Don’t Give Up Fight for Equal Pay, Child Care, Friedan Urges Women

Feminist leader Betty Friedan urged women Friday night not to give up the fight to achieve equal pay for comparable work and to bring to the forefront the need for better child care programs.

Friedan, 66, founder and first president of the National Organization for Women was in Orange County to address a full house of 400 attending the banquet finale to Women’s Week 1988 at Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana.

Her book “The Feminine Mystique” became the manifesto of contemporary feminism in this country when it was published in 1963. “Mystique” articulated for the first time the frustrations of the suburban American housewife.

In her latest book, “The Second Stage,” published in 1982, Friedan urges “daughters” of the movement to rise above the polarization between the sexes.

The first criterion for the second stage is “equal pay for work of comparable value,” Friedan said, stressing that women must go beyond the male model to become equal.

“The nurse who taught three generations of surgical residents still cannot expect a 10th of a doctor’s pay or his voice in the hospital,” she said.

The second criterion, she said, is to work for adequate child care provisions.

The United States is “the only industrial nation outside of South Africa without a national policy of child care provisions.” A woman “can still be fired in many states if she takes 12 to 14 weeks to bond with her child” after giving birth, she said.

“Because it is difficult for women to keep on in their line of progression in their jobs, there are real problems, and they are not just women’s problems.”

Friedan currently is a teaching fellow at the University of Southern California.

A number of Orange County women were honored at the banquet, the culmination of a weeklong program of seminars and workshops on women’s issues sponsored by the college. Among those cited for their contributions were state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), Mary McAnena, Dee Aker, Son Kim Vo and Karen Hawkins.