The World Split Open

by Ruth Rosen

  WOMEN’S CULTURE

  As women started to see each other through their own eyes, rather than through the distorted lens of their culture, they began to respect and love each other. (Country Women’s Festival, Mendocino, California, 1987) Photo by Lynda Koolish

  The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival turned into an annual celebration of the growing women’s culture and featured some of the movement’s most talented musicians and singers. (1977) Photo by JEB

  Margie Adams, along with Holly Near, Chris Williams, and Sweet Honey and the Rock, were among some of the most talented new musicians who played at women’s concerts and dances during the 1970s. (Los Angeles, 1973) Photo by Lynda Koolish

  POLITICS AND PROLIFERATION

  At a Forum for the Future held in New York City to create a feminist agenda for the 1980s, four of the movement’s prominent early leaders posed for photographers: Ti-Grace Atkinson, Flo Kennedy, Gloria Steinem, and Kate Millet. Photo by Bettye Lane

  The National Conference on Women in 1977 featured a torch relay from Seneca Falls, New York (site of the first women’s rights conference), to Houston. Bella Abzug, Billie Jean King and Betty Friedan—pioneers who had dramatically changed the lives of American women—accompanied young runners through a euphoric crowd. Photo by Diana Mara Henry

  When delegates at Houston finally voted for the first far-reaching National Plan of Action, activists cheered and snake-danced across the hall. Photo by Diana Mara Henry

  Feminists joined United Farm Workers in their campaign to improve the labor conditions of agricultural workers. Dolores Huerta and Gloria Steinem with Bella Abzug, congresswoman, Chair of the 1977 Houston Conference. Photo by Bettye Lane

  In 1978, Gerda Lerner, who had co-founded the first program in women’s history at Sarah Lawrence College with Joan Kelly, brought together leaders of women’s organizations for a summer institute in women’s history. They took on the project of creating women’s history week, which later turned into a month. From left to right: Professors Gerda Lerner, Amy Swerdlow (with her fist raised) and Alice Kessler-Harris. Courtesy of Gerda Lerner

  Every January 23rd, on the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, activists against abortion demonstrated in Washington, D. C. In 1987, feminists satirized the opposition, but the media couldn’t tell the difference. Photo by JEB

  On October 11, 1987, 500,000 lesbians, gay men, and their supporters assembled in Washington, D. C., to demand an end to discrimination against lesbians and gay men. A few days later, Congress passed amendments restricting funds for AIDS research. Photo by JEB

  When the UN declared 1975 International Women’s year, delegates immediately expanded it to a decade. Conferences in Mexico (1975), Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985), and Beijing (1995) brought together thousands of the world’s women, who created vast networks, redefined women’s rights as human rights, and began to build a global feminist movement. (Beijing, 1995) Photo by Jo Freeman

  THROUGH THEIR WORDS

  With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), poet and novelist Maya Angelou transported readers through the searing and exhilarating experiences of African-American women. (Berkeley Community Theatre, 1994) Photo by Lynda Koolish

  Poet and essayist Susan Griffin’s pioneering essay, “Rape: The Ail-American Crime,” (Ramparts, 1970) was followed by such critically acclaimed works as Woman and Nature (1978) and A Chorus of Stones (1992). (Author’s home, Berkeley, California, 1975) Photo by Lynda Koolish

  Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1974), Song of Solomon (1977), and Beloved (1987), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her entire literary work. (Black Oak Books, Berkeley, California, 1987) Photo by Lynda Koolish

  A novelist, short fiction writer, essayist, and activist-at-large, Tillie Olsen taught a new generation of women about their lives in Tell Me a Riddle (1961) and Silences (1978). (Virginia Woolf Conference, Santa Cruz, California, 1973) Photo by Lynda koolish

  Novelist Maxine Hong Kingston was the author, most famously, of The Woman Warrior (1976) and China Men (1980). An activist, she helped Vietnamese veterans heal themselves through their writings. (Oakland, California, circa 1988) Photo by Lynda Koolish

