The women's movement redux

Watching a fascinating PBS documentary tonight on the women's movement. A lot of terms and events come flooding back to me--Katherine Switzer who in the late '60s outraged the running world by entering and completing the Boston Marathon, a male race for seventy years; NOW--the National Organization for Women; "consciousness raising" groups; Women's Liberation; the sit-in at Ladies Home Journal; Roe vs Wade; ERA and Phyllis Schafly. I lived through those years but there was much I wasn't aware of. I knew there'd been a split in the movement, but I didn't understand it until hearing Gloria Steinem's words tonight that Betty Freidan wanted women to have new lives in society as it exists, but Steinem and younger women wanted to transform society. And I didn't realize that  women of color early on saw women's liberation as a cause for white women; they didn't believe it would do anything for them. It took work and time for all women to come together. Because I was raised by a doctor I was aware of the problems of abortion and later, married to a doctor, of both abortion and the pill, so I kind of had a sideways knowledge of the sexual revolution. Still, it was eye-opening to hear Sarah Weddington talk about Roe vs Wade.
I graduated from high school in the mid-fifties, part of the generation who expected to marry, raise children, and live happily ever after. I majored in English because some man was going to take care of me, and I wouldn't have to worry about making a living (that didn't quite work out and I raised four children as a single parent, but that's another story). My then-husband and I were just "conscioiusness raised" enough that we were considered the slightly amusing, on-the-edge young couple by the medical society in which we moved. We adopted children, incuding a mixed race baby; I was the first to wear a denim suit (wish it fit me today--from Neiman's and really good looking); I had ambitions to write and Joel supported me. I remember one doctor, new to town, who introduced me to his wife, saying, "She's a woman's libber."
Yet watching tonight I realize how much I was on the fringe, benefiting from what women of greater courage and nerve accomplished for all of us. Hearing Freidan, Steinem, Letty Cottin Pogebrin, Susan Brownmiller, Judy Blume, Sarah Weddington, Bella Abzug, Hillary Clinton, and others showed me the intensity of the ongoing movement. That I raised four children alone and had a good career in publishing is due to those women whose shoulders I stand on. An eye-opening documentary. Hope they rerun it.

More ranch pictures--and a bit about aviation

I promise these are the last of our wonderful day at the ranch, but they are, top to bottom: the headwaters of the Star Hollow Creek (I called it Shady Hollow in yesterday's post, knowing all along that didn't sound quite right); my brother pouring wine--nothing like a bit of wine in a shady grove by a stock tank--the guineas and some of the calves wandered down to visit us; the pony, Pony Romo--so named by my two-year-old great-niece who when asked what the pony's name was said, "Pony Romo. You know, the baseball player!"; a field of Indian paintbrush that Jeannie simply could not drive by without taking a picture as we headed home in the late afternoon.

Tonight I went to hear a talk on young adult books about women in aviation, given by Fred Erisman who was my mentor in graduate school, has remained my friend all these years, and I guess I could now call a colleague (though I'm still a bit intimidated by that equality). TCU Press has published two of his books--Boys Books, Boys Dreams, and the Mystique of Flight about the young-adult books for boys, and now From Birdwomen to Skygirls: American Girls' Aviation Stories, in which I'm proud to say I'm one of the women to whom it's dedicated as "female role models par excellence." Fred was witty tonight, as he always is, but he made fascinating points: in the first decade of the 20th Century, women in aviation were hailed as exemplars of all that women could do, the possibilities open to them; it began to change as we moved into the '20s and '30s, and one series book about an R.N. who was a pilot, a field nurse in the army, and a public health nurse, ended with the heroine marrying her hero and saying contentedly, "This is what I was meant for" or something similar. By the 1940s, women in aviation had been consigned to the role of stewardesses--when the program began, much earlier, they were all R.N.s but increasingly they were hired for their appearance and social skills--although I know, from Jeannie, they also had lots of training in crisis management. But significantly, the young-adult books about women in aviation stopped in the 1940s. Joyce Roach and I found parallels to cowgirls in his talk--where Fred said women pilots introduced pants for women, we looked at each other and said "Cowgirls." Of course, as Joyce pointed out and Fred confirmed, women were in all kinds of professions, and respected, in the early 20th century. It was the 1940s, post-war era that confined women to the kitchen and the nursery, which Betty Freidan railed against in The Feminine Mystique. It was also in the 1940s that rodeo cowboys edged women out of the arena and confined them to barrel racing. Interesting parallels, and an interesting evening.