Continuing the Good Fight

During the 1970s, the fight for women's rights took its place alongside the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam protests, and the drive for political reform as one of the grand upheavals of our time. Women won a Supreme Court decision affirming their right to abortion, entered the work force in ever-increasing numbers, established day-care centers to facilitate raising children while pursuing careers, forayed into the political arena, and made headway in changing America's century-old perceptions of the woman's "proper role."

But now, even though feminists might justifiably feel that they have earned the right to sit back, relax and proudly survey their accomplishments of the past decade, women's rights seem threatened as never before. From coast to coast, pressure groups banding together under a "right-to-life" banner are successfully beginning to undermine state laws guaranteeing women easy access to abortion. Uniting with other conservative groups--ranging from TV-evangelist Rev. Jerry Falwell and his "Moral Majority" to Phyllis Schafly and her "STOP ERA" diehards, these "pro-family" forces have vowed to reverse the progressive trends of the '70s. They are plotting to prevent the ERA's enactment, repeal abortion laws, eliminate federal financing of day-care centers, and prevent revocation of the Internal Revenue Service's so-called "marriage tax" which penalizes two-income households.

Despite the conservative trends threatening women's rights, women have come far enough to shift the focus of the movement to problems facing particular groups of women. Two of those groups--office workers and Black women--have encountered difficulties that they are now striving to combat, encouraged by the victories of the women's rights crusade.

As the first women allowed in male-dominated work places, secretaries and other office-workers have long endured the indignity of being told exactly what women could and could not do. As the victims of America's 350-year plunge into slavery. Black women bear a tragic legacy unknown to any other member of their gender in this country.

While the Betty Freidans and Gloria Steinems stole the limelight and the headlines during the peak of the women's movement, these women watched from the sidelines, wondering if Women's Lib would ever have any relevance to them. But now they are speaking out. And they think what they have to say could greatly affect American society.

In the Office

Since joining "9 to 5," the national organization for secretaries and other women office workers, Maureen O'Donnell, a secretary at the Massachussetts College of Pharmacy, says she feels "autonomous" and has "a sense of power that with other women office workers I can effect change in the workplace."

Before her affiliation with the Boston chapter, O'Donnell "always had a sense I was doing something very valid, that I was making a contribution. But it was constantly undermined, worn away on a day-to-day basis. Every mistake that a secretary makes, such as a typo, is very obvious--and a boss can use that to put you in your place if he wants to."

Nancy Snyder, a staff organizer at 9 to 5, says working for "rights and respect for the women office workers of Boston" is her organization's chief objective. She points to the low self-esteem O'Donnell felt in her job as one of the primary obstacles facing secretaries in their drive for recognition. "Women office workers felt they weren't being treated with respect on the job and that they weren't valued at their true worth to a company. They tended to be underpaid--not given opportunities for promotion or advancement--and had a lack of knowledge about their legal rights," Snyder says.

So two years ago secretaries from Boston, Cleveland, and San Francisco formed 9 to 5. With 12 affiliates around the country, it boasts a national membership of 10,000, including the Boston chapter of 1000 secretaries and clerical workers.

Citing a typical example of the attitudes that 9 to 5 is striving to erase, Snyder says that businessmen and students often walk into offices with only the secretary present and ask her, "Isn't anyone here today?" "It's being treated like you don't have a brain and the work you do is idiot work--when it takes some skill to do it--when, in fact, office workers are the backbone of business in Boston and elsewhere."

9 to 5 rejects the notion that a secretary is merely an extension of her boss--"to cater to his personal whims and perform his personal errands." But for all its concern with office relationships, the organization's primary focus is economic--it advocates what Snyder terms a doctrine of "comparable worth".

A direct response to the ineffectiveness of the Equal Pay Act--which mandates that men and women holding the same job must draw the same salary--the "comparable worth" argument holds that all people should receive pay commensurate with their contribution to the company--regardless of their specific job duties. The Equal Pay Act "doesn't work because there are no men doing the same work women are," Snyder says. "We're put in low-paying, low-status jobs and stuck there."

For example, Snyder notes that the only substantial difference between a company's "junior" and "senior" claims adjuster, other than a $6000- to $10,000-per-year salary gap, may be the "coincidence" that all the junior claims adjusters are women.

Deploring the statistic that women still only make 59 cents for every dollar earned by men, Snyder cites 9 to 5's year-long (April 1979-April 1980) action against the First National Bank of Boston as exemplifying the group's hopes for what it can accomplish. The organization won a 10-per-cent pay increase for non-managerial employees, the implementation of job-posting for vacant positions, and the institution of promotion opportunities for women.

Because Boston office workers are the fifth-lowest paid in the country, Snyder says, 9 to 5 is now focusing its protest on the Boston Survey Group, an organization of more than 40 banks, insurance companies, hospitals, universities (including Harvard) and other businesses which meets quarterly to discuss employment practices. The group conducts biannual indepth clerical salary surveys, which, Snyder says, "set the going rate for salaries of secretaries and office workers. In effect, the Boston Survey Group sets an artificially low ceiling on what office workers are paid in Boston," Snyder says."

