Unknown Speaker  00:00
I like to pretend that those of us over 40 aren't good at technology, getting people to do things, you know. And now that I'm 45, I'm going much farther into that respect for your elders stuff. Which is very important, I think. Anyway, I did a little vote. Somebody say that wasn't important. I knew she would come and say things like that if it's gonna be good. Well, first of all, we we do have this rhetoric now of a kinder, gentler nation. And so I think we all need to start talking about it a lot. And we need to make this demand that this administration and I should add this democratically controlled Congress, in Washington, have to come to terms with women, if they're going to talk about kinder and gentler, or as we say, Now kinder and gentler. I don't know why we say that. Our vision, that's what I really want to talk about today, our vision of what a kinder gentler nation is, would be some of the analysis that I think we need to make of not just particular policy proposals, but of what seems to underlie some of them. So I'm going to talk about this new demographic stuff, and what I call the Star Trek syndrome. And I'm going to talk about the poverty analysis that you see everywhere. I mean, you get it on the hill, you get it in research, you get it in New York Times, the way in which poverty gets analyzed to the detriment of women. And also, naturally, we have to talk about this yuppie thing, and this mommy trek thing. And all of it to me is part of what I have been calling the youth come a long way baby backlash. And it is most targeted at women in their 20s, I think, and women in their 30s to this backlash. The real hardcore right wing backlash that I myself personally felt in my back, is targeted to visible out front people who are very active feminists and in certain positions. And it is, it is part of what happened to me in the Reagan administration was designed to discourage other people from, you know, standing out and up. Both. So anyway, the first the first tenant of a kinder, gentler nation is what? reproductive rights, everybody knows that right? The woman can't control her own body. If a woman does not have her own physical and psychological autonomy, then all the rest of it is irrelevant. George doesn't get it. He does not get it. I'm serious. He doesn't get it. We all understand and about three fourths of the electorate and people who respond to polls understand that this is a key point, reproductive choice is a key issue. George doesn't get it. He's out there sucking up to the anti choice movement, just like Ronald Reagan did before him. Now, some of us remember George Bush, when he said he was not in favor of a constitutional amendments. Anybody else remember this? You know that Erica Jong poem about the onion. George Bush is an onion, you peel away the surface, there's more surface, you get down to the center and its surface. He's a chameleon. He's not apt to me. He's worse than Ronald Reagan because of this, and I am second to none. In my disgust at Ronald Reagan, which is now you can see why they hired me from the government. Anyway, George Bush is worse because he has this chameleon quality and he can shift and change. What I would like for him and the Congress, especially, to know and to think about is the lives of young American women. Every racial and ethnic group, every occupational group, every socio economic class. These women in their 20s and early 30s have grown up their entire lives in a country in which abortion was legal. Now everyone who's in their 20s people, you know, when you were born, practically, we had one this, some of my

Unknown Speaker  04:53
colleagues and sisters in the movement have suggested out of their frustration, not mean spiritedness. that maybe you all need to lose it in order to know what it's worth and that you want to fight for it. We don't believe that. We never ever wanted anybody else to know what coathangers were really for. We still don't, I'm glad you don't know it know how bad it was. And I don't really think I want you to. And any everybody here over 40, you agree, right? So we don't blame the victims, we don't blame women in their 20s for not being activist, frankly, I have this feeling that young women in their 20s are going to be stronger and much more militant about this than we were. And the reason is that we were fighting for a right that we first had to persuade ourselves we deserved that we had never had. And they are saying I'll be damned if you're going to take this away from me, I have it. So that it's a very different feeling. We're having this conference of women in their 20s in the fall, and the steering committee for this conference is made up of women ranging in age from 18 to 29. And when they had their steering committee meeting, it was reported back to me, of course, I'm not a member of the steering committee. Because I am, I'm a member of the senior Advisory Committee. We have senior advisors, the older women over 30, who may have something to contribute, you will be pleased that the women in their 20s believe we do have something to contribute. But they like the fact that we are talking about partnership, I have learned so much from these young women about sort of being radical in a way. And of course, vice versa. But they did they did in a day and a half in their meeting what it would have taken us two weeks to do. They didn't have any splits. They didn't have any agonizing. For example, the issue of reproductive rights came up, I'm told, is this a problem? Was the question, Will this be a problem? Since we're trying to reach out to all young women? And everybody said, No, of course not. Don't be silly. What's the next question? Then up comes the issue of you know, men, this is a women's conference, this is a feminist conference, are we going to have men now in my day, I've always wanted to say that. In my day, we would have spent four days debating this, will they be hurt? Will they be angry? But But my husband, but my boyfriend? These young women said, Well, no, of course not. It's a women's conference. Next question. They don't hate men, they live with men, they, you know, they work with them. But they don't have that problem that you that we have. And they also are much they don't have the level of rage that we had, which worries me a little bit, but but it's also that they they have appropriate anger. Do you know what I mean? They've really learned everything that we wanted them to learn. And I think they're going to be really rough when the time comes. So I'm pretty excited about it. And they aren't going to tolerate these threats to their reproductive freedom. So the second really critical emergency issue that we are also working on and that I think all of you must be concerned about is the issue of AIDS. And the issue of women and AIDS. Now there is another session going on, even as we speak with wonderful people who are working in this vineyard, most of them working at the grassroots level, and also one or two at the national level. And we've started a National Resource Center on women and aids at cwp is largely because women are invisible in this epidemic in this struggle, and we are also you know, it's the usual sexism and racism, you know, blaming the victim and all that. This is women are seen as the vectors of infection. There's a lot of concern about babies born infected and no concern for their mothers who are seen as the evil ones. This is an issue that cuts across all the lines you have to cut across race, ethnicity, poverty, IV drug use, there are some people who think that a kinder, gentler nation, some of the people who coined the phrase means getting rid of all those people. We don't quite agree with that to a, to a very large extent. The women today who are the most at risk of AIDS are the women that society has failed.

