Friedan Fears Women’s Return to Old Roles

After achieving great gains in the workplace, women may soon face “attempts to send them home again,” feminist author Betty Friedan predicted Wednesday.

In an interview before addressing 450 members of the Orange County chapter of Women in Business at the Hyatt Regency Alicante in Garden Grove, Friedan blamed the Reagan Administration, which she said has not enforced equity laws, and a “turbulent” economy, which may force women out of jobs.

These two elements, she said, create the danger of a “new feminine mystique,” a concept that women are confined to traditional roles.

‘Could Be Worse Off Than Mothers’

While it is unlikely that older women will revert to their former passive roles, she said “the younger generation will be caught unaware. They could be worse off than their mothers.”

Examples can already be seen in movies such as “Fatal Attraction,” in magazine articles that encourage women to “go back and smile, simper, don’t make waves,” and in the so-called “glass ceiling” of real life--a invisible barrier above which professional women are said not to be able to rise.

The “glass ceiling” is a complex result of subtle sex discrimination and a male-defined work structure that has pushed a growing number of women out of management and into their own businesses, she said.

Women need to “press to break through the glass ceiling, get (equity) laws enforced and get child-care programs and parental leave.” In countries with nationally enforced parental leave programs, the ratio of women’s earning to men’s has risen dramatically, she said.

Friedan, 66, is credited with founding the women’s movement 25 years ago with the publication of “The Feminine Mystique.” The book, now taught as a classic in women’s studies programs, described for the first time the frustration of postwar women isolated and caring for children in the suburbs.

Friedan was the first president of the National Organization for Women and the original convener of the National Women’s Political Caucus.

Her latest book, “The Second Stage,” first published in 1982, lamented the limitations of the women’s movement and the polarization of men and women, and it questions whether women should have adopted men’s values. It calls for a greater appreciation of family in society and the workplace.

Some feminists believe that Friedan is out of tune with today’s pragmatic approaches to assimilating women into the workforce. Others have disputed her positions opposing surrogate mothers and complain that she has focused too heavily on the problems of upper middle-class women.

On Wednesday, Friedan, tailored and brusque, said she was disappointed with NOW for not promoting the “second stage,” for repeating the “old rhetoric” and for failing to bring in a new generation.

She has been teaching at USC and leading a think tank on new questions in equality.

Writing New Book on Aging

Friedan said she is finishing a book on “the mystique of aging,” tentatively titled “The Fountain of Age.”

“She is a figure of importance in all our lives,” said Elaine Weinberg, an Irvine lawyer. She said that as a result of reading “The Feminine Mystique,” she became a lawyer and her five children, inspired by her, subsequently became lawyers. Now, she said she sees a “regression of attitudes I recall from the ‘50s.”

Younger members of the audience said they were not sure who Friedan was and came out of curiosity. “Graduate school woke me up to the fact that it’s not as easy for women as I thought,” said Lynne Schatz, 24, a graduate student in the UCI fiction-writing program. “I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. I need to study what’s gone before me.”