Paper about Art and Feminism, 1974, page 8

          examples. Another might just be the
assumption that it is women's duty to
arrange for child care and the management
of the house, even if she does have a job,
that she's the one automatically that is sup-
posed to assume that burden. Would one
dare ask a busy executive to worry about
the babysitters, the meal planning and
household trivia? But women who are the
equivalent of busy executives or who work
all day in supermarkets standing on their
feet are constantly asked to assume these
responsibilities which in a just society
would be taken care in more positive ways
by day care, by living arrangements in
which some of these services are built in,
or by actual sharing; and it seems to me

I

DEVELOPING CAREERS IN THE ARTS

Discussion Leader: Doris Freedman
President, City Walls, Inc., New York

Doris Freedman: Artists throughout history
have had periods where they have come out
and made strong social statements and
involved themselves in broader communi-
ties.‘ But traditionally they have worked in
the isolation and privacy of their own crea-
tion. This is changing now and because it

is new careers in the arts are developing——
particularly for women.

Arts councils and street theatre groups are
two cases in point. In almost every case
that I'm familiar with the spirit behind these
organizations is a woman. While the admin-
istrative positions in these groups started
out as voluntary positions, today all the
councils have paid executive directors.

Clare Spark-Loeb: When you have a woman
in an administrative position on a news-
paper, television or radio station, things
begin to happen. I devoted many hours of
radio programming to a group of women
called the Feminist Theater. They told me
the group involved around thirty women who
did their own research, writing, directing,
techno|ogy—everything. These women built
new careers for themselves. A woman

that until this secondary discrimination is
done away with, until truly we have created
an androgynous society, a society where it
doesn’t matter what kind of sexual organs
you have but you do what you are fitted for,
dividing the burdens half and half or taking
turns-—unti| we have that, we still have
injustice. I think that it is the business of
the feminist movement in every field and on
every level to combat both of these types of
injustices, through action, through thought,
through the pursuit of truth, and through the
constant questioning and piercing through
of our so-called “natural" assumptions.
And it's only in this way that feminism can
be a- real weapon for justice for 51 percent
of humanity, which is us. [1

who had been an actress became a director
and the success of this experience opened
her eyes and gave her new confidence.
Career aspirations were raised incredibly.
And I cannot urge women strongly enough
to get into journalism and every aspect of
communications. If a woman is not around
to cover stories then these things don't
happen in the community. Without report-
ing of events accurately the people don't
know about them. People remain invisible
to themselves—they don't validate their
own experience.

Unfortunately, people don’t tend to believe
their experience unless they see it validated
by media, which is a different issue, but I
think the opportunities in alternative media,
for instance, are absolutely extraordinary.
Having a free press can change power rela-
tionships within a city simply because
secrecy is out and people know what's

going on. Artists and creative people can
speak directly to the public without the
mediation of whatever special interest group
is interested in keeping those opinions out

of the public focus. Please don't ignore

the need to get into the mass media.

89

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