Unknown Speaker  09:54
They're, they're young, sometimes they're low income, sometimes they're women of color. There are women trapped in abusive relationships, their women trapped in poverty and hopelessness and despair. They are isolated from support systems, excluded from health care. I mean, I could tell you terrible, terrible stories, and you'd all gasp, but you probably already know them. So what we also need is to get feminist messages about women, and women's roles and women's reproductive rights and health care into the policy debates. This is the small task we have taken upon ourselves in Washington. Yes, of course. But we always do that sort of thing. I mean, the center was the first to do work at the federal policy level on rape and domestic violence in the early 70s. When other people were saying, Ooh, that's awful. I don't want to deal with that. And people are saying that now about eight. So one of the things we're doing is AIDS education, from feminist perspectives, for national women's organizations, we have to take care of our own and train our own. Anyway, those are two critical issues that I promise you, the Bush administration will not deal with, in the way we want them to. You already know what their position is on our reproductive rights, you don't have any, we want to get rid of that for you. We we also have we also don't have much sensitivity about women and aids from this administration. So that's why I like to start with just mentioning those two things. The other thing that has happened in the last few years is that issues that used to be radical feminist issues. Contrary to what some have suggested, the demands that we made for changes in the way the workplace is structured the way women are treated in the workplace, for changes in the family. These have now become mainstream, quote, family issues, which is great, isn't it? You know, I mean, even Orrin Hatch is now in favor of some kind of childcare, right? Is this good? I'm a little worried. I'm worried when women gets submerged. Once again, these are now family issues. This is a way of dealing with them, without making women primary, or Central, or even key, and then you get the next step of it, which is the family is the instead of the many, many, many kinds of families we have, but there's the family. And this is something that I want to talk a little more about as we move along. If I live to page five, pardon me. So first, I want to give us some give some sense of our kind of vision, and I have four opening messages for you. Don't be lonely. Don't be don't feel like you're all alone, a feminist crying in the wilderness, wherever you work, or whatever. Of course, if you are here, I suppose you don't feel that way. I mean, if you are a student or faculty member here, I'm certain you couldn't possibly feel better. And if you do, don't feel lonely. In this past 20 years, since some of you were tiny children and others of us were getting grown up. We have made such astounding transformations in public consciousness that it's almost sometimes beyond my belief, when I look back. We have done this not by begging, we have done this not by saying oh please let us in. We have done this not by saying we are poor, pitiful victims. We have done this by empowering ourselves. Whether it is battered women who have said Oh no, I'm not doing it anymore. I'm leaving and have found women whose who created safe havens and empower themselves to take charge of their lives or whether it's women who said, I'm not stuffing these damned envelopes anymore. I'm going to run for Congress. Last year, there was a Gallup poll, which I hope you saw, which asked for the first time of women are you a feminist? Did you see this? 56% of the women who answered said yes. They said the F word

Unknown Speaker  14:37
64% of the African American women who answered said yes. 64% and 56%. So this isn't bad, right? It's more than half of the women so let's forget about this Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan Phyllis Schlafly stuff. Most women see themselves as feminists and can say the F word to them. Gallup poll. This is important. We've changed language, we have changed policy. When the Center for Women Policy Studies started in 1972. The first issue that our founding co directors JANE CHAPMAN and Marge gates worked on was sex discrimination in the granting of credit. Who here has been denied a credit card because she is a woman. Nobody. Anybody ever have to sign a baby letter in getting a mortgage? Well, lots of women did. And Jane in march started doing this research on the economic impact of sex discrimination and credit, you know, you'd go to the mortgage company and you'd have a husband and wife both working and the mortgage company would only count half the wife's income because she might get pregnant. And Bill absolute stood on the floor of the House waving baby letters, and read one that in which a woman and man a married couple that had to promise that if she did God forbid, get pregnant, she'd have an abortion. This was great. You know, the boys in Congress voted for the fair housing amendment here fair housing law amendment to prohibit sex discrimination and housing. And so the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. So this is, you know, a big change here. Now, we don't leave home without it. Now we are the leading consumers who to whom credit card companies and mortgage companies and automobile companies appeal I'm not sure I'm, I love that. But I mean, the way they do it. We change the language. Once upon a time, when I first went to be directors and women's Educational Equity Act programming in the feds, Marlene Simmons, who was then in writing for the Los Angeles Times in Washington did this big article about and it was really neat. My mother loved it had a great picture. And it was all about feminist education, and blah, blah, blah. So then some guy who shall remain nameless, picked it up off the LA Times wire, and wrote this incredibly nasty column about though she is an attractive woman, this, you know, one of those, but people showed me this column and I was so happy I loved this column. It was, you know why? Because he referred to the feminist movement. He didn't say women's live. I mean, he hated it. But he used our word, instead of their word. No trivializing and ridiculing it was really quite a quite an important moment for me. Anyway, I'm, you know, it doesn't take much with me, I get happy, pretty easily about these things. So then there's my second message, of course, which is to reaffirm the mission, the feminist mission, and to reaffirm our courage. This is the time to listen to Lucy Stone. Remember Lucy Stone. Thank you, thank you, 1855. I have this on my wall in my office and have had it there since 1970 1970. In education, in marriage, in everything, disappointment is the lot of woman it shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer. That's power empowerment. That's 1855. Now I'd like to say that to George Bush, but we rarely have lunch. The third message is rethinking the language and the assumptions that it carries. Victim talk, no more victim talk. Not that women are not victimized by oppression, but we are not victims. You know what I mean? None of this deficit thinking sort of stuff that patriarchy imposes. We aren't minorities, people of color, male and female, women of all racial and ethnic groups, we are the majority of the population. We are 60 or so percent, maybe more like 70 by now 75. And continuing to increase.

Unknown Speaker  19:32
Wilma Scott Heidi, who was one of the early hardcore feminist, and now what, which is hard to find now, but anyway, she she always referred to us as the continuing majority, which I think is a nice phrase. So that in fact, a kinder, gentler nation has to be one that does what we want and what we need, and we need to vote that way a little bit more The other part of this sort of deficit thinking is to define all of us to define women as the problem. Women are always the problem. We're heads of households, and that's causing poverty. We're workers in upwardly mobile positions, and we want to have children. And that is a problem. So I'm kind of tired. I don't know about you. But I'm, maybe it's because I have a cold, but I'm really fed up with being a special interest group. And this we get, I have to tell you, we get this from both political parties, we get it a lot from our brothers in the Democratic Party, which we are quite unhappy about. I don't have a narrower agenda. The candidates last year said that you know, so that's another message, redefining, and it means you have to be always on the alert, you can never rest, you have to always watch every word that people write to see what the assumptions are. My last message is to question authority. Anybody seen that bump that button it says challenge authority, we should all wear that button? challenge conventional wisdom, this is always what we do. It's it's feminists, deconstruction, you know. So what we've been doing for years, we are totally deconstructing the system, and trying to create new ones. And that's how we define the terms of this kinder, gentler nation for women. And then we have to tell it to those guys who coined the phrase, and haven't a clue what it means. And I believe we have to tell it rather loud. I kind of wish that we were no longer following suffrage, just tradition and marching, dressed in white. So I remember the first March where this was the idea. You know, we linked the women's movement of the 60s and 70s, with our four mothers who marched down Pennsylvania Avenue for the vote, dressed all in white. Now, of course, I don't have any white dresses. I don't know about you, but and that was, you know, that was a beautiful image. And we are still doing it. So of course, next week, you're all coming to Washington, right? With your white clothes. You know what I think we should do? I think we should dress in scarlet. I think we should be bright and vivid and terrifying.

