Transcripts For CSPAN3 Reel 20240704

Girls and women. Images and realities. The university of Michigan Television Center Presents a series of programs on the nature and potential of american women. Your host is lyn mattoon of the department of philosophy, university of michigan. Todays program, women law and politics, explores what the law says about women and what women are doing about the law. American women have taken an increasingly active role in public life during the last century. They worked hard to win the right to vote and finally succeeded. With the passing of the 19th amendment in 1920, many women have worked for candidates and political causes, and some have served in elected offices on a local, state and national levels. But one could hardly say that todays women dominate or even lead in any area of law or politics. Women are still a functional minority, though they actually outnumber the men in our population. Recently, a number of womens organizations have asked for change, calling attention to inequities based on sex throughout our society. Today, were going to discuss some of these issues concerning freedom for women in public and private life. Well also look at how women are working to resolve these issues, hopefully for the benefit of all the people in our country. Id like you to meet my guest. For women who share an interest in what american women are trying to do. Martha griffiths representative from state of michigan, the congress of the United States. Wanda reif, a recent graduate of the university of michigan law school, nancy hartsock, lecturer in the university of Michigan Department of political science. And marjorie lansing. Assistant professor in history at eastern michigan university. Mrs. Griffith, what do you think are the most important changes that have taken place in respect to the status of women since youve been in congress . Well, i think perhaps most important is the one that added sex to a bill of 1964. This bill was drafted really to help. Now, it wasnt clear. I. It would have meant that women would have been given rights that were not available to white women. Therefore, we added sex. It is my belief that the drafters had never had assumed that no women would have any rights as is so that i think both white and black women were helped by the bill. Hundreds of cases have been started and thousands of complaints have been made. We still have a long way to go. Margie, i understand youve done a study of womens Voting Rights voting patterns. Could you tell us a little bit about what you found in that study . How they vote . Theres real news in the voting patterns of american women. I would think from looking at 50 years of the female vote, that one could say that the womens vote may well be a time bomb in the 1970 election. Thats because of the dramatic changes in the lifestyles of women are reflected in the way they vote. To be specific. When women go out of the home and take a job, when women go to college, then they vote. When they stay in static or traditional environments, they dont vote. Now, that means that in the 1964 and the 1968 president ial elections, women for the first time in this country voted at the same levels as men in college. Women. In fact, women who have had even one year of college vote at the same levels as men and in the 64 and 68 president ial elections, they were more active than men in helping with the campaigns. So while theres really been a slow burn, i would say that predictably because of these major changes that, you know of, that women that the women vote will be heard from in the 1970s, as it has not been heard from at all in this country. Do you have any indications or is there any way of telling how women vote on the issues they tend to support and vote . As you know, statistics are not compiled by sex as one vote. One doesnt register as a man or a woman, but from 20 years of very good data from research organizations, we know that women perceive politics in a different way. Now they are less military minded than men. Theyre much better on civil rights issues. And this is reflected in campaigns in which candidates pick that up. For example, a president , the aspirant john f kennedy, realized early in his campaign that women were not supporting him and they do operate as a bloc. But its somewhat imperceptible because its not perceived by the voting booth as women. But theres a marked difference in the way they perceive this. So as you get an increasing number of women going to the polls, i would suggest that since they outnumber men and they also greatly affect the Electoral College because women are concentrated more in cities than on the farm and they affect the outcome of the president election. So theres a dramatic i really believe theres news in terms of women. The candidate did better give some thought. A candidate is better. Be sure he analyzes the data on women a little better and especially younger women, because women from the ages of 21 to 30 behaved very differently from their mothers or their grandmothers. As we well know. And this applies to the voting booth as well as to style of dress or jobs or any other phase of life. Could we talk a little bit about women in law, the does the profession encourage women . Is it because since many of these difficulties, women encourage encounter or legal difficulties, it would behoove women to have support within the profession at. Well, my experience is not been that the profession encourages women. Most men who are lawyers right now do not really believe that women, especially women in law school now are serious about practicing law and about becoming lawyers. I think that as more women go to law school and i think especially with my class, which was the first class to graduate, a substantial number of women, i think that as more women get out into the field and make themselves known and practice law, i think therell be a changing attitude. But i think right now the number of women who are practicing law is so small that most men dont really understand. Women in law accept them or encourage them. What about the Current Movement . Well, the women Liberation Movement. Do you see any parallels with that in the Civil Rights Movement . I think. Yes. You would might know about that. Well, there are a number of parallels. And, of course, thats really not surprising since both are movements of oppressed people. And i think that one another reason