our lovely
    state of Massachusetts when the Proposition 2 and a half crunch came in
    and the government started cutting the budget in the social-help areas.
    
    -Jody

    I would hope that AFDC and abuses of the system on both ends would be a
    feminist issue. If abortion rights can be fought for, then aren't the
    children that ARE here worthy of the same intensity of dedication to
    cause? This budding feminist male hopes and believes so. My children
    are lucky enough to be in a situation where their survival doesn't
    depend on the state. We both work, she is remarried and owns her own
    business, I make a decent wage. (Well, almost decent) They don't have
    to worry. What of those that do. It is high time that the state took
    care of those unable to take care of themselves. I know there are
    programs, but these are abused horribly by users and managers alike.
    There should be a program in place without 8 billion forms to fill out
    and maybe script redeemable in cash by retailers to ensure that the
    money doesn't get used for something other then the child's welfare.
    Sorta like foodstamps. I know that all abuses can't be stopped but it's
    an idea.
    
    Phil

    
    i believe that the modern feminist movement historically suffers 
    from disproportionate emphasis on middle-class or even upper-class
    white urban/suburban concerns and has done itself a disservice
    by lack of attention to issues of poverty and 'women of color'.
    i also believe that in recent years *much* has been done to change
    that legacy and that, in fact, feminism *today* is very concerned
    and involved in these issues.
    
    

    I happened to be working for a women's rights organization in DC when
    the Job Training Partnership Act was passed and implementing
    regulations were drafted and approved.  Unless one has been involved
    directly in the legislative/regulatory process, it's difficult to
    understand how it all works.  For recent history buffs, the JTPA was
    co-authored by Quayle and Kennedy.
    
    The legislative act, AS PASSED, would have gone a long way to help
    train, educate, and provide child care for AFDC women.  It also had
    set-asides for the Job Corps (mostly serving teen age boys) and
    displaced homemakers and displaced workers over 55 (to cover training
    men who lost their jobs and need to find work in other fields).  The
    set-aside programs were to have their own "pots" of money, a limit of
    17% was allotted for administrative costs, and the majority of the
    money was for the AFDC mothers for education, training, tools, and
    childcare.
    
    The implementing regulations, AS DRAFTED BY THE LABOR DEPARTMENT,
    pooled all of the money, the set-asides were basically unfunded except
    for the Job Corps.  Somehow the administrative costs, which were
    limited, were raised to some percentage of the program totals received
    by the states (and which are a lot higher than the legislative limit). 
    The regulations limited the amount of money for child care and tools
    for women.  Basically, the law which was passed by our representatives
    and which would have given people a good chance to get off welfare, or
    to otherwise support themselves was GUTTED by the Reagan administration
    with the implementing regulations.
    
    A coalition of groups, along with mine, participated in commenting on
    the regulations without any success.
    
    Qualye's role in the process was to try to keep the amount of money for
    the program at a minimum.  He succeeded admirably (not heavy sarcasm)
    and kept the funding below 2 billion dollars.  He was also involved in
    trying to limit the choice of education and training that the AFDC
    women would receive, mostly to manufacturing and minimum wage type
    jobs.
    
    All in all, it was an interesting process to watch, and this is why it
    is so hard to really reform the system.  There are lots of legislators
    and administration types who could really care less about helping
    people to help themselves.
    
    sue

    -1
    
    When I was writing about Quayle in the last reply it put in parentheses
    "not heavy sarcasm".   That's supposed to read (NOTE heavy sarcasm)
    
    sue

    No question in my mind that the fact that many of the poor are
    single moms. And I think that two of the solutions to that problem
    are: (and I wish I knew how to accomplish them)
    
    	Get young women to realize that they should not/MUST not be
    	dependent on a man for money. Ever. And create the situation
    	in which training and education will accomplish that.
    
    	Get as much money as possible to women. Freedoms are nice;
    	reproductive freedom is nice. But if you have enough money, you
    	can buy all the freedom you want.
    