Turning to another aspect of a worker's compensation--her pension--Snyder says the fact that 75 per cent of the women workers in the United States retire without a pension must be rectified. She notes that as women turn 40, they are phased out or fired, leaving them without retirement benefits. And the typical pension system, basing benefits on at least ten years of continuous employment, works against a woman who may have to take five years off in the middle of her career to raise children. "It's like starting all over again," Snyder objects.

Despite the problems they still face, the women of 9 to 5 are pleased by their progress of the past two years and confidently face the challenges of the future. "Women as individuals can't really deal with systematic, across-the-board sex discrimination," Snyder says, "but there's a lot we can accomplish in groups."

Through the Media

In this day of instant media stars and "experts," 28-year-old Michele Wallace stands, by any account, as one of the biggest and brightest. Her book Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman has catapulted her to talk-show and lecture-circuit fame as the reigning authority on the plight of the Black woman, particularly her relationship with the Black man. Even the Washington Post said the "fearless presentation of her analysis quite takes the breath away. It is serious, well-written, effective in its demystification, valuable as a model of hardheaded but caring analysis, principled in its criticism, important."

Speaking at Tufts University recently, Wallace seemed astounded at the controversy her book had engendered and uncomfortable in the pundit role the popular press had placed her in. "The book's purpose was to initiate discussion and investigation more than it was to tell anyone what to do with their life," she says.

Wallace's basic proposition, the one that has drawn her headlines and hostility, inquiries and insults, is that "there is a profound distrust, if not hatred, between Black men and Black women. It has been nursed along largely by White racism but also by an almost deliberate ignorance on the part of Blacks about the sexual politics of their experience in this country."

Calling Black Macho "a feminist interpretation of our oppression as Black people," Wallace says it is possible "to look at everything in the world from the point of view of feminism. Sexism had as much to do with how we were cruelly mistreated as racism."

Is it racist or sexist, Wallace queries, that Black women were stereotyped as "fat nannies or wanton sluts?" Is it racist or sexist, she asks, that Black men were portrayed as "sex-crazed work machines or impotent old fools?"

Wallace posits that what allowed Blacks to become slaves in American while others did not is sexism. "The only way to make us slaves (chattel slaves, not the indentured servants the first White slaves in America were) was to demean us sexually," she says. "The only way they could justify selling Blacks was to say we were sexually unfit."

The Black woman's special burden dates from the days of slavery, Wallace says. "It's a fact that when a White man raped a Black woman and had children by her, it was supposed to mean that she had more upward social mobility. In fact, it seems the opposite--Black women were the victims in sexual encounters with White men. Even today, many Black women can't be attracted to White men because of it."

Because her husband was often sold to another plantation, the woman slave often had to raise her children while performing heavy work in the fields and other traditionally male tasks. But because the Black man "was not allowed to do any of the things it was said at the time men were supposed to do" and the Black woman merely filled a void, she "has been punished for doing what any other woman would have done in a crisis by being labeled a superwoman and a freak."

Meanwhile, America was trying to convince the Black man that the ultimate expression of his masculinity was the obtainment of a White woman, giving rise to the false perception that the preponderance of Black men lynched during the early part of this century died after falsely being accused of raping White woman. "A lot more Black men lost their jobs and land than penises and lives in lynching," Wallace states.

When the time came for the civil rights movement, Wallace says, the White media served to foster a myth of the Black protesters as "superstuds," manipulating them as much as any segregationist laws did. "Being taught that they were studs was just as oppressive as being told they could not take care of their families," she says. As a consequence, Black men "were doomed to protest in the way in which they had been programmed. The most immediately gratifying way young Black men of the '60s could assert their manhood was by having a White woman or oppressing Black women."

When Black women discuss social issues today, Wallace says, they most often address two concerns: the jealousy they draw from Black men because they count as minority "doubles" to satisfy affirmative action quotas and the perceived "shortage" of marriageable Black men resulting from the larger population of Black women. Wallace also sees one of the Black woman's foremost problems as other people's unwillingness to take her seriously.

If a Black female celebrity is pretty, or sexy, or married to a White man, she is called a talentless whore. If she's elegant or highbrow or intellectual, she's pronounced funny-looking, uptight, or in need of a good brutal fuck. If she happens to appeal to a White audience, she is despised. If she's independent, physical, or aggressive, she's called a dyke.

Phyllis Bursh '83 agrees with Wallace's contentions and her allegation that the above classifications apply to non-celebrity Black women also. "It's definitely true," Bursh says. "Males have said this to me--but it really shocked me to see it here." Tracy Ellis '82--feels that the fact that more Black women are being admitted to Harvard-Radcliffe than Black men, bucking a schoolwide trend, may contribute to hostility between Black men and Black women students. "It strikes a chord of inferiority (among the men)--it can become a defense mechanism to be resentful," she says.

Wallace says that the remedy to the resentment between Black men and women lies in the opening of a "dialogue"--one that won't be easy or pleasant. At Harvard, there are steps in that direction, including Freshman Black Table's symposium on Black male-female interactions held last year, and the Association of Black Radcliffe Women's plans for a similar forum this year. But the ultimate solution Michele Wallace would suggest to Black women at Harvard and everywhere is the same as the reason Black Macho was written--"Because my personal answer for Black women is to become feminist."