Unknown Speaker  22:41
You know, you can wear anything you want today, but would be wonderful to see the sea of red. because red is a very terrifying color. I don't know why. It's blood, isn't it? And we do control blood. They think that, you know, we never should have let them know they had a role in reproduction, that they used to worship us when they thought it was magic. Take it back. I didn't really mean. But anyway. So moving along to the Bush administration. And let's look at the truth about the Bush administration, which you see in two ways. You see it in their appointments. And you see it in their policy proposals, more than in their rhetoric. Now I know they're getting off to a slow start. I know they're just sort of, you know, Union. But have you seen Did you see this? The you know, when he came in the cabinet, you've seen the cabinet, the Bush cabinet, I mean, hello. It is what we used to call the white male club, the white male club as an institution, not as persons. Most white males don't get into the club, by the way. It has a lot to do with class and where you go to school and status and wealth and power and all those things. But the white male club traditionally says to women and people of color, Why sure if you're just good enough you can get into and then one or two are admitted. And that's a sign that there are some who are good enough but the rest of you obviously are not. Elizabeth Dole is our our woman in the cabinet. And aren't we happy? She's there because George Bush wanted to co opt his leading opponent her husband. Isn't that tacky? She opposes the Family and Medical Leave Act. Well, of course she does. She speaks for the Bush administration. I thought she might have a little more influence. I thought she might try harder. But she favors lifting the ban on industrial homework, you know about this right? throughout our lifetime, throughout my lifetime, it has been banned. And now the times have changed, you see, and we want to let women have this choice to have their own private personal sweatshop at home, where they would need the Family and Medical Leave edge, right? Because they'd be there all the time. earning less than minimum wage, having no benefits, no protection, and having that remarkable isolation that keeps women from organizing. Now, this is pretty terrifying these folks. And it's it does work with the kids using their kid. Yes, exactly. That's right. The kids get to help mommy. But Mommy doesn't get to help them. That's the other thing. She doesn't have time. Because she you know, it's piecework. You know, it's not nine to five or eight to four or nine to nine. It's perpetual. So look at the rest of the cabinet. We have Dr. Sullivan, the only African American cabinet member, the poor man. Do you know they were trying to take away the money that he had earned in severance pay from Morehouse because it might look unethical for him to this is not a wealthy man, you know? Boy, C. Boyden Gray, million boy millionaire, inherited wealth, of course. He was getting to put all his stuff in blind trust and was resistant that he is the Ethics Officer for the administration. Have I not mentioned that. But for Dr. Solomon, they were going to make him give back his measly $300,000, which he had earned year after year after year after year by not taking sabbatical. Fortunately, he gets to keep it. This is the latest from last week. Oh, how generous. This man made this big mistake. You saw this. It was in the New York Times was everywhere. He said he didn't believe that the Roe v Wade decision should be overturned.

Unknown Speaker  27:13
He said he believed in a woman's right to choice. He had to recant. He had to take it back. And say he agreed with George Bush and he was anti abortion to get that job. Now isn't that terrible? Now I think one of the very very right wingers I forget which one they all look like to me, Howard Phillips call away rich. They're all the same. One of them said, This is not good enough for us that he recanted. Because you can't trust these MDS to be anti abortion. I love that. God willing. That's true. Last but not least Connie Newman. Has anybody heard of Connie Newman? She's the nominee for head of the Office of Personnel Management, the old Civil Service Commission. She is a black woman she started in government as a grade three clerk typist. She is considered too liberal for the job because she supports comparable work. Isn't that nice? She apparently has said I hope she really did say this. And if she didn't I wish I had said it first. But she did say that she thinks a society that pays millions of dollars to sports casters doesn't and haggles over teachers pay doesn't have any idea about how to define comparable work. Anyway, that's the kind of appointment we're getting. We also know that there are people being appointed inside the different departments of the very right wing, Dr. Sullivan is going to be surrounded by the hardcore anti choice, lunatics. They did that to poor law, pedophile Ted bell when he was Secretary of Education. And he just didn't know how to cope. Howard Phillips once attacked me on a radio show for having referred to Ted bell as quote, his wimpy miss. I did. It was true, too. He was a winner. And he didn't Well, that's another story. That's the previous administration. One of the things I think we have going for us here is that George Bush, and his administration won't get that Reagan Teflon. You know, Pat Schroeder called him the Teflon coated president because none of this stuff stuck to Ronald Reagan. I haven't heard whether we're going to have him testifying in the alley North case. We decided we didn't need him to come on so but I have a little nostalgia for Ronald Reagan and his boys because where else would you have learned that ketchup is a vegetable? You know, I mean, who else would say something this this crazy George Bush won't say stuff like this. But things will happen. And it won't be so blatant and egregious. Ronald Reagan, of course, did, did establish his administration's views on women's role in 83. You know about this when he gave his speech to business and professional women's clubs. I've only been quoting this since 83. And please let me keep on. Because he said George Bush won't ever say this. Because he's not that careless. But Reagan without, without a script was very careless. And he went up before the DPW, which picture this auditorium in a big hotel in Washington, you must remember this speech. He it's all made up of btw, women, most of whom are, you know, my age, middle age 40s 50s. And beyond, majority of whom are Republicans, not all of whom are business women, etc. And he says that he's always been a supporter. He wants them to know about what we're doing here in Washington on women's place. And so all the ladies do this. Right. But they're polite. They're ladies, they're well dressed like I am, but they really mean it. And he goes on to say that he's one who really believes in the importance of women's place, this is a quotation says because it wasn't for women, us men notice how totally illiterate he sounds. And I used to be an English professor. So I would never talk this way. If it wasn't for women, us men would still be walking around and skin suits carrying clubs. Remember that? This is George Gilder this is this is the 19th century. And here is another quotation, it is your work. That's you women to soften and we find men.

Unknown Speaker  32:11
Now, this is what Ronald Reagan thought. It gives you this ghastly pitch picture of men, doesn't it? I was hoping that the men of America would rise up in anger that he would suggest that they were simply these totally primitive rampaging beasts who couldn't control themselves, unless they had a little woman at home by the fire, nurturing them and refining them. So it's, it's generally pretty disgusting. George Bush will never say this. Even John Sununu probably wouldn't say this, but they retain this Victorian ideal of true womanhood, and you'll see it in their policies if you don't already. This cult of motherhood is also something we're seeing a lot from the bushes, aren't we? It is that's what it is. Barbara was just quoted in the paper last week and saying how the women's movement has made it difficult for women who choose to stay home and raise their families to do so. And I'm looking around me saying, Well, I, she, I wish I had married a guy who made millions and oil. Beautiful. I mean, who did that? That's this choice. Anyway, they're not going to understand our vision of this kinder, gentler nation. So I want to talk a little bit about the new demographics. Because corporate America is freaked out over, quote, The New demographics. And by this, we mean, the fact that there won't be enough white men around to take all the jobs that we've reserved for them. That is, you know, they're talking about the fact that 80% of the entering workforce will be women, minorities and immigrants, as they put it. And that's true. And they are now preparing a workforce for us. But I don't think they're planning for us to be the CEOs. Am I wrong? Do you think? So this is where I like to talk about the Star Trek syndrome. Does anybody else's Star Trek fan? You could admit it. Is anybody watched both the original Star Trek series on the tube and the next generation the new series, right? I am having so much fun with this because I'm, this makes me excited. You know, I get to add to my analysis. What you see is some really significant changes from the old star trek to the new, but most of them are very surface. So on the old Star Trek, you know, you have Captain Kirk. He's supposed to be 35 years old. I know he looks 50 But he's supposed to be 35 And he's like a hunk you know, and he's out out there trying to get together with women all over the galaxy, which is not appropriate I think for a starship captain.

