Betty Friedan, rest in peace. You helped spark a revolution of thought that galvanized a nation of women to reject the 1950s cookie-cutter lifestyle that revolved around being wife, mother, housekeeper and cook.
It’s hard to imagine women living a prefabricated life, tucked amid cul-de- sacs in mass-produced homes in leafy suburbs – the kind of lifestyle you railed against.
The woman who headed my family then never knew such a world.
While middle- and upper-middle-
class women, most of them white, related to “The Feminine Mystique” – Friedan’s 1963 critique of domesticity – my mom was struggling to save her marriage while working as a seamstress and raising two children.
No. 3 (me) came along later. Six years after I was born, Mom and Dad divorced, meaning she was not only mom, cook, housekeeper and breadwinner, she’d also take up the slack as dad.
This was the reality of single mothers in my ‘hood, who didn’t have the luxury of time to fret about a life interrupted. They gladly would have traded places with educated women of privilege who felt trapped in their suburban world.
Women of my generation only know what we’ve read about those changing times and what our moms have told us.
Back then, my mom was encouraged to go to “secretarial school” while women like Friedan graduated from elite colleges only to be ushered to a life serving her husband and children.
Which is worse: having little hope, or having hopes raised, then crushed?
Even though poor women of my mother’s generation could not relate to women like Friedan, they would benefit from the trickle-down effect the women’s movement had.
Taking college courses at night, my mom earned a bachelor’s degree in the early ’80s. Professors encouraged her to pursue a master’s degree.
Friedan, who died Saturday at age 85, helped empower women to fight for parity with men: equal jobs, equal pay and equal respect.
Those heading the movement did not clamor for poor women to have access to college grants, job training and day care. Though most single mothers living in poverty didn’t directly benefit from the women’s movement, many of their daughters have. That is, if they had a combination of strong mentors, luck and will.
The gains for women overall have been tremendous, and it happened because women like Friedan were stoking the flames of action, getting women organized and demanding change.
Still, we have a long way to go, baby.
There are eight female CEOs heading up Fortune 500 companies. Women own fewer than 30 percent of nonfarm businesses in the U.S., according to a January report by the U.S. Census Bureau. Yet, women-owned businesses are growing at twice the rate of the national average.
Women account for 20 percent of college presidents. Yet, at 56 percent of the college undergraduate population, women outnumber men in college.
Our societal views have changed too. Most men don’t expect to marry a woman who will stay home and play the role of housekeeper, mother and cook – not that there’s anything wrong with it if it’s the woman’s choice.
Over lunch last week, an acquaintance told me she and her husband didn’t plan to have children. Just like that. No whispering. No guilt.
That’s the gift Friedan gave women. Our worth isn’t determined by our marital status. Divorced women are no longer viewed as used goods. Single women who have passed age 35 are no longer spinsters. It’s freeing.
But there are some things that are hard to liberate ourselves of: Middle- class single women may be independent and career-minded, but they still have to do their own laundry.
Cindy Rodríguez’s column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays in Scene. Contact her at 303-820-1211 or crodriguez@denverpost.com.
