Feminism, contrary to what some might like and many might think, is not dead. Unfortunately, like many other political movements, in the 1970s the women's movement seem to be primarily defined in terms of jobs, careerism and institutions like the Women's Bank in New York and Ms. magazine.
Considering this new mentality, the most recent addition to Boston area feminist newspapers, Equal Times, will probably meet with considerable success. At any rate, it has all the markings of the socially palatable feminism getting passed around these days: slick-looking, personal but not solidarity-oriented writing, Equal Times is, ultimately, a tribute to this new brand of feminism.
This new weekly is not directed at "the women's revolution" or continuing political change. Its orientation is toward women hunting for equal-paying, high status jobs. As the editors state in the first regular issue, "If there's one thing that's important to most of us it's our jobs--or a job. This is the beginning of what we feel will be the heart of Equal Times--our Help Wanted Classifieds."
Don't get me wrong, I think jobs for women--just like jobs for Blacks, Puerto Ricans and other disinhereited Americans--are crucial. But the problem with Equal Times is that it only concerns itself with the economics of a woman satisfied with and looking to fit into the American status quo. It offers neither an alternative worldview nor information or examples of alternative lifestyles and that's where it fails.
Take the first issue (a preliminary trial issue appeared in September). The articles range from "Supermarket Management" ("You don't have to be a superwoman to be a supermarket manager, but it may help."), to "Wages for Housewives" which, in a comment one would only expect to find in Readers' Digest or Life Magazine, exclaims incredulously, "Some folks are beginning to suggest that women who stay at home and clean and cook and shop...should be considered 'working people'."
When the author of the latter article states that "What we really need is for women to have a choice. She doesn't necessarily have to go out into the marketplace in order to be recognized as a person of worth in her own right," not only does she have problems with grammar but she somehow forgets that, believe it or not, most women in this country who "get out into the market place" don't have much choice: they do it because their children are hungry and need clothes or because womeone in the family should have had an operation months ago but the money wasn't there to pay for it. They do it out of necessity, not want, and they do it on top of another, full-time job at home. The author just may have hit on something when she queries whether working for love, not money, is really enough. The question is whatever took her so long?
Equal Times further betrays its upper middle class orientation and its lack of interest in the problems of working women when it runs articles extolling the virtues of volunteerism--It can benefit You. Although the author's explanation of this viewpoint is offensive, after reading a few pages of Equal Times it is hardly unexpected: "Our society would probably grind to a halt if women demanded minimum wage for everything they now volunteer for. Maybe you don't think that would be such a horrible occurrence. But while you and I argue the matter, people who have been elected to public office are making decisions that have a profound effect on our lives and we don't even know who they are or how they think."
The article does encourage assertiveness and discourages women volunteers from falling into stereotypic menial labor roles, but you can almost here the author sitting around at a policy-making session saying, "Come on now girls, all these small jobs have to be done and like it or not, we can do it best so let's put our whole effort into it and do a good job."
The really offensive aspect of this newspaper is not its silly acceptance of a status quo that has never taken women seriously or of the conventional belief that women have a world of possibilities open to them; what any socially-minded or conscious reader is bound to find most abrasive is Equal Time's blatant appeal to cold self-interest.
Look what activity in political campaigns can do for you, one article tells us. You can be rich and famous (and without losing your femininity), another counsels. Considering this emphasis on individual benefit, it's entirely appropriate that the listing of events speaches and general information is call the "connections" page.
However, in all fairness to this most recent attempt at a newspaper for women, Equal Times does have its good points. Essentially, it fills a gap and picks up the pieces left by the mainstream newspapers. While its news coverage is scanty in the first regular issue it does make an attempt to play up some items concerning women that normally receive scant attention elsewhere. But again, Equal Times fails its readers when it becomes too enamored with news of upper middle class women or women in upper middle class status jobs.
Sojurner, a Cambridge-based feminist newspaper, is more effective--in the year it's been around, this monthly has made a more earnest attempt to reach a large base of women across the economic and racial spectrum. However, in its concentration on women Sojourner often ignores the problems facing all outsiders in white, male America and fails to see feminism as one part of a more general movement for change.
Sister Courage, another monthly that is oriented toward women, is, politically speaking, probably the best Boston-area paper of the three mentioned here. As it enters its second year of publication, Sister Courage, like Equal Times and Sojourner, still isn't a paradigm of skillful, articulate writing, but it concentrates on women's continuing struggle for equality, rather than on helping its readers find comfortable jobs. It, too, however, tends to see change for women as originating only through the efforts of women's movement rather than through a more general effort at reconstructing society.
Truth is, though, if you are really interesting in finding a women's newspaper that has some conception of what feminism is really all about, these Cambridge and Boston papers aren't the best place to look. Majority Report, a biweekly newspaper published in New York City, doesn't have the listings of events around here, but it talks about women, minorities, politics (not just Democratic and Republican) and workers and makes an effort to counteract the distortions in mainstream media coverage of these topics that we are bombarded with incessantly.
And that's what differentiates Majority Report from the three Boston newspapers: it questions and criticizes the status quo--class society, if you will-- in a general sense while still focusing on the concerns of women.
Majority Report has been around since 1971, which may account for the greater degree of sophistication in its writing and approach, but what keeps that paper several steps above the others is an understanding that the position and problems confronting women are inextricably tied to the organization of and power distribution in society.
So it does no good to marvel at the income levels of a group of women here or there, or at the new job advancement opportunities for women. These things are pleasing and somewhat encouraging if you happen to be one of the select few to whom they apply. But they do not fundamentally change the relationship of women, or any other group, to society.
No career-conscious, job-oriented newspaper, no women's bank and no amount of women business executives or corporate lawyers will make a difference because, really, they are all part and parcel of a system that historically has flourished by keeping someone--if not women, then another group--down.
In this sense, of course, Equal Times seems to fit more neatly into the confines of the so-called New Feminism than any other women's newspaper around Boston and Cambridge. My recommendation is to steer clear of it despite its appealing look and to stick to the old-style, combative feminism that doesn't fit into the U.S. status quo and values. And my guess is that the editors of Equal Times might do well by themselves and their paper to take a few mixed-income and mixed-race CR sessions. For the new breed of feminist among us CR translates as consciousness raising and in case you're unfamiliar with it, it's spelled C-o-n-s-c-i-e.....