    --DE
    

    
    
>    i believe that the modern feminist movement historically suffers 
>    from disproportionate emphasis on middle-class or even upper-class
>    white urban/suburban concerns and has done itself a disservice
>    by lack of attention to issues of poverty and 'women of color'.
>    i also believe that in recent years *much* has been done to change
>    that legacy and that, in fact, feminism *today* is very concerned
>    and involved in these issues.
    
    
Joe,
    
    I agree that the feminist movement has historically placed a lack of
    proper emphasis on women of color and other mothers in general. Maybe
    because the movement has already got a full plate. I don't really know.
    
    I don't know if it's gotten any better. If the new feminist movement
    has become more involved it hasn't paid off. There are more and more
    homeless families. There are certainly less programs for AFDC
    recipients. The CEDA program was a good one that I believe went by the
    wayside. It trained one friend in programming and another in
    electronics.
    
    I think women's poverty should be a major issue. What good are all of
    our equal rights when so many of us are destitute? Given the choice be-
    tween the right to vote and a good job my choice would be clear. 
    
    Kate    

    	Actually, many white women *did* work back when the movement
    	was founded.  In Massachusetts, many women worked in factories,
    	as an example.
    
    	The women's movement had ties with the movement to abolish
    	slavery (in the years before the Civil War) as well as ties
    	with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's.

    CEDA!  That's what the program was!
    
    -Jody
    

    Actually, it was the CETA program, which was replaced by the JTPA. 
    Although many women and men were trained in this program, the critics
    zeroed in on the fact that many in the program were employed in state
    and local government.  In DC, many worked for the Fed. or DC govt. not
    doing much.  Because DC is the Govt company town, it got lots of
    attention and was scrapped for JPTA.
    
    As I said in an earlier note, JPTA WAS SUPPOSED to be targeted for AFDC
    receipients.  It also took out the employment by govt component and
    substituted private industry to provide the jobs.  There are lots of
    ins and outs to the program, and I haven't kept up with who is really
    benefitting from the program.  I suspect it's the private industry who
    also received tax incentives for hiring folks in this program.  It's an
    interesting story, I'm sure.
    
    sue

    I believe the name was CETA, comprehensive employment and training act. 
    CETA was a godesssend to many people I know, including myself.  It kept
    me off of assistance, and gave me the tools needed to get on a career
    path after I was traded in on a new model.  
    
    Unfortunately, the congress's thoughts were that this program cost too
    much for the number of people it helped, and that the people it trained
    were unemployable, untrainable, and several other epithets that have
    motivated me to write nastygrams to my congresscritter.
    
    JTPA is the "new,improved CETA" which tries to get people into lower
    skilled jobs, and the training to do those jobs, it has a lower
    training cost, therefore great in the eyes of funders, but, from what I
    have seen in Colorado, they have not been training for the market, and
    are not training to a high enough skill level to start off at a high
    enough salary to get off the public assistance treadmill.
    
    By the way,  displaced homemakers have been a focus of "the movement"
    going clear back to the early 70's.  One of the big pushes for ERA that
    I remember, was to get *all* women the opportunity to be financially
    independent, including equal work for equal pay, decent daycare,
    education, etc.  This also included getting rid of laws on the books,
    that said that a farmer's wife was not an equal partner, and her having
    to pay inheritance tax on the property that she and her husband worked
    if he died, the same laws governing other property, inequal credit
    accessability, etc.
    
    Meg

    Having been raised as a poor woman, allow me to speculate that
    perhaps a part of the reason for lack of involvement by lower
    class women is that poor women are too busy working at jobs that
    pay minimum wage or less, struggling to feed and clothe their
    families on that wage, and often trying to be both father and
    mother to their children, to have time for political action. 
    
    We have very little faith the system would do any good even if
    we did get involved in political action.  It's never done any
    good before, why should it start now?
    
    --bonnie

    As the grandaughter of a suffragette, I originally took exception to
    .8.    I do not believe that racism was built into the movement by
    the founders - I think the women in question were very conscious of
    racism, and were for the most part, not racists.   
    
