Roundtable, part one

[00:05 - 00:09]
The following tape recorded program was produced in the studios of KPFA Berkeley
[00:09 - 00:14]
California under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in
[00:14 - 00:18]
cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters
[00:18 - 00:24]
in connection with the series the American woman in fact and fiction recently presented
[00:24 - 00:28]
by the station. We offer a panel discussion recorded under informal
[00:28 - 00:33]
circumstances in the KPFA studios. The participants in the discussion
[00:33 - 00:38]
are Mark Schorer writer and professor of English literature at the University of
[00:38 - 00:43]
California Ethel Albert and her apologist and recent fellow at the
[00:43 - 00:47]
Center for Advanced Study in the behavioral sciences at Stanford University.
[00:47 - 00:52]
Dr. Anna Mencken Berkeley psychiatrist Peter Gold a guard professor of
[00:52 - 00:57]
political science at the University of California and former president of Reed College
[00:57 - 01:02]
Miriam Allen the Ford writer of San Francisco and Virginia
[01:02 - 01:07]
Maynard writer and director of the series on the American woman in fact and
[01:07 - 01:12]
fiction as a starting point for the following conversation.
[01:12 - 01:17]
Each participant read the chapter entitled The ordeal of the American woman which
[01:17 - 01:21]
appears in the book America as a civilization by Max Lerner published in
[01:21 - 01:26]
157 by Simon and Schuster. The most
[01:26 - 01:31]
continuous American revolutionary rights learner is the American woman.
[01:31 - 01:36]
First there was the suffrage revolution as part of the long hard fought movement for equal
[01:36 - 01:40]
rights in which a succession of strong minded women in the face of jeers and
[01:40 - 01:45]
humiliation broke into previously barred professions and won the right to an
[01:45 - 01:51]
equal education with men to speak in public to vote for and hold office.
[01:51 - 01:55]
Second there was the sexual revolution directed against the double standard of
[01:55 - 02:00]
morality and aimed again for women and some of the same privileges of sexual
[02:00 - 02:05]
expressiveness as the men had coming in the wake of the Equal Rights Movement.
[02:05 - 02:10]
It was a phase at once of the revolt against Puritanism and of the dislocations
[02:10 - 02:15]
caused by the First World War. Related to the revolution of morals was
[02:15 - 02:19]
third the revolution of manners with women shedding their cumbersome
[02:19 - 02:24]
garments and adopting form fitting clothes and revealing swimsuits and shorts
[02:24 - 02:29]
taking part in sports driving cars and even piloting planes
[02:29 - 02:34]
serving in war time as wax and waves smoking cigarettes and drinking in
[02:34 - 02:38]
public. Fourth says Lerner there was the kitchen
[02:38 - 02:43]
revolution with mechanized kitchens and canned and prepared
[02:43 - 02:48]
foods giving some women greater leisure and enabling others to get industrial and
[02:48 - 02:52]
clerical jobs. Finally there was the jobs revolution which
[02:52 - 02:58]
transformed the American working force as it also transformed women's role in the economy.
[02:58 - 03:03]
In one thousand twenty there were eight million women holding jobs in
[03:03 - 03:08]
1955. There were more than 27 million comprising over 30
[03:08 - 03:12]
percent of the labor force. During the first quarter of the present
[03:12 - 03:17]
century says Max Lerner the American woman strove for equal rights with men
[03:17 - 03:23]
having achieved them. She has spent the second quarter wondering about the result.
[03:23 - 03:28]
A section from Lerner's America as a civilization. The
[03:28 - 03:33]
chapter the ordeal of the American woman we are about to join
[03:33 - 03:38]
the discussion now as the panelists are talking about recent book length publications
[03:38 - 03:43]
concerned with modern woman Wiley's generation of vipers as mentioned
[03:43 - 03:48]
Margaret Mead's male and female the Kinsey Report and the Lundberg says
[03:48 - 03:53]
modern woman in the last seconds someone mentions a very recent work in
[03:53 - 03:57]
titled The trouble with women. The conversation turns
[03:57 - 04:02]
to magazines and newspapers. Regular contributors to this unprecedented
[04:02 - 04:06]
flow of comment on the American woman from a large stack of clippings on the
[04:06 - 04:11]
table around which the panelists are seated. The moderator selects a number of Representative
[04:11 - 04:16]
items from recent periodicals cartoons illustrating some facet of the
[04:16 - 04:21]
so called Woman Question articles and interviews with various
[04:21 - 04:25]
commentators on the American scene. Some of the titles are red
[04:25 - 04:31]
U.S. women told to forget the qualities as one. It took courage and
[04:31 - 04:35]
research to say women are people. Goes another American
[04:35 - 04:40]
women want to be everything reads yet another report of an interview with a
[04:40 - 04:45]
British born journalist Alastair Cook. Does all this comment bear
[04:45 - 04:50]
out learner's contention that the American woman is undergoing an ordeal as the moderator.