Unknown Speaker  35:12
That's one of the ways he solves problems on other planets is going to bed with a woman who happens to leave the planet, though she wears little skimpy things. You've seen this. You've seen this because you are. He also presides over a crew that is the sort of 1960s vision of a multiracial group, right? I mean, where no man has gone before, is where they're going. And, truly, that's what it is. So you've got all this high tech stuff, the technology of the 23rd century, the social structure of the 1950s. Believe me, it's astounding, that women are are you they're sort of they're pitiful. They were those itty bitty little things, the women on other planets, women on the Enterprise have uniforms that are like that, right. The women on other planets are all these sorts of diplomats and lawyers and doctors and, and planets chief. And they were practically nothing. And they fall in love with Captain Kirk. Or he solves their problem through some kind of sexual innuendo. It's hard for me to understand. On the new Star Trek, and of course on the old Star Trek, one woman is on the bridge, right? Top management, Lieutenant ahora. She's a an African woman. She's the communications officer what is that she is a high tech telephone operator. She never gets out of that seat. She's, she happens to be the best character in the whole show. And she is her the actress is herself a very active person and also a feminist as I understand it, but that's the role for women. The only man of color on the bridge in the old Star Trek is Mr. Spock. He is a Vulcan. We don't have Vulcans. What kind of message do you get if you're a kid and you watch this? I mean, this is this is subtle, but incredibly powerful. He does not threaten Mr. Spock is brilliant, of course, logical, rational, better brain than any human. Though he is happy. He doesn't threaten white male dominance at all because he is not human. And we are led to feel throughout that he's inferior because, you know, he doesn't have emotions. You know, his friend, the doctors always they're always doing that cute stuff. The doctor acts like an idiot. So on the new Star Trek, we're doing a lot better. The captain is like a Mitch. Maybe it's because I'm older now. But I liked him a lot. You know, he's so mature. And he's, he's bald and stuff. And he's much more of a diplomat. This is the thing I think is the key difference. He doesn't solve things with his photon torpedoes. The same way as Kirk would have. He's much more diplomatic. He's not out hustling women. You never see him doing that. That is left to the first officer who is the token hunk on the new next generation. But look at the women and people of color on the bridge. I mean, I love this. We got all these women. Counselor Troy is a beta Zoid. She's sort of like Spock, you know, she's half human and half beta soy. So what is a beta Zoid? It's your typical woman, right? Intuitive, a little psychic. Always feeling what other people are feeling. I'm not making this up. You should watch this. You should watch this show. She is absolutely gorgeous. On one episode, she was lying in her bed sleeping. And she was impregnated by a flash of light. It was just this sort of free floating energy source very high intelligence. And did anybody else see this? I was like appalled here. This is. She's the receptive one. She's the real woman. incredible, incredibly receptive. That's right now we also have we also used to have on the bridge, this was the only woman in a non traditional job, Lieutenant yar. She was the chief of security. She got killed in an early episode. I rest my case. Now then we have men of color. We have Worf who was a cling on? He is He is visibly black. But He is the former enemy. You know, Klingons used to be our enemies in the Federation. And he's like the mirror opposite of Spock. He's real earthy and passionate and he has to always be in control of his, his physicality and stuff. I mean, this is the most astounding thing. An old timey racist stereotype and, and there it is being advanced as sort of sophisticated because he's really actually cling on, you know?

Unknown Speaker  40:11
Oh, I see. Yes. So if you look at that as a kind of vision of the future, and then you think about it, I see now I've got you, you're only when you read this new demographic stuff, and you read about education reform, you read about improving the productivity of the American worker, and improving education of these people. You're gonna think about Star Trek, you're going to know where we're going to end up. Unless we get in there and have some control over what that education reform looks like and what that workforce transformation looks like. This is a very bleak future for us. Anyway, the next thing that worries me is about the way poverty gets discussed. It's, it's always blaming women. And so I have this little, little continuum to give you for just a few minutes about the discussions, the policy discussions about poverty in about the last 10 or 15 years. First, the feminization of poverty, right? You know, that one? Who's poor women and children? Well, obviously, that it's, it applies that men died. Or they went to prison, which is, in fact, what has happened to a lot of low income men. But this notion that poverty it resides in women and their children, is what was done with this notion of the feminization of poverty, sort of a subtle, blaming the victim, which is getting less subtle. After a few years, the emphasis shifted to and we all say this children in poverty. So like, what are these children in poverty, they're all living by themselves. Like Dickens, you know, they're all living in these little tenements. And they have these little pocket books, and they go out and steal handkerchiefs or something, wait a minute, why are children in poverty because their mothers are in poverty. But we are not thinking about their mothers, we are thinking about children, as if they are a separate system. And that is, again, very dangerous and damaging. Then we have down the line, the teen pregnancy epidemic, notice how it's always an epidemic. It has to do with women's reproduction. It's always couched in disease terminology. And it's always the women who have the disease, not society, which has invented this disease we have, we still operate under such patriarchal assumptions about teen pregnancy and such. Incredibly, pardon me, sexist assumptions that we we act as if there is something wrong with girls who look at the world around them. And see that they have they are offered no opportunities, no encouragement, no commit no belief that anybody is committed to their futures as achievers in the workplace, etc. And we think that they are sick to think that having a baby might make them happier or feel successful. Now, we don't want them to think that anymore, but you can't just tell them not to do it. Of course, we also have this problem this comes up when you're talking about women and AIDS, and teenagers and AIDS is that in this country, we don't talk about sex. women's sexuality is the most terrifying thing in the world. Is it not? To them? To somebody? Well, certainly it is to how shall I put this person's in power, shall we say? So here we have this epidemic, we have with the people who are poor are women and children. And they're all just continually reproducing? I don't know, you know, isn't that something and making themselves poorer, right? They make themselves more poor. And then we talk about the permanent underclass. Now, that's, this is frightening, we have an assumption that this underclass is permanent and inevitable. And it only is in a society which is based on needing a low wage, underpaid, poor workforce that supports all the rest of the yuppies, etc. That's all of us, all of us in the professions, all of our corporate structures and so on. It presumes that you must have that kind of hierarchy. You must have the very, very wealthy and the very, very poor to support them. Now in New York, I noticed I mean, I come from Washington. and where most of the limousines belong to governments. In New York, I mean, there's millions of these enormous cars going around, and you can't see in them.

