Friedan Weighs In on White House Scandal

WASHINGTON — True to form, Betty Friedan is fired up--incensed, outraged and overflowing with her point of view on the subject of alleged sexual misconduct in the highest office of the land.

This is the woman who, more than 30 years ago, helped found the National Organization for Women to enforce a new law against sexual discrimination in the workplace. This is the woman who helped give birth to modern feminism, who redefined how women were regarded by a nation and themselves.

And this is what that woman has to say about the swirl of charges of sexual impropriety on the part of President Clinton:

“So what? What’s the big deal?”

To Friedan, 77, author of the groundbreaking 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique,” the recent uproar over the president’s private life is a “diversionary” tactic overshadowing the real problems women face in the workplace today.

“It’s a complete misuse and misreading of feminism and the women’s movement to put people’s private sexual behavior as a priority,” Friedan said recently in announcing a new project she will lead on women and the workplace. “The women’s movement is about public policy that will affect the lives of women. This other stuff is nonsense, even if it’s true. It’s not important.”

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She said that even if “somebody in a high position makes an advance to a woman in not such a high position, if she says no and he walks away, what’s the big deal? Whose lives are affected?”

Friedan says the current climate of sexual scandal “trivializes” the women’s movement by portraying women as “helpless little creatures.”

To be sure, Friedan has long been focused on bread-and-butter issues for women, such as pay equity and flexible work hours, rather than abortion and sexual harassment. In a book published last year, “Beyond Gender: The New Politics of Work and Family,” she called for a restructuring of the workplace to deal with the new reality of American families.

Friedan, a Democrat, says unabashedly that more important than any allegations of a “wandering so-called presidential paw” is that “the public policies enacted on the watch of this president have been very good for women--we have family leave, we have many good appointments of women and we have a staunch defense of women’s right to choose.”

Similarly, she says, she would not have bounced from office former Sen. Robert Packwood (R-Ore.), for making crude sexual advances toward women in his office because “he had done very good things for women.”

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Friedan’s comments regarding Clinton echo the position of many of today’s women’s leaders, who have been largely silent on, or dismissive of, the charges against Clinton. Recently, Gloria Steinem wrote a column about Paula Jones’ sexual misconduct claims against Clinton, saying that, even if true, there was no harassment because Clinton took “no” for an answer.

Steinem and others have been criticized for failing to back Jones as they did Anita Hill when she made harassment allegations against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, a conservative.

“I’m surprised feminists have done a 180-degree turn on this issue,” said Linda Chavez, a former Reagan White House aide. She called “outrageous” Friedan’s assertion that a sexual relationship between Clinton and a former White House intern, if true, was his private business.

Friedan said she agreed with NOW’s recent decision not to file a brief in support of Jones’ legal appeal, saying she hoped the organization didn’t get caught up in scandal politics.

Friedan’s comments were part of her launch of the four-year project she will be directing for Cornell University’s Institute for Women and Work, subsidized by a $1-million Ford Foundation grant.

She said she hopes her efforts will lead to shorter, more flexible working hours for both men and women, union protection for temporary workers and a “values revolution” in which “QOL,” quality of life, becomes as important a national measurement as the GDP, or gross domestic product.