    I may be the grandaughter of a Suffragette, but *she* was the
    grandaughter of a woman active on the underground railroad.  Is that 
    a racist background?   It was the closest we had at the time to an
    anti-racism attitude.
    
    -m

To echo Bonnie's remark (.13): 
It takes leisure time to be politically active, and leisure time
is a luxury of the middle and upper classes, for the most part.  
Middle- and lower-class women, even if they were not working outside the
house, had (have) 24-hour jobs at home.  Middle- and lower-class women
working all day and night for their families weren't likely to have
money lying around to hire help or send kids out.

I don't know what's been the attitude of the feminists
of the last century or so, though I suspect it depended on the
individual and that there has always been a range.  But I can
deduce that opportunity to participate would be limited by economics.

	MKV

    Mary's .15 made me realize another factor:  a lot of the goals of
    the feminist movement don't even make sense to lower-class women.
    
    In the lifetime of my grandmother (she was born 1911), it's been
    the norm that women of the lower economic classes work outside the
    home, if they can find work.  
    
    Being able to reach a middle class level where they didn't have to
    work night shift at the hospital or dish out breakfasts to drunken
    truck drivers was a goal, an achievement.  From where they stand,
    it seems rather peculiar that all these leisured women would be
    rejecting something that for them is very little more than a
    wistful dream.  It doesn't quite match their experience of
    reality.
    
    --bonnie

    RE: .16
    
    ...which makes me think yet again that the feminist movement has
    either not made itself clear, or has had its objectives so muddied by
    the media that people don't understand.
    
    The feminist movement is not about "wanting to work"; it's about
    Women Having Choices. The term "only a housewife" was NOT coined by
    feminists, and yet it's laid at our feet constantly. The point of
    feminism is that a woman who WANTS to work should be able to work at
    the job she wants, and that she should be recompensed on a par with
    any man in a same or analagous job. That a woman who wants to work in
    the home, do so, and be recompensed appropriately - that housework be
    recognized at the Real Work it is; that childcare be recognized as the
    Real Work it is.
    
    --DE
    

    re .16, I find it interesting that you say that "it's been the norm
    that women of the lower economic classes work outside the home, if they
    can find work."  You say your grandmother was born in 1911, about the
    same as as my mother.  My father was born in 1901 and my mother in
    1913.  My father never had a very high paying job, but he would have
    been embarrassed to have his wife work outside the home, unless she
    *wanted* to be a nurse or a school teacher.  I don't *think* he would
    have been embarrassed to have a wife who *wanted* a career.  But, he
    would have been humiliated if his wife had worked at a menial job out
    of necessity.  He saw it as his duty to provide for his wife and family
    and would have been humiliated if he couldn't.  That's sexist in it's
    own way, I know, but at least my mother never had to work at some
    horrible, tedious, low-paid job.   I do wonder where my father got that
    attitude from.
    
    Lorna
    

    Well, my grandmother (maternal) was born in the 1800's.  She worked
    outside the home. She was a suffragette.  My mother was born in 1916, 
    my father in 1914. My mother worked outside the home in the 30's, she
    worked outside the home in the 40's, I'm not sure about the 50's, and
    she worked outside the home in the 60's and 70's, until she retired. 
    She was a feminist before it was fashionable.  I can *not* imagine my
    father expecting the "little woman" to stay home while he provided for
    her.  As it was, he worked a full-time job, a part-time job, plus he
    was in the Army Reserves/National Guard.  That is, when he wasn't on
    active duty.
    
    It just never occured to me that "a woman's place is in the home."  I
    was never told that I couldn't be something because I was a female. 
    Because I wasn't very smart, yes, but never because I was a female.
    
    BTW, they were both raised in Lowell, MA, when it was a hard-core mill
    town.  They have lived in Natick, MA, a one-time "bedroom community"
    for the last 40 years.  I don't think either of those factors
    influenced these facts.
    
    E Grace

    re .19, well, I don't know where my father got his ideas.  He grew up
    in a small fishing village in Nova Scotia, Canada, in the early 1900's. 
    I don't know if growing up in Canada had anything to do with it.
    