[04:50 - 04:55]
If so what is the nature of the ordeal. The modern dilemma.
[04:55 - 05:00]
We hear the response of psychiatrist and unlike you I don't see any of
[05:00 - 05:02]
our old.
[05:02 - 05:07]
But what I think you holes in our Deal of an American woman seems
[05:07 - 05:11]
to be based on insecurity of the American woman about
[05:11 - 05:15]
herself as if there is a confusion of the role women that
[05:15 - 05:21]
think you mention the cartoons you mentioned they all make fun of the
[05:21 - 05:27]
multiple functions of an American woman today as if
[05:27 - 05:32]
she is. If he lives a number of different
[05:32 - 05:37]
levels at the same time with the result that she doesn't know where she
[05:37 - 05:42]
actually belong as if her sense of identity is confused. Well the
[05:42 - 05:46]
usual arsing wife mother or sister coming home
[05:46 - 05:51]
only to become the fool for a while then to switch back to cook and
[05:51 - 05:56]
housekeeper and in between the sophisticated lady at a
[05:56 - 06:02]
cocktail party. What is she really. She handles the budget. She
[06:02 - 06:06]
is planning practically everything in the family. It seems to me
[06:06 - 06:10]
that it is a mini general job she is managing
[06:10 - 06:16]
things. Previous times father brought the bacon and her room
[06:16 - 06:20]
and cook it and there didn't seem to be a very great problem
[06:20 - 06:25]
about the role. Now all her activities do not satisfy her.
[06:25 - 06:30]
She has to paint or learn to fly an airplane to express
[06:30 - 06:34]
herself. Why express are injured while eating
[06:34 - 06:39]
well. Only one thought at this point and possibly
[06:39 - 06:44]
because she does not say mke of herself first and
[06:44 - 06:49]
last as her family. But she sings of herself as an
[06:49 - 06:53]
individual who does an expert job and many expect
[06:53 - 06:58]
Jobs in and for her family.
[06:58 - 07:02]
Her existence does not consist in being one but in
[07:02 - 07:07]
doing something she lives in different levels of
[07:07 - 07:08]
activity.
[07:08 - 07:13]
There is no wonder of course that her sense of identity is confused. The point I wanted
[07:13 - 07:16]
to bring out is the difference in being in tune.
[07:16 - 07:21]
Doctor ordered guard and then presented his view.
[07:21 - 07:26]
It seems to me that you have to do two kinds of booze here and that there
[07:26 - 07:30]
is a kind of image of women and it is only I think there are many images of
[07:30 - 07:35]
women and there are countless different roles that women play
[07:35 - 07:41]
and I think the image that you may have of women will depend upon your close
[07:41 - 07:43]
status.
[07:43 - 07:47]
I suspect that the image of women which have been for example
[07:47 - 07:52]
by the aristocracy of uniquely in the 17th 18th
[07:52 - 07:57]
century was a quite different in the age of women than was held by the
[07:57 - 08:02]
Russian peasant. And I suspect that's true today.
[08:02 - 08:07]
And most of the discussions that appear in the paper. I've written by
[08:07 - 08:12]
leisure class people people who have time on their hands and don't know what
[08:12 - 08:17]
to do with it. Most of them are not applicable in my
[08:17 - 08:21]
judgment to the vast majority of
[08:21 - 08:25]
working women their wives and sweethearts
[08:25 - 08:31]
sisters of miners and farmers and so on
[08:31 - 08:36]
there as I see here this business of male female man and woman
[08:36 - 08:42]
is a pretty elemental business after all it's the most elementary of all the divisions of
[08:42 - 08:47]
labor. It nature and it does represent
[08:47 - 08:51]
fundamentally a difference of a division of labor
[08:51 - 08:56]
a difference of function and biological function in the world
[08:56 - 09:02]
and it's just fantastic to assume that a division of
[09:02 - 09:07]
labor and a differential of function so profit on the spot
[09:07 - 09:12]
should not result in differences of temperament or point of
[09:12 - 09:17]
view of values and so on. I
[09:17 - 09:21]
read an article some years ago by Floyd Allport a
[09:21 - 09:26]
psychologist in Harper's magazine in which he argued that the
[09:26 - 09:30]
talk about differences sex differences has a lot of nonsense
[09:30 - 09:36]
that sex differences were socially imposed never a conventional No.
