Day 61 - Reflections on Gloria Steinem

Image by cathredfern, via Flickr

The other day I read about a woman in El Cajon who was fired because she got pregnant but wasn't married. She worked at San Diego Christian College. She wasn't a teacher. She was a bookkeeper. The school claimed she had signed a contract that committed her not to engage in certain behaviors and her premarital pregnancy violated that contract. It wasn't pregnancy that was the unacceptable behavior; it was the behavior that causes pregnancy because it was outside of a marriage that was the unacceptable behavior.

But the school next did the unthinkable. They offered the job to the woman's boyfriend, the father of her pre-maritally conceived child. He turned it down.

How did they think she got pregnant? Of all the possibilities, immaculate conception does not seem to be one they would accept. But they were prepared to apply their standards selectively. It isn't that the behavior is unacceptable; it is getting caught that is unacceptable. And when it comes to pregnancy, only women get caught.

The story reminded me of a far too similar story at a company I worked for in Minnesota. This story contained no pregnancies (at least I never heard such details mentioned) but it did involve a man who was married carrying on with a woman who was not his wife. What the two of them did outside of working hours was not visible or known by any of those I knew. The man worked in the same division as I; the woman worked in the division that took orders. Both of them spent most of their work day on the phone as their jobs required. They both spent a lot of time on the phone with one another. But she was fired for spending excessive time on personal phone calls during work hours.

What did they think he was doing? Why was it acceptable for him to spend all those office hours on the phone with her, but not for her? I never learned what brought on the decision to fire her. I suppose it is possible that the man's wife found out and insisted she be fired. What isn't likely is that her bosses were unaware of whom she spoke to during all those hours since they walked around the halls holding hands when they met to have lunch together. Or maybe she spent time talking on the phone with others, too. But the story that made the rounds only mentioned phone calls between the two of them.

The first of these stories is from this week's news. The second is from 30 years ago. Both illustrate the issues that Gloria Steinem and the other founders of MS Magazine and the National Organization of Women began raising 40 years ago. In spite of the progress in the past 40 years, in spite of the change in attitudes of so many in our culture towards women choosing non-traditional careers, choosing to have children either through traditional means, through artificial insemination, or through adoption, without partners, we still have work to do. So long as any woman is punished for behavior that men are free to indulge in, we have work to do. So long as the distribution of power is not equal, we have work to do.

After the interviewer stopped reframing his questions about the pressure on women in western societies to Ms. Steinem earlier this week, he turned to other questions he thought he knew the answers to. He stated that he assumed Ms. Steinem had chosen not to marry, not to have children. Again, she surprised him. Because she grew up in the 1950s, she said she had always expected to marry and to have children. But she realized she could choose to wait. Her choice was to wait; not marrying and not having children were what happened with the passage of time. Last week I saw an interview with Dana Delaney, the 50-something star of the TV series Body of Proof. Her interviewer asked her if she had made the choice not to marry and not to have children and the contrast was quite remarkable. Yes, she said. She chose not to marry, not to have children. She chose to concentrate on her career. I chose to marry, but so long as I was married to someone I was concerned would not be a supportive father to a daughter, I chose not to have children. I chose not to have children because I thought was the only way I could remain married. When that marriage ended, not having children is what happened with the passage of time.  Twenty years have made a difference. But we still have work to do.