Dame-ish Society

THE PHRASE "WOMEN'S GROUP" must mean more than the sum of its two words. Does every group of women, gathered for whatever purpose, fit into this category? Probably not. Otherwise feminists could not use the term so freely when they wanted to indicate a radical gathering of like-minded women to foster social change for the benefit of women.

For over 50 years, the Society for Harvard Dames--an organization for wives of graduate students--has rolled along on well-oiled wheels. Sometimes, along the way, women graduate students duly noted their objections to its status. Not that they wanted to join...they just wanted to keep the record straight. They had the same objection to Dames as a visiting professor here recently exhibited in a comment about Harvard Faculty Wives: "Whose faculty wife am I?" she wrote. "Am I my husband's faculty wife?"

But the Society keeps on going as before; those who object are those least likely to join in the first place. So Dames has just never gotten around to changing its bylaws.

Anyway, the pursuits of this group of women are certain to draw rage from militant feminists. Harvard Dames regularly sponsors cooperative dinners. They have a swap baby-sitting program. They organize bridge tournaments, fashion shows and evenings with members from foreign countries--complete with slides, posters, home-cooked dinners and chat. All the things a small-town women's club used to do. Minus perhaps the annual food-baskets for the needy.

A group of women openly and blatantly doing all these repressive anti-feminist things, and appearing to enjoy them, seems cut out for attack. But again, the existence of such a group in an urban center, in a University town, and now in the 70s, raises questions about other women's groups who would be doing the attacking.

THE FUNCTION of Harvard Dames is almost purely social. Even though they have some offerings in skill-teaching areas (crafts, cooking, book discussions), the big attendance is at the social functions. The bridge group is the all-time big attraction. Feminists whose goal is to be the equal of men in whatever they do should find nothing wrong with that. After all, as one Harvard student's wife said, "If you're working all day to support your family and you come home tired at night to a husband who's studying, you just want to get out of there and relax with the girls." Relaxing with "the group" is something women can do as well as men. And if feminists are right, that women should naturally prefer the company of other women, then this way is as good as any.

And even women undergraduates, whose roles are not yet strictly defined by their sex, should understand older women's desire for strictly social activity. One luxury of undergraduate life is walking out of your room into social life. Without moving far, without formalizing the pursuit, undergraduates can run head on into people who "share our interests"--even if that interest is only in complaining about the miserable food served in the Kirkland House dining room.

This automatic experience is what Dames and other social-oriented groups seeks to repeat for their members. It--and the other groups--try to separate the casual after-dinner bridge games and conversation from their framework and set them up as an end in themselves.

The distinguishing feature about the social activities of most of the world is that they arise as a function of some other activity. In high school we associate with people who have the same business as we do, that is, going to school. As undergraduates our friends are generally again engaged in some common business when we meet them--like sports, photography, or scholarship. In the non-academic world, friends or acquaintances are products of work or of community.

To make social relationships ends in themselves seems almost sure to destroy the purpose in friendships. Playing bridge and going to fashion shows are frivolous occupations. Not wrong and silly, but formless. There is an enormous difference between attending a fashion show (if you like them) with a friend to relax, and relaxing at a fashion show in order to make friends.

The formalized pursuit of recreation and friendship should not be condemned. Harvard is a notice-board city, where a mimeograph machine and a meeting are the two best avenues of communication. A woman who works to finance her husband's education is not likely to be doing fascinating comrade-producing work. A community that has a two-years-or-till-the-Ph.D.-is-done significance is not a true community at all. She, more than any, needs to reap the benefits of the meeting and the mimeo.

EVEN though the factors that necessitate the existence of a group of women like the Dames can be readily understood, the existence of a group of women only for the purpose of meeting other women socially certainly cannot be praised, even faintly.

The groups that call themselves "women's groups" in all the politically emotion-laden sense of the word are not exempt from this restriction. A woman's group has political meaning if its purpose is to act constructively to change the social structures that lead to women's isolation. If groups are formed with the purpose of rising above debilitating stereotypes about jobs, families and education, new avenues of communication between women can be established automatically.

If, on the other hand, the purpose of a woman's group is only "rapping," getting together with other women who "understand the problem" and talking about becoming auto mechanics, the group is less than dysfunctional, it is dishonest.

If women want to get together to talk to other women and to make friends as a release from boredom or pressure, then at least they should be honest. Hold a fashion show; call it a social event. Make some friends.