Unknown Speaker  45:11
And I keep thinking to myself that there is such astounding wealth here. I mean, I'm really, I'm really into Trump bashing these days, because unless one of you is going to tell me about his philanthropy, Donald Trump gives away money. No, I haven't heard about the Trump Foundation. If I had, I would have asked him for a grant I heard about the Ford Foundation, you know, but this kind of glorification of robber barons terrifies me. Now, I don't fly Eastern, for obvious reasons. But even if it weren't for Frank Lorenzo, I would never take the Eastern shuttle now that this guy is bought it. I know, please, let's not destroy Panem. Anyway, it's just this, this whole notion that we talk about poverty, in terms of what is wrong with the poor. It's not new, but we are all falling into this trap, we now have this new consensus about welfare reform. We had welfare reform. So Paul passed in the last session of Congress. Back in the days when I worked for the National Welfare Rights Organization in 1972. We were fighting against the Family Assistance Plan of Richard Nixon, which we felt was the worst thing in the world. To get off welfare, and go to college, it's always job training, low wage, low income, maybe entry level, maybe possibly you should be so lucky moving up a bit. But there's always this assumption that if you're poor, you're stupid. And that's really what's under it. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  47:03
And there are some in other places too, at in other colleges where low income women are. Right? Oh, it's not it's not the women were in the shelter.

Unknown Speaker  47:20
And then there was an education program. Yeah, you're teaching.

Unknown Speaker  47:39
And there are a couple of colleges that have done this, bringing women low income women and their children on to campus. Education, going into a college education. And this is just what I was going to say. You can't just say, Okay, here's a voucher go to college. You know, you have to have those support systems, you have to think about what human beings need in order to get an education and to work. Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember. They tried to wake me up

Unknown Speaker  48:28
and use some of these letters to talk about how do you get yourself in college?

Unknown Speaker  48:33
Yeah. And I think some of this is see this has been happening, there are pockets of this around the country. Years and years ago, I talked to people from New Jersey who were trying to do the same thing. And what is not happening is that there's any institutional change. It's this little program here, and this little program there and thank God for those programs began reaching individual women, but we are not changing the system. So what you all are saying is exactly my whole point that those of you doing that all of us working in these programs and making these changes one on one, personal etc. And for other women have got to be getting empowered to make the change institutional. And we're all scrapping around to get a few bucks, right to do our programs. And if you would, you would probably be able to run that program for the next 10 years off of what they spend on paper clips in the Pentagon. And so we're really looking at ways to get this kind of knowledge and power into policymaking. And that's really, that's really a key, I think, to what to what we're talking about with a kinder, gentler nation, who Ronald Reagan said, Okay, you people out there do this as volunteers. Government doesn't want to do it anymore. I'm sorry. Government has to do it. And then now then they said also, the state should do it and the locality You should do it. And the state said, Oh, great, give us that federal money. We don't care if it's a little bit less if you let us just do whatever we want with it. And then they began to realize that that wasn't enough. And so there is still a federal role in making these kinds of changes, and we can't keep letting them off the hook. Now, to some extent, we, we fall off, I mean, because we sort of fall into these traps of rhetoric, which I think are very easy to fall into, in the way in which we look at the problem. We let them get away with stuff. I don't think I don't think we should be willing anymore to accept any statement that suggests that a single woman raising her children is a pathological family. And that's what is suggested. The latest, Carol just mentioned the latest Rand report about how golly gee, we've made it, you know, we're making a few extra cents compared to men. There. Rand also has come out with a report suggesting that by the year 2000, we will make substantial progress towards equal pay. Oh, I see. But that we will not have ended the quote, feminization of poverty. And of course, female poverty is generally caused by the increased number of female headed households. And what does that mean? That means it's the women's fault. That means a female head of household is by definition of poor household, and that it is her fault. And it also means that the really sound correct household is the male headed households. We've actually got the Census Bureau now not to say male headed, but they really still mean it. So we are looking at women defined as pathological in in ways which are incredibly destructive to our own thinking as well as to policy change. I remember some years ago,

Unknown Speaker  52:07
using the term impoverishment of women, the feminization of

Unknown Speaker  52:14
implications are entirely exactly I was so disappointed that the feminization of poverty where devastation poverty became the district. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  52:24
Right. And also we talk about now at risk children, you see this all the time, I mean, I come out of an educational equity background. And if you talk about at risk children, you are implying that they are inherently at risk that it's in them. You talk about children placed at risk by society's failure to nurture, educate, etc. That's different. Yeah. That's right. It's it's a different concept. But you can't get people to say children at risk who want to say at risk children. I mean, I do it all the time. These things about language are always my hobby horse because probably it's the way I connect my former English professor self with my current whatever this is, which is what brings me to talking about the youth come a long way baby backlash. Because I think it is astoundingly dangerous. What we end up with is policy that defines women as either these evil poor women, these pathological poor women, you know, this fantasy that Reagan had of the welfare mother with her Cadillac, and her 60 Children, women are either these poor problems, or were these yummy queens. You know, the navy blue suit, Little Red floppy tie. I see one of those, I'm going to rip it right off the briefcase brigade. This is the you come along way baby thing you know, all you have to do girls, get your education. Get your job on Wall Street or whatever gets your law degree, get your MBA, don't, don't ask me how you're going to afford it. We're not talking to you if you can't afford it. See, that's not who we want. You get that education. And then you've come a long way baby, you don't have to be this awful, screaming feminist. There's this very unsettled message that personal success is the goal of the women's movement, no wrong. transformation of society, for the benefit of all women, children, men and other forms of life is the goal of the women's movement. So it is so dangerous Not to mention, we're going to mention the majority of working women who don't fit in either category. The 80% who are in the pink and blue collar occupations, who are the ones really struggling against a society that doesn't give child care that doesn't care about child care, that doesn't provide for upward mobility, etc. So you've got these two outer ends of the spectrum. And that's what's in the newspapers in the magazines. I, myself have been reading some of these magazines, just for I don't know, I read I read conservative digest, too. You know, it's like, you got to know what they're saying. I'm actually had trouble with conservative digest, I finally had to give it up. But they wrote this awful article about me in 1982, entitled feminist network fed by federal grants. And that was what got the folks to try to fire me. But anyway, that's, that's when I started reading it. So I knew what they were saying. I read savvy sometimes that makes me gag. I read working woman sometimes. I have even read been reading leaders. Anybody else over 45? Looking at that incident astounding and as the most well, that was my next district. Yes, I was going to mention that too. I hope everyone else has seen them. Anyway, what this? Girl, where are you successful woman? Oh, you're stealing my

Unknown Speaker  56:21
thunder as the worst person in America?