that the parallels arent surprising is that the Womens Movement is very much a descendent of the Civil Rights Movement in very well, very direct terms and very direct ways. So that the Womens Movement really began in the middle sixties and a large percentage of the people who made it up were people who had earlier been active in the Civil Rights Movement and who had begun to see that while they were working for the freedom of blacks. They, as women within the movement, really werent free. And they began to have a whole reevaluation of their role within the movement and within society in general. So i think that theres that theres the kind of direct influence that the Civil Rights Movement has. I think that in terms of a real parallels, there are number. One of them, i suppose, would be the fact that the Civil Rights Movement has now through the sixties become a black Liberation Movement and has moved from demanding equal access to public accommodations, as it did in the 1960s with the lunch counter activities moved from that to a much more thoroughgoing statement of what black people need and has has really expanded to a critique of the whole system of american democracy and the way that it operates. And i think that the Womens Movement in a much shorter period of time has done the same thing. And partly it was able to do that because the groundwork for a lot of the critiques had been made by the Civil Rights Movement. But i think that the Womens Movement is now sort of divided in the same way that is, there are those in the Womens Movement who would correspond very much to the naacp and the Civil Rights Movement. That is who who are proposing legal action as one way of bringing women into full participation in society. And i think that there are also women in the womens Liberation Movement who would be very much in agreement with the critique proposed by leaders of the black Liberation Movement that theyre very, very many parallels. Well, what about civil rights . Are there civil rights that women do not enjoy . I mean. Well, i think that there certainly are. I think that maybe i should should turn it back to martha griffiths. But i would like to add one footnote to, too, what she said about the 1964 civil rights act, because the sex provision was added really as a joke. It was put in by a Southern State to keep it to keep it from being painted. It was not added as a joke. The man who originally offered it thought that he was really going to hurt the bill. But i made the argument and i wasnt joking. I understood exactly what it would do. It was accepted not as a joke, but because the people who sat there agreed with my argument that you would have given black women rights, that white women never had. Now, i didnt make the further statement, which i think was quite true, that no one who brought that bill to the floor had ever considered giving anyone woman any rights. And the truth is that black and white women got those rights together. But no one who voted that day voted as a joke. Im sure that they didnt vote as a joke, but there was a great deal of levity in the debate and a great biography. And levity stopped when i started speaking. Well, i, i think i that debate it really didnt work out that way at all. But this has been one of the things that its a myth that has been put out through this whole country, that it was a joke. And every woman who says it again and again really aids the Supreme Court in making a very erroneous decision. Just document a little bit just what a civil rights status of women was before and after. Of course, women dont really have any rights. The 14th amendment has never been applied to give women equal rights, equal protection under the law. She doesnt have any rights. The only the right to vote and the right to hold public office. Those are the only two rights that the constitution of the United States guarantees her. And everything else. She is protected by the law. The middle ages. The common law of england. She had no rights. And this is the first right now one case has gotten to the Supreme Court under title seven. And on that case, the Supreme Court made a very poor decision. Could you elaborate about the case . Well, the case was a woman who applied to Martin Marietta and i believe she was in florida. She had five children. They told her that they would not take a woman who had children under the age of six. It was a 3 an hour job. But they admitted in court that why they of course, they wouldnt think of asking a man that question that the man of the hour did have children under six. Now, this was a clear case of discrimination. And the Supreme Court, in its decision, sent the decision back to the lower court for further information as to whether or not women with children under six were good employees. What kind of nonsense is that . What did that have to do with that woman . Whether other women were good employees with children under six. Furthermore than that. But the Supreme Court was really saying was that this woman who was the sole support of the children their father had abandoned them. It was perfectly all right for her to work at a dollar an hour. No one was going to ask any embarrassing questions about do you have children under six . But when you got to 3 an hour, thats different. Then we were. Save those jobs for men. This is brings up the whole area of work and equal pay and equal benefits and so on. Social security, for example, thats i think this is another one of your causes. Well, the Social Security law is perhaps the most inequitable law that is written by the federal government. You, a woman, pays in on exactly the same basis that a man paid but in jail. I went on the ways and means committee. If she were out of the labor force for a year and a half and died, even her own children couldnt draw on Social Security and her husband cant draw yet she has to be supplying more than half support. Before her husband can draw on her wages. Now, at the present time, if a man works two jobs and pays in Social Security and pays above the base and the base is going to be 10,500 next year, he can take a credit on his income tax. But if a husband and wife Work Together and they pay in on 19,000 and they make out a joint return, they can take no credit yet when they come to draw on a Social Security, the wife doesnt draw as his wife and pay him on her own. She takes her choice. She draws either on him or on her own. So