    My mother grew up in Hopkinton, Mass., and her parents owned and
    operated a fairly successful apple farm.  I don't think my grandmother
    ever did any outside work on the farm.
    
    As I've said before I think women who were brought up to believe they
    could do anything were lucky.  That's how I've tried to raise my
    daughter, but it's not the way I was raised.
    
    Lorna
    

    RE: .19
    
    Let me clarify:
    
    >>Because I wasn't very smart, yes, but never because I was a female.
    
    
    This is what I was *told*.  My family has never considered me to be
    very bright.  
    
    Which doesn't say much for their brains, does it?!  (*8
    
    E Grace

    	My maternal Grandfather graduated from college at the turn of the
    	century (he was over 45 years old when my Mother, his first child,
    	was born.)  He was upper middle class - he was a publisher and
    	owner of a magazine.  He married my Grandmother when she was 28
    	years old or so - up to then, she was a pure career woman employed
    	at the magazine by my Grandfather.  After they got married, she
    	kept her career (before, during and after the births of my Mother
    	and my Aunt.)  My Mom was a "latch key" child in the late 1920's.

    	My Grandfather had very strong opinions about womens rights.  He
    	often stated that women needed college educations every bit as much
    	as men.  He hired my Mother to work as a feature writer (and
    	photographer) for the magazine when she was 14 years old.  When she
    	went out on stories, people thought she was 20 (including my Dad.)
    	My father met her when she was covering a dance for the magazine -
    	he was 19 and she was the most sophisticated young woman he'd met
    	in their town.  She had a lot of presence for 14 years old.  :-)

    	Unfortunately, my Grandfather died before my Mother finished High
    	School - and they lost much of their money when the magazine folded
    	a few years later.  Then there was WWII - my parents got married and
    	had two kids right away (by the time Mom was finally 20 years old.)
    	When the war was over and they were more settled ("thirtysomething")
    	- they had one last child (me.) 

    	Both my parents passed down my Grandfather's belief that women need
    	education as much as men do.  In fact, all 4 of my Grandfather's grand-
    	daughters are college graduates (some of us with multiple degrees.)
    	One of his grandsons is a PhD.  The other two didn't go to college.
	Although neither of his daughters finished college, they passed his
    	message down to their daughters (and sons.)
    
    	When it comes to the women's movement, I don't see the need to second-
    	guess what they did (and to criticize the movement for the things we
    	perceive that they *didn't* do the way we wish they'd done.)  In the
    	early days of the movement (200 years ago,) things were so limited
    	for women that the Suffragettes and other pioneers of womens rights
    	performed miracles by being heard at all!

    	If we think about the intense degree of hatred shown (in the 1990's!!)
    	to women like Molly Yard - imagine what it must have been like in
    	the 18th and 19th centuries (before we were even close to having the
    	vote or being able to own property.)

    	The womens rights movement has a long, proud history - and feminism
    	is still here today (200 years later!)  We can build on what has
    	been accomplished for us in the past 200 years - we can add to the
    	good work that has been done without discounting the movement for
    	what any of us might regard as omissions.
    
    	Long live the women's movement!  I wish I'd met my Grandfather -
    	he gave my family the legacy of a belief in women's rights that *both*
    	my parents kept alive for me and for my sister.
    
    	My brother is raising a daughter by himself, and the legacy is now
    	being passed down to her.

    re: .17
    
    I guess I'm not expressing myself very clearly.
    
    To women who have no choice but to work to survive, the idea that
    there are women who don't have to work, but want to, but claim not
    to be able to, doesn't quite compute.  If they want a job, why
    don't they just go out and get one?  They've got more education
    and training -- they could get a better job than flipping
    pancakes.  And when you're working at the kinds of jobs you can
    get when you drop out of high school at 16, you'd love to have a
    choice about whether you stayed home with the kids.  But you
    don't.  You work or you don't eat.  And they don't see anything
    about the women's movement that will have any impact on that
    little fact of life.  Equal pay for equal work?  Nobody gets paid
    well to shove a broom around an office after all the professional
    women and men have gone home.  
    