  The author of many critically acclaimed collections of poetry and essays, Adrienne Rich inspired her readers to hear the magic of words and to stand up for their convictions in Diving into the Wreck (1973), Of Woman Born (1976), and On Lies, Secrets and Silences (1979). (San Francisco, 1978) Photo by Lynda Koolish

  Poet and essayist Audre Lorde taught her readers about being African-American, a lesbian, and a woman—but never a victim—in Sister Outsider (1984) and The Cancer Journals (1980). (Full Moon Coffeehouse, San Francisco, 1972) Photo by Linda Koolish

  Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s chilling dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1986) raised the specter of how an elected totalitarian, right-wing, American government might treat its female citizens. (San Francisco Bay Area, private reading, 1979) Photo by Lynda Koolish

  Novelist, poet, and essayist, Alice Walker received the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple (1982). Walker proposed “womanism,” rather than feminism, as more appropriate for African-American and other minority women. (San Francisco, KQED Radio Station, 1988) Photo by Lynda Koolish

  But it was the daily newspaper that developed the particular formulaic conventions that characterized “first woman” stories. These tales of individual success began to appear during the early 1970s, peaked around 1976, and practically vanished by the end of the decade. Caught off guard, fumbling headline editors frequently employed Cold War imagery—like “invasion”—to describe women’s entry into a new profession. Patronizing language often accompanied the news of a woman’s accomplishments. When San Francisco appointed the first woman to the position of port director, the local paper headlined the story, “New Port Director Is a Lady Lawyer.” When a famous female conductor replaced Seiji Ozawa as a guest conductor in San Francisco, the headline read, “Symphony Guest Gets to Do a Man’s Job.”19

  At first, reporters didn’t do much better. Some journalists wrote their stories as if they had just learned of a deep, dark secret: “A gun-toting woman correction officer has been working inside the walls of San Quentin Prison for the past week, it was learned yesterday.”20 The “first woman” narrative almost always noted a woman’s appearance, often through words, frequently with a photograph, and predictably described her marital and parental status. Invariably, the reporter asked the first woman whether she considered herself a “libber,” whether feminism had helped her secure her new position, and if she had encountered resentment from male coworkers or subordinates. The first women learned the right answers to these questions: No, being a woman had never harmed them, nor had it helped them. No, they had no connection with “women’s libbers.” When asked how they “juggled” their domestic and work responsibilities, they rarely admitted to any difficulties. When asked whether men had expressed any hostility to their arrival in the workplace, they diplomatically described themselves as “good sports” and “one of the guys.”

  Strangely, the term “affirmative action” never seemed to appear in these stories, and yet this policy and its guidelines had opened up all kinds of doors for women. The phrase “affirmative action” originated in a 1965 Executive Order issued by President Johnson and amended in October 1967 to include a ban on sexual discrimination. The newly renumbered Executive Order 11375 required that all institutions that did business with or received grants from the federal government should not only refrain from racial or sexual discrimination, but should also “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during their employment without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” During the early seventies, the government, universities, and even the private corporate sector made great efforts to find such qualified candidates. Instead of just relying on the old boys’ network, employers n
ow advertised jobs all over the country. Equally qualified women and minorities were supposed to be considered to make up for past discrimination.

  Middle-class educated women, as it turned out, were undoubtedly best positioned to pounce on these new opportunities. As a result, women found many formerly all-male jobs and careers open to them for the first time. Yet none of the reporters or the interviewed first women seemed to know—or wished to publicize—that affirmative action had helped them. Perhaps this is one reason why so few women later understood that they owed their jobs to affirmative action.21

  I still remember a feature story that made a great impression on me in this period. It profiled a “lady neurosurgeon” who rose at dawn to train for marathons, made breakfast for her children, operated on six or seven brains, returned home for a few “quality hours” with her children, cooked a gourmet dinner for her husband, and then, with her children asleep, enjoyed a few hours of intimacy with him.