that working husband and wife are really supporting those where the wife doesnt work. When should we say here that . I think the significance of these discriminations is that it makes a parallel. It documents your point because there has been a its not generally known by women. The fact that they have so much discrimination against them legally, that theyre not protected by the 14th amendment or the due process. And like the black movement, like the Civil Rights Movement, there has been a kind of awakening in which women are beginning to learn that the legal discrimination is with respect, to work, with respect. The whole court thing is really highly discriminatory. Isnt that right . Yes. If some poor woman wrote in and said, well, now in a Community Property state, surely there is no problem. As late as 1968, the Supreme Court refused a woman married more than 20 years and a county of the property that the husband had been managing all those years. So she has no rights at all. I think that younger women, people who are more close to my age, who are just now coming out of the job market, are being radically awakened to the great discrimination that goes on. I think especially the things that affect us now, such as equal pay for equal work and salary differential is based merely on facts as opposed to jobs, status or the type of job you do. And i think that a lot of younger women, as theyre finding out about this, ive noticed, are not accepting this as much as women have in the past. And this is also a reflection of the growing awareness thats occurred in the past ten years of the discriminate against women. And i suspect that as this becomes more generally known, youre not going to have the acceptance and the lack of awareness that you have in the past about the really basic inequities in our law as to the treatment of women in a variety of situations, especially related to job situation. What about these protective life . Dont they sometimes work . I again, i think the women say, well, of course they do. For instance, theres a weight lifting law, presumably in many states, but it only applies in certain areas. It never applies in a retail store. It never says that a 90 pounds nurse cant lift the 300 pounds man. This is different. Would you be just doing away with those parts . Of course. And title seven did that when you added sex to title seven . It did it. And i said it on the floor that day that it would do that. That is what it would do. I and i hope that it would do it. Of course, it should wipe them out. But unfortunately, states still have laws that are not very limited in that many of them have wipe them out. Many of them have said the federal lawsuit proceeds. But the point to make is that a family supported by a woman is discriminated against as opposed to a family supported by a man. But it is also should be pointed out that women who are so called housework, housework and who are not employed or who are not in poverty, are also discriminated against legally with respect to their whole life. They dont generally recognize the protective laws have been used deliberately to really to keep women discriminated against even more so, isnt that right . Absolutely. By members of congress. Its even used by the labor movement, unfortunately, to to keep the equal rights amendment, for example, to go in. And its a its a its a misunderstood ending of the intent of the bill is no in Beverly Hills that a mrs. Perez out in the state of arizona only recently brought a case to the Supreme Court where she had lost the right to drive her car because her husband had been involved in an accident and couldnt pay the judgment. He wasnt even in the car, but it happened. Now, when the Supreme Court considered it, they said that a discharge in bankruptcy, which this family had gone through, discharged that obligation, and therefore they could no longer take the license to drive away. But that wasnt even what the decision should have been based on what right. Did anybody have to take her drivers license away because her husband had had an accident . What about more different kinds of laws . For instance, Property Rights and welfare laws. And they i think i think, you know, the welfare laws discriminate against women in so far as i think you cannot have a woman living with a man receiving. You cant have a man give to a man living with a woman receiving welfare again. What you cant have originally you couldnt have a man in the house and able bodied man. Now that has been changed. You can have that, but. Well, there is really a discrimination against women because they were so discriminated against in the job market, really not of money. Theyre getting on welfare is much less than they could ever get if they werent being employed at a substantial job. As in the situation with women in florida who might have had to go on welfare when she had that many children for the support and she couldnt get a job. And you certainly, if you were working for a dollar an hour, you certainly couldnt provide for your children under six. Well, and so its really a terrific ive often considered what would happen if my if my husband died, i would barely be able to support us with our childcare and the. Well, of course, Social Security has another little horror in it. If you have less than three children, you address Social Security from your husband. And the moment you walked out the door to work, you would lose your share of it, which is absolutely nonsense. I it would be better if you kept your share and worked. Yeah, we say that. What arent . Theres two kinds of changes. One, a change to a more Technological Society is going to tend to to make the argument that protective law is somewhat ludicrous. And secondly, the fact that women are going into Higher Education in such numbers that there might be a real change. I think, in the next decade. I think thats what were describing as is the constant is whats happening now, but its not going to be the next ten year period. I think we should make a benchmark in terms of the times of in which we are discussing this, because im very optimistic about it very quickly. Im optimistic about it because of the kinds of changes that are occurring. Could be interesting would be to ask both of you, what chance do we have of having more women legislators and more women in office . Well, i think i should defer to you first on your question. Well, as you well know, women