    I'm not saying that what poor women think is necessarily true, 
    I'm just trying to explain some of where they're coming from. 
    
    re: .18 (I think) -- Lorna, anyway
    
    Interesting.  I'd consider someone who had the options of being a
    teacher or a nurse to be considerably higher up the economic scale
    than the "lower class" I'm talking about.  Those are professions
    that require schooling, and enough money from somewhere to fund
    the schooling.  I'm talking about the level where people are
    living on jobs that pay minimum wage or less and where "benefits"
    are something only the bosses get.  
    
    We personally were better off than most of the people around us
    because my father had a real trade -- he was a mechanic and could
    make decent money.  Decent money was enough that we never had to
    go on welfare, and we did manage to scrape together enough money
    to get me a college education.  But the lumberjacks and
    pancake-flippers around us didn't live so well, and I know I was
    lucky to have the chance and the ability to take advantage of the
    chance. 
    
    --bonnie

    	RE: .23  Bonnie 
    
    	There may be some confusion here about the message from the women's
    	movement.  As Meg (I think) mentioned, it's about having choices
    	(not about having "jobs outside the home.")
    
    	Women were excluded from the workplace in the professions that were
    	open to men with the same education. These were the jobs women weren't
    	"able" to get.  It wasn't just a simple matter of going out and getting
    	hired into areas where women weren't being hired (except in very rare
    	instances.)  The majority of women were still excluded until changes
    	were brought about in the past 20 years or so.
    
    	Even as recently as 1974, I remember how few women were in my area
    	of expertise (television production) and I recall the comments my
    	co-workers made to me when I was first hired - "It takes a man to
    	run a television camera."  "Women can't do this kind of work." "If
    	you make a big enough mistake to stop tape even *ONCE*, they'll take
    	you off camera for good and will give you something less important
    	to do."  "Suzanne and Carol, can you sweep the set while the other
    	cameramen have a smoke?"  "We know you have the most seniority of
    	any of the camera operators here today, but we don't want to risk
    	a mistake in this show.  Yes, we know you've never made a mistake
    	that's caused us to stop tape.  We don't want to take the chance.
    	By the way, can you quickly train one of the guys on how to run the
    	motorized zoom on the elevated camera?  You seem to be the only one
    	here today who knows how to use that thing.  Don't forget to sweep
    	the set before the talent comes in.  Good girl."
    
    	Over the years, my supervisors and co-workers became a heck of a
    	lot more enlightened, of course.  If not for the women's movement,
    	though, they never would have had the chance to realize how mistaken
    	they once were.

    re .23, Bonnie, another miscommunication.  When I mentioned school
    teachers and nurses, I wasn't calling them "low class" by any means.  I
    mentioned them in the context of wondering whether or not my father
    would have been able to deal with a wife who had ambitions for a
    profession, such as school teacher or nurse.  I had wondered this
    because I had stated that my father believed that married women should
    be provided for by their husbands, and that they should not have to
    work at menial jobs out of economic necessity.  My mother never worked
    outside the home even though my father had, at times, held some low
    paying jobs such as school janitor.  (Neither he or my mother ever
    collected wellfare or unemployment, though.  He always held some sort
    of job until he had his first heart attack when he was 62 and had to
    retire.  Then he collected social security until his death at age 76.)  
    
    The point was that my father never wanted my mother to go to work at
    menial labor out of necessity.  I had only wondered, as an
    afterthought, how he would have felt about a woman who had career
    aspirations, i.e, nurse or school teacher.  I hope that's clearer.
    
    Lorna
    

    re: .25
    
    Lorna, now I've got it.  Yes, I misunderstood that.  I'm sorry,
    and thanks for clarifying.
    
    I know if my mother had been inclined to become a teacher, my
    father would have been delighted.  Do you have any gut feelings
    about how he would have felt about it, or is it one of those
    things we'll just have to wonder about?
    
    re: .24
    
    Suzanne, *I* understand your distinction perfectly well.  
    