  The story contained all the first-woman elements I have since reread in newspapers from that decade. I remember the sinking feeling I had afterward. I knew I was not—and could not be—such a superwoman. Of course, there was no way to know whether this superwoman eventually succumbed to exhaustion, or how her marriage and children survived the stress of such a driven life. Nor did anyone know about any obstacles she had encountered during medical training or, later, in the operating room. It all seemed so simple. The “can do” American spirit, grafted onto a first female professional, had given birth to a somewhat unbelievable typecast character, the Superwoman, who, with her inexhaustible energy and talent, would be the dominant media image of the feminist in the 1980s. From helpless housewife to bionic woman in one decade.

  Consider the tale of Marion McAllister. In February 1973, the New York Times profiled McAllister, an African-American woman who had just entered a training program that promised to make her the first Transit Authority “motorwoman” in New York City’s subway system. Alongside her photograph, the story described her as married and the mother of a fifteen-year-old daughter. The fact that affirmative action had created these new training opportunities was, as usual, ignored. Instead, the article cast McAllister as a female Horatio Alger, a hardworking, ambitious young woman who had begun her career as a counter girl in a restaurant and was heading ever upward toward her dreams. McAllister publicly credited her husband, a subway yardmaster, with encouraging her to apply for the position. To the reporter, she confided her long-range ambition to become a dispatcher, a position in which she would have matched her husband’s salary.

  Unlike the typical “first woman” narrative, this story revealed how McAllister had encountered sexual discrimination in her earlier attempt to enter an all-male occupation. Three years before, McAllister had applied to take a civil service exam to become an assistant dispatcher. To hide the fact that she was a woman, she had signed up under the name M. McAllister. When she arrived for the exam, the Transit Authority refused to permit her to take the exam, simply because she was a woman. They even called the police. Since no rules—simply custom—prevented a woman from taking the exam, McAllister—shaken and stunned—took it and failed. Now, having passed the exam, she was finally on the fast track to becoming a “motorman,” a short step to her real goal as a dispatcher.

  Or so the reader assumed. Unlike most first women quoted in the press, McAllister openly admitted to some apprehension about entering the program. “Today in class,” she said, “I was just ‘one of the boys,’ but I think quite a few train conductors will have a feeling about being ‘copilot’ to a woman motorman.” Just three months later, in a tiny paragraph squeezed under “Metropolitan Briefs,” the Times reported that “citing ‘personal reasons,’ Marion McAllister resigned from the Transit Authority motorman training program that would have made her the city’s first subway ‘motorwoman.’” The newspaper now described her as the thirty-six-year-old mother of two children.22

  What had happened? Had her coworkers hassled or harassed her with racist or sexist comments? Had her home life become intolerable? Had she given birth to or adopted another child? Had she or one of her family members become ill? Readers had no way to know; most of those who read the initial article probably never even noticed the news of her resignation.

  First women learned that they should be good sports, attribute their success to family or to meritocracy, and always show more interest in becoming one of the boys than in advancing other women’s careers. When a woman became San Francisco’s first “lady bartender,” she joked about the ribbing she received from male customers, adding, “I’m just one of the fellows—36-24-36.” When voters in Hayward, California, elected a woman as mayor, she quickly pointed out that “it was not a women’s lib thing. I asked voters to judge me as a person, not as a woman.” When Bonnie Tiburzi became the first woman to pilot a commercial passenger plane, she attributed her success to her “strong father and two brothers.” “I guess,” she said, “I just considered myself one of the boys.” When Sally Ride, then a graduate student, was chosen to be one of the first American women astronauts, she emphatically stated at a press conference that it “was not a feminist breakthrough. . . . I don’t think I was hired because I’m a woman, but because I’m a scientist.”23