Unknown Speaker  56:24
Well, you see, this was what I wanted to talk about. This is the you've come a long way baby backlash. I mean, this is this is the quintessential example of it. First, you have this notion that you've got to climb this corporate ladder of success first, that that's a value, and that you have to do it at the expense of other women. You cannot partner with other women, you cannot be part of a feminist network. You can't do any of that, because that's who you're competing against. Then you get this. You've come a long way baby stuff, you get a couple of network news anchors, who are of the female persuasion. You get TV shows, which show husbands and wives with extreme comfort. I mean, the Cosby Show is my favorite, because I want to see someone clean that house one day. But you have to you have a lovely couple, and they are very successful. And they are partners. And this is very nice. But this is a thin little minority of the population. You then get this notion that feminism has caused all of women's problems. So before I get to Working Girl and fatal attraction, I want to show you the New York Times ad for Tony grants book. Has anybody else seen this? I'll pass it around because you're gonna love it. It's called being a woman. Fulfilling your femininity and finding deals the 10 big why's of liberation. I'm not kidding you. Your achievements make you more attractive to men. That is a lie. If you achieve you're not attractive to men. It also tells how the half truths of feminism left us with half lives. New pass it around when people start reading you may shrink out loud if you must. I did. I did. This whole notion Fatal Attraction and Working Girl. These are my favorite movies. Women now everybody loves these movies. I mean, I've had my in my office, my staff members, avid feminist, all of them liked working girl. And we've talked about and it is a good movie. This is scary. Because especially scary because it's well made. And people don't pay attention to the real message. And here we have the hero. He's the little girl. Then she sort of talks like that. I'm exaggerating a little. But she's she's made up to look like a pardon the expression sexist expression bimbo. That's the image. This woman does not break any of the rules for women in the workplace. She really doesn't she acts like a nice girl. All right, not so nice. But she act girly. The bad guy, the evil one. The wicked stepmother, as you've said, Is this horrible woman executive all women executives are like this, you know? That's the message. She lies, deals, cheats, does whatever she has to and she's a real bitch. And that's what we're that's what women executives are for. Well, I guess they're Leona, that leading feminist in Fatal Attraction that everybody see Fatal Attraction, the same stuff? You didn't Oh, please, please see this movie. Okay. See, it's important to watch this stuff in Fatal Attraction. The good woman is who the beautiful wife and mother and archer who plays the watch. She's gorgeous. She's thin. She exercises sheets. Well, she has a lovely home. She takes care of her kids. She does not work outside the home. The evil one is this career woman, this sort of high powered, single woman who's like a predator. You know? She's a promiscuous lunatic. And she gets killed. I mean, really badly, too. I mean, it's disgusting. They really murder her. And you're supposed to cheer because she's the evil one, you know, she pins the rabbit to the door and or Boyle's that or whatever she doesn't remember. And she's portrayed as this crazy lunatic woman who goes completely zonk zonked out wacko over this man. Now, why doesn't Why don't the two of them get together and kill him? He's the problem. I also saw I have to tell you this as an aside, I was someplace where I couldn't get out and they had the TV on. And I was waiting somewhere for someone and it was this TV talk show with a woman named Sally.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:25
And she was doing a show on step mothers and stepdaughters stepdaughters who hate their step mothers. And I'm going to tell you, there were these young women in their 20s, whose fathers had remarried. And these young women were, without exception, blaming their step mothers for stealing the father's away for being hateful and cruel to them. Now, it's perhaps true the step mothers were robbing people, I don't know. But none of them blamed their father. You know, it's his kids, I was, I was in a public place and waiting. And so I couldn't start screaming at the TV, look at your fault was not safe to do that. And in Fatal Attraction, or in working girl, or in any of these others, it's not especially safe. So you get these incredible messages about what kind of woman is acceptable in the world, from these movies from Star Trek from everything else, and then you get this message. After you get the you've come a long way, baby thing where you too can be an attorney or an astronaut. The next set of messages is it's not really worth it. You know, you can do it. But it's pretty awful. Because, gee, wouldn't it be better to just have babies and we have biological clock stuff. Nobody talks about the fact that your employer, your community, the government, nobody makes it comfortable and easy for families to raise children. Regardless, it's this you can't, you can have it all, but it's not worth it if you try because you're going to miss out on the happiest moments of your child's life. So you get all these articles, which I have seen in cut out about how I had I was earning 200,000 a year on Wall Street, but I gave it up to stay home with my kids. Because they didn't want to miss their early years and I'll go back. Well, excuse me, this is a lie. They're not going to let you come back on the same track because you have the mommy track. The new traditionalist which you've met the ads for Good Housekeeping, I didn't bring it with me. I wish I have. Has anybody seen this? Who's seen this? Yes. I've seen a black woman. No, no, the new traditionalist? I have not? Well, I haven't seen that I was gonna look in Ebony to see if they stuck one in there. But it's it's the old, Feminine Mystique woman. Standing next to you. And did you notice the one I have that I cut out? She's standing with her two little helpless children in front of a window and there's nothing out there. It's like grass and he's like an estate or something. The new traditionalist, you you have to in order to get that job you have to get an employer ie husband, who makes a hell of a lot of money.

Unknown Speaker  1:04:28
This whole reaction?

Unknown Speaker  1:04:31
I think so.

Unknown Speaker  1:04:32
We've all made it as busy as

Unknown Speaker  1:04:35
well, I think it's a tribute to our success. But it's also a warning because the success is is very, it's very short term, and it could all get drowned. Which is why I think we should be proud of ourselves. I mean, I'm really quite excited that the Vatican is so upset about ideological feminism. You know, I mean, I think we have made this is why I started out by talking about the changes there. We've made in the advances, but it's like we don't want to get loads at all, because this backlash is truly astounding. And the latest is, of course, the mommy track, which some of us knew as occupational segregation and sex discrimination. I don't know about you, now that we have this problem of these women who keep wanting to have these babies and stuff, we are we are telling employers that they can be nice to us that it is for our benefit, if They line us up on that slow moving mommy track. And what it's basically saying is there are two groups of women, there's women, you treat like men, you give them promotions. You let me take this back, there are women who are either single or childless women who you treat like men with wives, because men with wives don't have to worry about this. And you can get them promoted, and they can be transferred, and they can travel and all that stuff, then they're women, you treat like women, you discriminate against them, you pay them less, you give them less opportunity, and they like it. There's something very violent here that I feel quite uncomfortable about. I don't want to spend a lot of time on the mommy track, because frankly, I think it's being blasted by everybody. I'm grateful to fully Schwartz for having written that ridiculous article. That that the CEO of DuPont had to come out and say, no, no, no, no, no. And he chairs her board. That we are we're getting everybody. Even the New York Times editorial said Wait, are you kidding? Which I nearly flipped over? Since they keep going call me Mrs. They don't do that anymore. I know. Why. Exactly. Why is she still doing this? Don't ask me? Well, of course she has been she is advising corporations on how to effectively employ women. And I think that's that's an important thing. The last thing I want to say about the you've come a long way baby backlash is about fashion. Have you have you seen what we're supposed to wear now, we're supposed to wear short skirts, and sheer blouses. Now, this is a this is the kind of reaction that I don't think anybody has missed, right? To some extent all of these terrible messages about women and what they're supposed to do and how they're supposed to be end up reflected in the Bush administration's policy proposal. That's why I go on at such length about this. Because we need to have this sense of this sort of underpinning when we look at these proposals. And also I talk about popular culture. And I talk about what you read in the New York Times and The Washington Post, because that's what members of Congress read. Do you think those guys don't go to the movies? Do you think they read the latest books you send them forget it, words of one syllable only. Not and lots of whitespace on the page. And they also mean they get their their ideas from all these sources that we need to pay close attention to now I'm going to have to do a congressional survey. Maybe the Congressional Caucus on Women's Issues will let me do this and they'll at least send it to their members. I want to know how many of them watch Star Trek. Want to know how many of them saw Working Girl and liked it? This is important. So we have this continued resistance. Regan having passed the torch to Bush to spending money on women and children. We have better rhetoric. Now George Bush says he is haunted by his vision of these children in the inner cities. Did you remember that from the campaign? What is going to happen to them? Try to think about it George. Try to imagine what you can do.

