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We’re having a garage sale today. In one box was my Ms. magazine collection, many from the 1980s, which my husband thought he’d finally talked me out of. But this morning I sat down on the futon (also for sale), and reached over and pulled out a random issue to look at for old times’s sake. Mistake. What I read inside, rather than being a trip backwards through times, was eerily reminiscent of things I might read in today’s paper.
From the 1980s:
• A story about female attorneys in court, having to tolerate comments about their dress or their looks, or having to put up with “terms of endearment.” But the female attorneys had their clients to think about, and therefore did not make any show of objection.
• An Orwellian piece of fiction that foresees a time when women’s periods would be monitored, to ensure that any pregnancy is detected and carried to term, under penalty of law, miscarriages being only slightly less criminal than abortion (analogous to manslaughter being slightly less criminal than first-degree murder).
• A 1984 feature by Donna Shalala, future Secretary of Health and Human Services, lamenting that women in the labor force got only 60% of the pay received by their male coworkers. She added that while some of this was a lack of equal pay for equal work, it was also due in part to the fact that traditionally “female” work was underpaid compared to equally demanding “male” work. She asked “Is a registered nurse really worth less than a tree trimmer?” (As a registered nurse who is married to a tree trimmer, I’m tempted to say that we’re both underpaid, but that would hardly be objective.)
• A clipping from 1983, about the first all-female crew in a C-1A from Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 30 (VRC-30), conducting an operational mission terminating in a carrier-arrested landing - a feat considerably more difficult than parallel parking, and therefore worthy of respect in my book.
Jump to the 21st century:
• In 1999 (ok, technically the eve of the 21st century), Judge Jeanette Burrage of Des Moines, WA, threatened to sanction female lawyers who dared to wear pantsuits in her courtroom. Judge Burrage said she had never seen such a thing before - something that anyone with a working television set the following year - the year of Hillary’s basic black pantsuit - would be hard pressed to claim with any credibility.
• “Personhood” Initiative 48, on the ballot this fall in Colorado, endows legal “personhood” on a fertilized egg. So eat your veggies, ladies, because unhealthy behavior on your pregnant part could be murder.
• Women have made advances in the wage gap - kind of the same way that a glacier makes advances down a mountainside. As of 2006, we ladies were closing in on 77% of what the menfolk bring home. Whahoo! That ought to keep the girls happy until they find Mr. Right!
• Upon making the news for being selected as the first US female astronaut in 1983, Sally Ride was asked if women had finally “arrived.” She answered that women will have “arrived” when a female astronaut was no longer news. By that yardstick, I guess we’ve come a ways since Ms. Ride’s blast-off through that particular glass ceiling. But 25 years after the first all-female VRC-30 crew mentioned above, I’m still waiting for that first all-female shuttle to take off. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 7, 8, 9....
I did not go looking only for those 1980s stories that had a modern-day counterpart. I just looked at the magazines, found what I thought to be examples of sexism in the bygone days, and then Googled for similar examples from the past 10 years (the lifespan of my granddaughter). And I found an updated equivalent for each and every one. That’s how far we’ve come - not.
But now we are in the midst of an historic presidential campaign. A well-qualified and experienced woman took on the task of winning the Democratic nomination, and although she fell short of that goal, she fell only very slightly short of it. My own decision not to support her was not based on her gender, but on some of her positions, and her missteps as a candidate. Friends of mine, male and female, have expressed their own views on the subject, and not one of them has said that they couldn’t support her because they couldn’t trust a finely manicured finger on The Button. As part of achieving true equality, we have to learn that occasionally we will lose a fight based solely on our merits.
Now here’s the flip side.
John McCain, the other major political party’s apparent Presidential Pick, has decided who will fill his Vice Presidential slot. Here were some of the top candidates for that position, their political and executive experience, and their conservative “cred”:
Candidate #1: Resume includes running for U.S. President; CEO of a management consulting firm; CEO of the 2002 Olympic Games; served as Governor of an eastern seaboard state with 12 electoral votes; native son of a Midwest rust belt state with 17 electoral votes, as well as son of one of that state’s former governors.
Candidate # 2: Currently in his second term as governor of a Midwest state with 10 electoral votes; has a degree in Political Science; former Vice President of an internet consulting firm; experience as a labor attorney; former six-term member of the state legislature, where he was a fierce advocate of tax cuts, and did a turn as House Majority Leader; co-chair of McCain’s presidential campaign.
Candidate # 3: Currently Governor of a key state with 27 electoral votes; was previously that same state’s attorney general; longtime advocate of capital punishment, reinstating the death penalty after lifting a moratorium by that state’s former governor; upheld his state’s prohibition on gays and lesbians adopting children, making his state the only one with such a ban; early career included serving as counsel to the minor league division of the Baseball Commissioner's Office, and as a staffer for U.S. Senator Connie Mack III.
Candidate #4: Less than two years into first term as governor of a remote, rural state with only 3 electoral votes; previous political post was mayor of a town of less than 5,000 souls; in a recent interview, when asked about being the possible pick for McCain’s running mate, asked “what is it exactly that the VP does every day”; anti-choice; pro-death penalty; lifetime NRA member; currently under an ethics investigation for abuse of power.
Oh, and she’s a girl.
The winner? Candidate #4!
Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that the Good Old Boys picked her strictly for her appeal to women as a woman? Not that she’s completely unqualified. She is 35, a natural born citizen, and has some political experience beyond winning Homecoming Queen. But I find it hard to believe that she rose to the top of the pile, over other well-heeled contenders, based solely on her merits. I have to conclude (perhaps cynically, but no less legitimately) that the G.O.B. party (no, that’s not a typo) thinks I’ll be swayed by the “Girl Factor.” Well, if the G-Factor works, then after 88 years, maybe we really can’t be trusted with the vote.
Sarah Palin is an interesting public figure. She has a movie-screen bio: basketball star and beauty queen, “hockey mom” to five kids, a son shipping off to a war zone, and the moxie to take on the big boys at their own game. She might do well, although I have my doubts, and I’m passionately rooting for the other side. Other than significant political disagreements, it’s not really her that I have a gripe with. I can't blame her for taking the gig when it was offered to her. My bigger problem is with her party, and those handlers who picked her for the VP slot for what appear to be gender-based reasons. Sure, it would be historic to have the first female Vice President within my lifetime. (And OK, I do have a secret fantasy about Sarah giving ‘em Hell if they ask her to make the coffee at the first cabinet meeting.) But knowing that she attained that position because of her gender sort of takes the spring out of what would otherwise be one giant leap for womankind.
So I’m saving my Ms. collection. I plan to sit down someday with my granddaughter and my niece, and go through these snapshots of the late 20th century, to give them a perspective on what has - and hasn’t - changed. And how, just a generation or two ago, things they might take for granted - things that for them have always been - weren’t. And how all the discussion of the reversal of our advances is not just the hysteria of antique feminists trying to remain relevant. I’ll tell them that my own birth certificate has a space for “Father,” “Father’s Occupation,” and “Mother” - period. I’ll tell them that I was once told I didn’t need to make as much money as a less-qualified male nurse, because he had a family to support, and I’d probably get married to my own bread winner some day - and that at the time, that made sense to me. I’ll tell them these things, and show them these magazines, in the hopes that their jaws will drop and their hackles will raise, and they will guard these gains with the vigilance of a mother bear.
Then, only then, will I put these magazines back on the garage sale pile.
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