have been while their voting patterns have are marked. And since theyve gone out to vote in the same numbers as men, as you well know, theyve now gone into political office. Now, one reason is that they have not been in the professions in which people are recruited for that. You know, well, half of the members of congress are members of the law school. So perhaps perhaps one that will belong to an age group which will recruit women to go into politics. Certainly the success syndrome for women in this country is to get married, have a fun husband and happy children. And this doesnt combine to work with politics. But my study shows when women do go into politics, they go at the local level. So they can still have that fine husband and happy children, which are, you know, this is this this combination of roles is what i think may occur to a greater extent, because a bit more part time employment and more part Time Opportunities for women in politics, although just one man. What do you think, nancy . I think that we may find that the general public is a great deal more ready for it than the structure of the political parties. One of the issues that i think really shows this kind of thing is the abortion issue, where surveys show that the general public, by and large, is willing to accept it, but yet it really cant get through the legislature. And i think that the same kind of thing they will be operative. In the case of women in politics. That is that a majority of the population now says that they would they would be willing to consider a woman as president. But in fact, thats true. But i think that it would be a great deal longer before either of the major parties is willing to do that. And it might well be that if you took a three day sample of people who were officers of of those major parties, you would find a great difference. And it would be a very small minority of that group that would be willing to consider a woman as president , so that i think that you really do have a kind of opposition from Party Structure and one of the things that that i think some surveys have shown, mostly the ones that i know, you know, were done in europe. But i presume that they would come out fairly similar. They showed that when women were nominated for public office, they tended to be nominated for offices where in a district it was not a safe district. That is where they thought that they would lose or where they were really token candidates put up. So the party could say, we had so many women run and they just cant get elected, so why bother . Thats right. Yeah, i won first in the district in which i won myself and no other member of my party had ever won that district. And i am sure that the party never anticipated that i would win. Well, this is the story of the way minorities get the vote. This is the story of womens getting the vote in this country. They got it first in the west. This is the story of blacks being able to register and vote in the south the same the same pattern where they dont threaten the existing vested interests unless they are able to vote and participate more. You know, i think actually we are perhaps on the verge of a great change. I hesitate to say that i really think so, because women have i mean, in the 1940, did they go into the workforce and then retreat again . But since the the pressure is on, not to have children rather than to have children, perhaps that would be one significant most one of the most significant changes. You know, but it was certainly much less encouraged to have large family. And so its a socially commendable thing. And the whole business about abortion, which is also illegal matter and this also is a question i think women are the ones who are pushing abortion and theyre the ones who have actually gotten it as far as is. And men are the ones who are legislating on it, which i think is indicate some of the problems that we have. I cant believe a woman would. Yeah, its curious. Some of the some of the arguments you hear on that issue about the women who went to work in the forties very frequently, went to work in factories, did they not . I during that time and the fifties, you have educated more and more women. So that you have a Different Group of women who are seeking work today outside their homes. Would this that be true . Thats true of almost all women in america who graduated from high school by 1970 and a much higher proportion have gone on to college than any any previous decade. And 80 of all College Educated women work. The first thing i think every little girl should know today is that she is going to work outside her home, that the dream world is over. Yes, i think thats true. That children should be women. Children and boy, children should be brought up to find something that they want to do themselves. And theres no going to be no hanging on anyone else if, you know, being the source of your selfrespect and and hopefully as the laws become less prohibitive of women working, more women will be more encouraged to go out and work in the workforce and is education level increases. And more women will realize the advantages to having an education in terms of their ability to get a job in the workforce and the ability to have some say in what goes on in their lives and other people and to have real power. Yes, yes, yes. Go to the machine. Come home again. The interesting jobs are the most attractive ones. And the fact that theyre being open to women is probably going to be a very whether reluctantly or not, they are being open to women. I think a law, for instance, there, which normally has less than 2 women in the profession i think will be opening up in years in the years to come. And i think medicine, i think engineering, other professions, college, professorships, i think are going to be opening up more and more to women as women get a Higher Education and begin to realize how much theyre missing out on by accepting a role that was preordained for them much earlier in their life, where this has come to the end of our program. And so we run out of time. Thank you, martha. And wonderful nancy. And magic for being with us in our next program, we will look into the education of girls through college. I hope you will join us then. Thank you for being with us today. And. Good. This program was recorded in the ann Arbor Television studios of the university of michigan. 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