    I'm saying that for millions of women in this country, trying to
    guarantee that women have the right to choose whether they'll work
    or stay home is a meaningless distinction. Millions of women
    *HAVE* to work to survive.  They don't have a choice.  And I
    suppose at the bluntest level they don't really care whether a
    woman who is living comfortably doesn't get to choose.  Choice in
    this sense is meaningless under the present economic conditions.
    
    Besides, in a very real way it is a right to work issue.  Nobody
    has ever tried to make it illegal for a woman to stay home and
    raise her kids, etc.  Until very recently no woman ever felt
    social pressure and disapproval for having decided to stay home. 
    That was always a choice.  
    
    And I'll repeat that I'm not trying to defend this point of view,
    or say that they're right.  I am only trying to explain it.  
    
    --bonnie

    
    Taking a stab at what would help "poor women":
    
    I was reading McCall's yesterday, and out of all the women surveyed,
    the majority (maybe 60%, I don't remember) said that the number one
    thing that would make their lives better was more money. Somewhere else
    down on the list were things like, husband helps at home more, better
    sex life, etc.
    
    I guess what I'm looking at is the fact that there is a group of
    Americans who are poor. That group is disportionately comprised of
    women and children. It would seem logical that a "women's" movement
    would be addressing women's poverty, maybe even at the top of the list.
    But it isn't.
    
    In parallel, among blacks, there has always been a lot of talk about
    the DuBois-Washington argument of which is more important: civil
    liberties or skills and land that enable you to put food on the table.
    DuBois, who was educated at an Ivy league school (Harvard) was all for
    higher education in liberal arts, supporting the right to vote,
    abolishing ideas that black people were mentally inferior. Washington,
    who was raised in the South and founded Tuskegee Institute primarily as
    a trade and vocational school, argued that giving blacks trades, skills
    and meaningful work would place them in a situation in which they could
    take care of themselves, and from that vantage point, gain respect.
    Those who sided with DuBois thought that Washington (Booker T.) was an
    "Uncle Tom", someone who was just kissing up to white folks and was
    willing to accept lesser status in America. Those who sided with
    Washington felt that DuBois had messed up priorities, and that civil
    liberties and intellectualism didn't mean much when you were starving
    and broke.
    
    Today, most people can see that both sides have merit, and are best
    used in tandem. But the class issues are there. I think there are
    clearly some class issues that haven't been dealt with well within the
    women's movement, and it is the "DuBois" side that gets the press. If
    there is a "Washington" side, I think it needs a bit more propping up
    and paying attention to. 
    
    I also read in McCall's (great magazine! ;-) ) September issue that
    currently, women are more likely to vote than men are. It seems to me
    that if the women's movement pitched themselves toward the issues of poor
    women, they would find themselves with a far broader support base,
    than if they pitched themselves toward the issues of the well-to-do.
    They do the greatest good of all by trying to address the issues of
    both groups, which seem obviously VERY different.
    
    I have to admit, when I'm starving, I don't care much about respect.

    -> .27, thank you!
    
    I don't think the women's movement has _deliberately_ overlooked the
    issues and problems of poor women, and/or women of color, but I do
    believe that the most prominent part of the women's movement has been
    more of the DuBois school of thought than of the Washington school, and
    that that is at least partly because it was not exactly poor women of
    color who (had the time and energy to have) started the women's
    movement.  (pls excuse the runon sentence)
    
    Somewhere else, someone else was asked how best to instill good morals
    in people.  The answer was
    
    		First, food.  Then ethics.
    
    This makes sense to me.  Taken in the other direction, my morals go out
    the window if my kids are threatened (ie, I'd steal to keep them fed).
    
    Sara

    .27 explains my point a lot better than I did.  Thanks.
    
    I suppose it would be incendiary to say that the middle class,
    both feminists and MCPs,  has had a strong tendency to _tell_ poor
    women what they need rather than asking them what they need . . .
    this is, as Sara points out, not exactly deliberately overlooking
    the problems.  It just misses the point and so gets ignored.
    
    --bonnie