Beyond Gender - Betty Friedan - Part 1

Beyond Gender - Betty Friedan

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 84

  March 25, 2017 

Book 27 - Beyond Gender - The New Politics of Work & Family
by Betty Friedan (1997)
 Part 1 - pages 1-48
Reading Time - 1 hour

Yup, this is the Betty Friedan who wrote The Feminine Mystique in the 1960s. Her book helped ignite the feminist movement and gave voice to frustrated housewives everywhere (or at least in the USA). Thirty years later, she wrote another book based on her experiences.

Friedan suggests that the issue nowadays is not so much gender equality (although that is still an issue) but income inequality, or economics. She says we need a need paradigm shift, one that takes us beyond feminism or identity politics (women/men, black/white, gay/straight). We need a new way of looking at the system.

She suggests that while many women have entered the workforce, a lot of them are stuck in low-paying service jobs. Similar to some of the other feminist books I've read, Friedan notes that there are no policies on how women can combine a career and child-bearing. Australia, for example, has excellent policies that support women in the workforce.

On the other hand, Friedan notes that the rage of some feminists (down with men) has been replaced by the rage of white middle-aged men who feel that they have been down-sized in large part because women have entered the workforce. In reality, the issue, according to Friedan is a job crisis due to down-sizing and profit-chasing by corporations. Fewer jobs but employees working longer hours. She specifically notes the 1994 elections where the unhappy middle class made their feelings known. Apparently their targets of rage were immigrants, welfare moms and gays. Kind of weird when you consider the US presidential campaign of 2016. Same old, same old?

Friedan says that we need to look at different options: flexible work weeks, job sharing, benefits/hour (not per person), shorter work week, tax deductions for volunteering. All of these are in place somewhere in the world and work well. But there seems to be a corporate resistance in the US to anything that might reduce profits. Better to have employees work 80 hour work weeks apparently.

It is interesting to read one of the big feminist writers and see her (23 years ago) putting her finger on the issue that is still the issue. The growing income gap between the rich and the poor, with a shrinking middle class.