[09:36 - 09:41]
Entirely so. If you see women as they
[09:41 - 09:46]
are you see them as just I suppose it's
[09:46 - 09:52]
without agenda. And this business I've had de
[09:52 - 09:57]
sexualize a vision of both the male and the female in the
[09:57 - 10:01]
process of forgetting the elementary function of this
[10:01 - 10:05]
division of labor. Makes me a bit impatient.
[10:05 - 10:08]
Well now to marry and before dying I don't want to disagree.
[10:08 - 10:13]
Yes you see me bursting. I don't want to go out on a tangent I would take you up on
[10:13 - 10:15]
that I could talk for an hour on that point.
[10:15 - 10:20]
As a matter of fact it has not be sexualizing anybody nearly 100
[10:20 - 10:25]
percent of the so-called male or female characteristics outside of the
[10:25 - 10:30]
primers sex and secondary sexual characters are the matter of
[10:30 - 10:35]
turning up conditioning of a sociology not of biology. I think this is
[10:35 - 10:40]
true but they arise from the house he thinks of nothing we want to remember is of the something
[10:40 - 10:45]
much more basic than the differentiation the male and female us a differentiation
[10:45 - 10:49]
into human beings and non-human beings we are all primarily human
[10:49 - 10:54]
and that the least important thing about most of us is that whether where
[10:54 - 10:57]
they all feel man or female feel oh god how.
[10:57 - 10:58]
Oh yeah.
[10:58 - 11:04]
It's not enough time as you say I do what I want to say Protect Your only as and far
[11:04 - 11:09]
more I got angry here now that I think if there is a
[11:09 - 11:14]
dilemma it is a much more universal dilemma Lemme either of the American woman or a
[11:14 - 11:19]
woman. I think we're living in a time of profound transition where living out of
[11:19 - 11:24]
time at present of the worst insecurity even beyond the
[11:24 - 11:28]
and security of life in them in the dark ages. In other words a time of
[11:28 - 11:31]
fear. It's a universal dilemma.
[11:31 - 11:35]
Well I heartily agree with what you've said. I think that those of us who've
[11:35 - 11:40]
done some work in anthropology are particularly impressed by the incredible
[11:40 - 11:45]
contrasts as you move from one culture to another where as I think I mentioned to you
[11:45 - 11:50]
earlier in Africa it is taken for granted that the woman is the appropriate one to
[11:50 - 11:55]
do hard labor and I think it's a role the curious that. Women in my country
[11:55 - 12:00]
are able to get the men to do the hard work and I think that's not fair because those poor chaps you know
[12:00 - 12:04]
kept carrying all these heavy things and work such long hours and they're not laws. You
[12:04 - 12:09]
know they go off and get drunk or stop and visit and you get down to
[12:09 - 12:14]
some very simple things like basket weaving in one culture this is obviously a
[12:14 - 12:19]
male occupation and another it's just as obviously a female occupation. And I
[12:19 - 12:24]
think to follow your line you go on from there to the differences out of sight between
[12:24 - 12:29]
people who have a skin one color or another or who speak one language or
[12:29 - 12:33]
another. It isn't that there aren't any differences is that we have to backtrack and find out
[12:33 - 12:39]
what the differences really are and then I think raise the question what difference it makes.
[12:39 - 12:44]
The fact that one creature is female and one male makes a certain difference at least
[12:44 - 12:49]
biologically and perhaps in other ways. But is it necessarily the case
[12:49 - 12:54]
that because you are female you are better at French than at mathematics or that you ought to stay home
[12:54 - 12:58]
and cook instead of guy out to do something I think that the differences have to be
[12:58 - 13:01]
re-evaluated later.
[13:01 - 13:05]
Dr. Olga Gardner referred again to the question of women and labor.
[13:05 - 13:16]
A social tradition custom and so on and so forth. Also
[13:16 - 13:20]
the distribution process. I just returned from the Soviet
[13:20 - 13:25]
Union for the last time 10 million people liked what even a fuel
[13:25 - 13:29]
shortage of men and a great deal of the
[13:29 - 13:36]
things that we noticed in there so few women are going they probably
[13:36 - 13:42]
would not be doing if there were not this eclipse.
[13:42 - 13:47]
I suspect the same is true of the technological revolution that's taking place in the United
[13:47 - 13:52]
States under which when going into industry and going into business