Eleanor Smeal - interview with the president of the Fund for the Feminist Majority - Interview

Progressive, The, Nov, 1995 by Barbara Koeppel

So the public doesn't see the conservatives - and I would call them reactionaries - as people trying to subsidize industries that hurt the nation's health. And by just talking about abortion and crime and welfare fraud, they keep business interests happy, because this shifts the spotlight off economic issues.

Why can't we frame the debate? We can't even get the press to talk to us. The economic issues - like how to have a clean environment, how to get people jobs in a post-industrial society, subjects that people would go for and that we're talking about - these aren't covered.

Q: And why is that?

Smeal: At the management level, the press has clear economic interests, and people often forget that. And politicians - from both parties - are supported by these interests. They frame the debate in the same way as the press, and no one talks about reducing military spending. They talk as if military contracts were the only sources of jobs, when they know full well that the human-service sector creates far more.

Q: Why is this happening now? Is it ideological or economic - or both?

Smeal: It's a combination. And this is what's so dangerous. The business interests - which form the financial base of the rightwing - are trying to piece together a coalition of interests, subtly appealing on the one hand to low-income southerners on the race issue, and on the other, to groups like the fundamentalists on the abortion and morals issues, and to workers on the affirmative-action issue. It's because big money sees these conservative concerns as dovetailing the deregulation issue.

Q: Let's talk about the women's movement. What do you think are its most important gains?

Smeal: First, there's the obvious - education. Before the late 1960s, women were just 3 percent of law students and 8 percent of medical students. Now, we're 40 percent of both. More girls are going to college. Before, there were quotas. For example, when I went to Duke, the university wouldn't accept more than 25 percent female students. Now, women are 52 percent of all undergrads.

Second, we have more choices about the occupations we enter. In the 1960s, women were in only 20 percent of all job categories, mostly in those predominantly filled by women, such as secretaries, teachers, and nurses. At the same time, we accounted for less than 1 percent of dentists, veterinarians, and engineers. Now, we account for 25 to 30 percent of all professions. On the surface, this may seem a minor improvement. But given where we were just three decades ago, it's more like an explosion.

What is most important is the change in consciousness, both for women and men - but mostly for women. In the 1960s, people didn't even think discrimination existed. So we had to first prove it did - for example, documenting that women were paid less for doing the same work. But even that wasn't enough, because we then had to show it was wrong - since the thinking in those days was that it was OK for men to earn more at the same job, because they had to support families. Now, 80 percent of the public think women should have comparable pay.