Unknown Speaker  1:09:21
He's these poor pitiful ones, what can what will happen to them, we aren't gonna give him we aren't gonna put any money into improving education because we don't throw money after that, you know, we aren't going to put money into the WIC program, the women infants and children's feeding program. Because after all, you know, those women ought to be getting some kind of prenatal care, but it's not my problem. We need to be very practical at the same time that we're being visionary. So we need to accept the compromises we're getting on the hill, the Family and Medical Leave Act. The Bush administration opposes it. We support it. It It's not for mommies. It's for parents. It's also not just for parents, it's for people who get sick. But guess what? It's not what we really need. It's like the first olives out of the jar. It's unpaid leave. Can you afford six weeks of unpaid leave? It's it's not our goal. It's it's the first step towards it. And we are having it's going to make it this time. But we, the Chamber of Commerce opposes it. Why do they oppose it? Because they know it's just the first step. They know, the next thing is paid leave. They oppose it because they don't believe in mandated benefits. You can't tell us what to do, we'll do it ourselves. Well, but you didn't. on child care. What does the Bush administration offer us for child care? Well, I assume that all of you have nannies. So or au pairs, so that you don't have to worry. And that that few 1000 a week that a costume is of no significance. It's just pin money that you have earned from working. Because I know how you women are you only work for that pin money, we have to get a new phrase for that. Because even I didn't use to know what pin money was. I mean, it's like, you know, money that ladies need to buy pins, I mean, but see, I rest my case. Now, we all know that. But we should call it something different because women in their 20s don't know that. Well, we should just tell I'm going to add that to every speech. So for childcare, what we are offering is a tax credit for poor families. There you are, you earn $13,000 a year, which is the maximum you can earn to qualify for this. And you get $1,000 per child. Now, most most childcare is going to cost you 1500 to 3000 or so per year, and you're going to get 1000 which at the most is going to be less than 20 bucks a week. Now, this is encouraging, isn't it? We also have in this proposal, the key point of it for me is that we do not discriminate against women who choose to stay at home with their children, you get the 1000 bucks, even if you stay home. So to me, this is a subtle and in fact, I think stupid proposal to encourage women to stay home. Now I don't know too many families, which earn between eight and 13,000 a year and have a kid or two who can afford for somebody to stay home. This is the crisis, you know that if you want to stay home and you're poor, you can't you only get two if you're rich, double standard for addition, you know, so this is the bush proposal. It's not childcare. By the way, this is some itty bitty income supplement, I'm almost embarrassed to use the terms income supplement for this. And it is it is very definitely giving the message that the more appropriate families will have a person ie mother staying home. Because remember how haunted he is by the fate of these poor children in the inner cities and their fate, as he likes to call it that is caused by the fact that their mothers in this evil way they have are going out to work. Nobody says Oh, aren't you silly? Yes, of course. They're supposed to do that. The daddies are supposed to work. Did you remember Kramer vs. Kramer.

Unknown Speaker  1:14:02
It's like, you get all these stories about women giving up their work to stay home and women who are single parents are pathological. But a man who raises his kid who has custody of his kid is like a hero and you're supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy about it. It's so wonderful that he wants to have his own kid. It's it's very, very scary. I think we need to ask a bunch of questions about all of this. And the first is whether equal access are one of our goals is even possible in a patriarchal society. And how we then reformulate this society. Whether this glass ceiling in the workplace is inevitable in this kind of hierarchy. And whether there is a glass ceiling to equality as well. We will only be allowed to go so far. And then be stopped. The key to public policy is institutional change. Everybody who studies public policy knows that institutional change when it comes to women, public policy gets defined as changing the women. It's very odd. We're talking about changing systems, we're talking about transforming the workplace, not the women. So we keep being these voices crying out in the wilderness, about all of that. We are also we are also talking about the feminist vision and mission and agenda persisting into the next century. So I think we should not let them make us fear the F word. At which, which is part of the you've come a long way baby backlash that we're supposed to not use that word to describe ourselves. I want to, I want to conclude with a little story about what we did in the Carter administration, because it may be useful for you all wherever you work. And also, I'll give you my my motto for living. Aside from Lucy Stone, which is my real motto for living in the olden days in the Carter administration, and he W which was the then Health Education and Welfare Department, before it split into health and human services and education. There were a lot of feminists, there were a lot of women in positions of some responsibility. We had some assistant secretaries, some of us were special assistants to those. And we formed an underground in a GW which we call, well, it was the feminist underground, but we call ourselves the turtles. And I'm going to tell you the story of the turtles, and why we called ourselves turtles, because this is, it's my feminist message. We got a lot achieved, by the way. It always amazed Joe, California, why his general counsel, his assistant secretary for education, and is the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. All we're saying the same thing about certain issues. Because he didn't understand about the underground. Most people who have never been oppressed peoples don't understand about underground, you know, we have underground railroads, we have all that anyway. So we call ourselves the turtles because of this poem by Melvin Tolson called Harlem Gallery, which nobody reads anymore, but was one of the great poems of the Harlem Renaissance in the 20s. Remember, I speak English professor. So I never missed an opportunity with my friends and colleagues, who are these lawyers and policy types, to tell them about poems. So in this, so all of them had a copy of this poem. It's a short piece of that, which I will tell you about much as I hate to paraphrase a really great poem. So it's about this enormous shark. And he is swimming through the ocean, and he's all in he's huge, and he's all teeth. I mean, all sharks do is swim and eats women eats women eat, they never sleep. So he's ceaselessly swimming. He's swallowing schools of tuna. He's swallowing up dolphins, he's eating all the time. And he swallows this beautiful little turtle.

Unknown Speaker  1:18:28
And she gets inside there she is swallowed whole inside the belly of the shark. And rather than quietly dying, she opens her little mouth, and she has her tiny little curly teeth. And she quietly and methodically and carefully choose a great hole on the side of the shark, and freeze herself. And those of us who are feminists inside institutions, whether they are corporations, or governments or universities or nonprofit organizations are to a large extent, turtles in the shark. We are, we are in this business of transforming the institution not just in surviving in it, or getting ahead in it, we are transforming it. And that's why we need to be everyplace and we need to not lose this consciousness so that we're not just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic here. We are trying to make the Titanic safer. So the motto is that you remember what it means to be a turtle. Did you have turtles when you were a little kid, you've seen turtles. You can only move forward if you stick your neck out and put your ass on the line. That's it I hear, I feel like I took about two or three days to do this, because I'm going so slow. But do you have any questions comments?

