So, if you are hoping for something hot, this isn't really it. I am going to talk about what it means to be turning 70, to have lived through the women's movement (indeed, been part of it), and how so many younger men and women (let's say 50 and younger, but it really can apply to anyone, male or female), don't really "get" what the "women's movement" was all about.
This was illustrated well this week by the ruckus over one Hilary Rosen's comment about Ann Romney, saying something like, "Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life". The women's movement was NEVER about belittling the job that traditional, stay-at-home wives and mothers did. The women's movement WAS about giving women the choice to do something different than the traditional roles for wives and mothers.
In my classes on Women's History at Pasadena City College, I asked students in groups to make lists of all the things they could think of that defined "women's work". It is pretty amazing: women are cleaners, cooks, nurses, sexual partners, nurturers, teachers, chauffeurs, gardeners, laundresses, bill payers, budgeters, readers - and most also work outside of the home. I'm sure I left some things out, but women play many roles as part of what we call "women's work".
I have a lot of friends who are in their child-raising years. Some of them work outside the home and some of them don't. Study after study has shown that it is the quality of time that mothers spend with their children that counts the most - not the quantity of time alone. Since about 80% of all women of child-raising age do work outside the home, one can say that most women are faced with lots of work around the house as well as at whatever job they are doing away from the home. Is it a luxury not to work outside the home? I think the answer would be "maybe", since for many women, their work away from home defines them as much as does their work inside the home.
I graduated from college in 1964, and began teaching the next year. Then I had two children and finished a Ph.D. degree. I always worked, both in the home and outside the home, but some of it was part-time. Teaching is not only a traditional career for women, but it also allows mothers to be home with their children at certain points in their upbringing. That worked for me. At the same time, I spent much time training to be an endurance athlete. I also found time to serve on various non-profit boards, matching my particular interests. For me, having a professional life really mattered, and I hope it made me a better parent, but who judges that? What I know is that I was so lucky to be able to follow my own path: have my children; have a career that I loved and was both fun and rewarding; be a contributing member of my broader community and a role model for younger women; and pursue my love of sport through triathlons and masters swimming.
For those of you who may not realize it, the women's movement made my life, as I have experienced it, possible. My mother did not have the same choices. Think of your grandmother: did she have the choice to "do it all"? If someone has that choice and chooses to stay home, that is her choice. That is what the women's movement was all about - it did not prescribe how a girl or woman should behave, it gave them the same choices that others have. The women's movement did not make women into men, how could it? One may admire Michelle Obama and Ann Romney but still make their own choices about what to do with their lives. The USA is one of the best places in the world for a woman - or a man - to live, in large part because we are free to make choices about how we live our lives.
