Word: womens
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Sometimes even the women who participated in the feminist revolution, who shaped their lives according to its ideals, shake their heads and wonder. Call them the "Yes, but . . . " generation. Yes, these women in their 30s and 40s are feminists, but things have not worked out as expected. It is hard for them not to feel resentful: toward society for not coming to the aid of women in their new roles, toward the movement for not anticipating the difficulties. "We were promised that we could do it all and we would be as successful as men," says Carolyn Lo Galbo Goodfriend...
Many mid-career women blame the movement for not knowing and for emphasizing the wrong issues. The ERA and lesbian rights, while noble causes, seemed to have garnered more attention than the pressing need for child care and more flexible work schedules. The bitterest complaints come from the growing ranks of women who have reached 40 and find themselves childless, having put their careers first. Is it fair that 90% of male executives 40 and under are fathers but only 35% of their female counterparts have children? "Our generation was the human sacrifice," says Elizabeth Mehren, 42, a feature writer...
Nonprofessional women, poor women, minority women feel their needs and values have been largely ignored by the organized women's movement, which grew out of white, middle-class women's discontent. Most women of color say their primary concerns -- access to education, health care and safe neighborhoods for their children -- were not priorities for the women's movement. As for getting out into the workplace, well, poor women have always been there, mopping floors, slinging hash, raising other people's children. "I never saw the feminist movement as liberating me from the home," says L. Clarissa Chandler, a black social...
...other hand, stay-at-home mothers, who still make up one-third of all U.S. women with children under 18, feel their status has been depreciated by feminism. Sighs Dabney McKenzie of Montgomery, who describes herself as both a "feminist" and a "typical Southern housewife": "It's almost as if there's a caste system of employment, and motherhood is down there at the bottom...
...might be tempting to conclude from the wide-ranging complaints from so many quarters that the women's movement has failed, that rather than improve the lot of women, it has helped make their lives more complex and difficult. But for all the discontent and frustration expressed by women today, a vast majority revels in the breakthroughs made during the past quarter-century: the explosion of roles for women, their far greater participation in the country's political and intellectual life, the many options that have come to replace their confinement to homemaking. Very few women would like to turn...