Unknown Speaker  1:20:20
Yes, at the federal level, zero, zilch and none. We had a Federal Office of domestic violence in HHS near the, in the waning days of the Carter administration, which was designed to, to fund finally, the domestic to fund some domestic violence programs, some shelters and in fact, the office was headed by my very best friend and, and it was right upstairs from my office. And we're, and as soon as the Reagan administration came in, they abandoned they abolished it can't even talk and fired her. She was a political appointee. At the moment, there are still some itsy bitsy funding for some domestic violence work out of the Justice Department. But it's my understanding that it is drying up yesterday morning. The work that some colleagues have been doing on domestic violence with Justice money has been carefully reviewed. Back in the olden days, when the when CW PS had the first National Resource Center on family violence, they had money from justice, and they publish things and produce things. And that was, and that's what you did. Now the national woman Abuse Prevention Project, which shared which is our tenant, which we rent space to. They are coming to the end of their funding to do newsletters and technical assistance and training and all that sort of stuff. Every word they publish is read and most of them revised by two or three layers at the Justice Department. Golly, yes, but it's federal money. It's federal money. You take the money, you pay the dues. And it didn't used to be that way. We used to get federal money and not have to pay those dues. But there used to be different policies. I think there isn't. I think there isn't going to be a kinder, gentler funding program on domestic violence in this administration, unless we really do something very activist about it. And it probably means legislation. Yeah, yeah. One and then to all the women. Okay. security and happiness. Yep. Yep. Also, we just did, we had started a project in 81, on earning sharing. Does anybody else remember this notion that Social Security is a sexist, sort of a patriarchal system, you know, you're, we have this notion in the olden days, that you could have earning sharing so that a husband and then wife in with a husband and wife pair in which only one worked full time, year round outside the home, making a lot of money, would share the earnings equally. So we started this project way before I came back to the center. I was the center's first volunteer, by the way, in January 1973, for I went Civil Rights Commission. So now I've come home forever. We started this project to look at developing a model of earnings sharing for Social Security. And we have just finally published the report. Which if you give me your name, I'll send it to you. It's hard to read. It's very theoretical, but it's really a wonderful piece of work. I didn't do it. So I feel free and saying that, and it really, it is the only thinking right now about transforming Social Security into a sex equal program. I think it won't happen in our lifetime. It's it's very elaborate how they, which is one of the reasons nobody's paying a lot of attention to it, but it's balancing the earnings so that instead of having a couple in which the husband earns all the money in the wife is only a beneficiary as his widow or as his dependent. They're both equal. They both share equally in his earnings. And then when you have these two earner families, there's their sharing as well since but it's

Unknown Speaker  1:24:50
February there is that when you found the one on offense, there's so much an arbitrary amount of 50,001 person If you aren't $50,000 A year live on a paid history of if he died on when to reach 65, and he may vote retired, pay the equivalent amount to one family, but in my arm $50,000. Now, whether he or she is very unique here is what it takes to when they retire, treat as if she she does not get anything for her.

Unknown Speaker  1:25:37
She can't she has to choose between being a beneficiary. But see, that's what this that's what this, that's what this report is counteracting.

Unknown Speaker  1:25:52
And this is putting it on somebody maximize or learn very

Unknown Speaker  1:26:01
well, Max, the reason that this earnings sharing report was done was to propose a different system than the one you're describing. And it's there's there are a lot of complexities to it that I frankly don't have in my brain and even on my best days. But it's it's an interesting proposal that needs some attention, which I think we're not going to get to this very expensive now you want. I think she was first us Yes.

Unknown Speaker  1:26:34
implementing policy and lobbying?

Unknown Speaker  1:26:40
Well, we all do that. I mean, we all do advocacy. And we and some of it is involved with lobbying. And under the tax laws, a tax exempt organization like ours, and the others in Washington are allowed to do a certain spend a certain percentage of our budget every year on lobbying. When the center started, the idea was the chain in March had was that they would do the policy research, because nobody else was doing it. And in other words, create the ammunition and hand it off to the lobbyists who would then go up in Lobby, things have changed a lot since then. All the all the organizations that represent women do a lot of advocacy. And we all take different issues, we all sign on to everything in their teams of lobbyists, lobby days, National Women's Political Caucus, and now and other membership organizations don't have the same tax restrictions. But we all make that kind of contribution. And we've even invented this quasi structure called the Council of Presidents of women's organizations, which all of us belong to, and there's about 50 or so organizations ranging from small policy centers like mine, two big national membership organizations, where we are trying to put forth a feminist agenda that we can all agree to, and then everybody's working towards what we used to call it in the olden days. In in the Coalition for Women and Girls in education, which is another coalition so we used to refer to ourselves as representing the mythical marching millions you know, like each of you represents a millions but everybody needs to be a lobbyist I mean, you every letter you write is a makes you a lobbyist. Yeah, just a little story. Oh goody, very informal observance of Women's

Unknown Speaker  1:28:45
History Month in high school and colleges with more knowledge and various faculty members both inside and a very nice maintenance man named Tony wandered in toward the end of the program and start to live and when was over he said what is that? Who do you think gave you the vote we have what's more, you live six and a half years longer than we do? I want my

Unknown Speaker  1:29:18
back oh my goodness. We gave you the road well, you know, it's gonna take a long time. This is a retraining program for persons of the male persuasion marry. area might respond to depression seems like well, I guess I'm thinking sort of in terms of the cabinet, I think education because Bush wants to be the educator. Shouldn't president I know that but don't hire that over there? And, and he does. He does have daughters, I don't think that really is gonna help with him. But Cavazos. The Secretary has a consciousness about dissidence, disadvantaged children about some of the issues and seems like a likelier person than some of the others. So I would say that may be the place especially if we can get them to think about what it means to educate women and people of color and immigrants, because they are scared. They're all scared. And I think that's a pressure point.

Unknown Speaker  1:30:44
I want to say something pro working zero.

Unknown Speaker  1:30:51
No, I'm serious, because that lots of people really like and I need to figure this out. Oh, my

Unknown Speaker  1:30:55
36 year old girl daughter said, How come in life and you're a feminist, you know, and I've heard people say that and so when I liked the heroine, because she she wasn't happy when she has the chat idea she was successful. But what I really liked about it is that the leading man defer to her factor support her wasn't envious, acknowledged her ability. And that is something new.

Unknown Speaker  1:31:26
Well, you know, this is what's interesting about this, it is a good movie. Now if it were a bad movie, she wouldn't be the least bit likable this child but that's why it's so dangerous is because it is a well made movie. And they make and I'll tell you my, one of my staff people liked it because she was an underdog. We all want to root for the underdog. It's just that the overdog was one of us, you know, I mean, it was like this is all just cat fights, but that this notion of upward mobility and being creative and seizing opportunity, she liked that because she could she could identify with this underdog who's ill treated as a secretary you know, I

Unknown Speaker  1:32:16
mean, he had to go wrong. He had had a couple of bad

Unknown Speaker  1:32:25
times, but it wasn't for him. And it wasn't he wasn't using her.

Unknown Speaker  1:32:31
What do the people in their 20s Think about this movie? Come on you guys. Go for it.

Unknown Speaker  1:32:39
Everyone liked it that I went to see it with in it felt like it part of it was that they were saying that she's the underdog. That's what happened. I'm in an organization right now where I'm the underdog and I'm not going to win. And I think that's the whole concept that people look at this and say that very unlucky gives you hope. Be real.