  First women rarely mentioned the women’s movement. When they did, they took special pains to distance themselves from the “women’s libbers” the media had so successfully created. One twenty-seven-year-old, who became the first woman to hold a high office in the FBI, broke with tradition when she announced that she intended to use Ms. rather than Miss or Mrs. When asked about women’s liberation, she said that she didn’t support that “part of the movement that says men are bad, who say that we should have a completely different society.” Equal pay for equal work. With these words, women could nod to feminism even as they distanced themselves from the media’s hardly recognizable version of the movement itself.24

  Men were the good guys in these narratives—not because of their willingness to embrace affirmative action and to search out female talent, but because they so warmly welcomed women into new occupations. The first woman story compulsively described male coworkers as generous and welcoming people. When San Francisco began assigning female officers to book prisoners at San Francisco City Prison, one of the female officers said, “When I first came here, I was a bit wary of how the men would treat me, but I’ve found them to be the nicest people I’ve ever worked with.” When Marjorie Downing became the first woman president of Sonoma State College in California, she swore she never had difficulty with men. “I’ve been dealing with largely male faculties all my life and I’ve never had any trouble. I don’t foresee any major problems, do you?” In marked contrast, the friends and families of these first women almost always mentioned how tough-minded they were and how capable they would be of handling whatever the “‘diehards’ will dish out”—an implicit acknowledgment of the reality of resistance and resentment that these women undoubtedly did encounter.25

  If affirmative action didn’t help, and men didn’t harm, good looks, of course, were irrelevant. In a New York Times feature about Stella Wilson, a woman who became the first female “salesman” for Xerox, the reporter wrote that “the blue-eyed, dark-haired former British model [had] marched into her boss’s office two years ago and announced she wanted to become a salesman.” Given a two-week trial, she proved herself and finally wound up as the top “salesman” at Xerox’s New York office. The former model assured her interviewer, “I don’t think my looks helped.” Women, she explained, were simply “more intuitive” and “could evaluate the situation better.” Quick to disagree that she was a pioneer libber, she repeated the required mantra, “I’m all for equal pay for equal work,” adding, of course, “but I think a lot of the aspects of women’s lib are rather bizarre. Like bra burning. I went to one women’s lib meeting and all the women looked rather strange. Besides, I have all the liberation I can handle. And I think that a woman can get almost any j
ob she wants—if she really wants it.” When asked if she ever encountered male resentment, she replied, “You get a few snide remarks,” but quickly added that “Men were charmed to be confronted by a woman sales representative.”

  Unmarried Stella Wilson had embraced the narcissism of the age with a vengeance. When she said that she had all the liberation she could handle, she meant that she already led a life wholly devoted to herself. She lived alone in an expensive rented apartment, shared a summer house in wealthy Southampton, and spent her leisure time sky diving, skiing, swimming, and painting portraits of old people. “They have so much character,” she said. Wilson hoped to marry eventually but thought that children would limit her freedom. “The world is such an incredibly exciting place. There is so much to do and so many other ways in which I can use my energies. Motherhood is like childhood revisited. I’ve already had one childhood, and I don’t want to go through another.” Many young feminists also harbored reservations and apprehensions about marriage and motherhood, but for quite a different reason: they feared the feminine mystique’s emphasis on exclusive domesticity. For Wilson, “liberation” meant the permission to consume whatever gave her greater “freedom.” Like other first women, she made no mention of trying to help other women or even of liking other women. Asked about supervising men and women, she ended the interview predictably: “Oh, I much prefer to work with men. I can’t stand the pettiness of women.”26

  Stella Wilson’s story is a good example of the way that feminism came to be associated in the public mind with career women, single or married, who chose self-advancement and self-indulgence over hearth and home. Her avoidance of marriage and motherhood had little in common with the kinds of criticism feminists had raised about unequal power relations in traditional marriages and families. But such distinctions easily blurred in the minds of people whose only exposure to the women’s movement was through media portrayals of the cool, manipulative, upwardly mobile woman, who chose career and consumption over family and children, which became the paradigmatic image of the feminist.