5. Discussion

Lucky 01' Sundowners

1. Which arguments for and against separate cities does Peter Black mention in his article?

2. Point out where Peter Black leaves the position of objective reporting and expresses his personal view.

3. What do you think about the concept of building separate cities for the elderly?

6. Dialogue Practice

Mildred Toldrin, who works for Sun City Information Agency, frequently has to answer phone calls from people who have heard of Sun City and are looking for a place to settle down when they have retired.

Simulate such a phone call in which Brian Johnson, a Chicago businessman, aged 60, and his wife Jill, aged 55, are asking for information. They have made some notes beforehand in order not to forget the following important points:

• climate

• houses for sale

• sites available for a fairly luxurious bungalow plus swimming pool

• medical and therapeutical care

• opportunities to take part in social life

• Brian's hobbies: golf, woodwork and metalwork, gardening

• Jill's hobbies: swimming, tennis, pottery

• school for granddaughter Julia (her parents are planning to go to East Asia on business for half a year and have asked the grandparents to look after Julia during that time).

7. Comprehension

Where There's Smoke

Which of the following statements are true and which are false? Correct the false ones.

1. Employees at the Department of Justice hardly do any work at all.

2. Fifty percent of all restrooms and corridors at the Department of Transportation are free from smoke.

3. Employees at the State Department are not allowed to smoke at work.

4. New restrictive regulations by the General Service Administration drastically reduce smoking in federal buildings.

5. Not even during prohibition did regulations try to interfere so much with people's personal habits.

6. The campaign against smoking was started in the 1970s by Betty Carnes, an ornithologist, who later died of lung cancer.

7. Betty Carnes was one of the first to successfully persuade the airlines to restrict smoking to special sections of the aircraft.

8. The present crusade, led by the U.S. Surgeon General, places special emphasis on the effect that smoking has on non-smokers.

9. According to the Koop report, employees can be sued if they do not follow the regulations.

10. Only 13 percent of all Americans who smoke do not think of giving it up.

8. Discussion

• The American campaign against smoking makes smokers feel like a "persecuted minority." Compare the use of the term "minority" here with that of the other texts of this unit.

• Do you think smoking should be restricted in your country?

9. Interpreting a Cartoon

Interpret the following cartoon. ^_

THANKYOU FOR NOT SMOKING

"This weekend, I thoughtI'd pop over to Vegas and grab a smoke.

8 The Changing Bole of Women

^{PART A Background Information}

STATISTICS REVEAL Comparable statistics over the past years indicate important changes that have CHANGES FOR occurred in the employment rates, education levels, and family roles and

WOMEN expectations of American women.

• More women are entering the labor force. In 1940 only 27.4 percent of all American women worked outside the home. By 1970 the figure had risen to 42.6 and by 1986, 54.7 percent. Projections indicate that by 1990 women will constitute more than half of the American labor force.

• More women have been attaining higher education levels. In 1960, of all persons aged 25 and older who had been in college four or more years, 39 percent were women. By 1975, the proportion had grown to 41 percent, and it reached 45 percent by 1980.

• Women are having fewer children. In the 1950s, the average mother had 3 or 4 children. In the 1980s, the average mother has 1 or 2 children.

• More young women are single. In 1970, the proportion of women from 25 to 29 who had never married was 10.5 percent. By 1985, the proportion of single (never-married) women between those ages was 26.4 percent.

• Women are marrying at a later age. The median age of females at first marriage rose from 20.6 in 1970 to 22.5 in 1983.

Opinion polls reveal that women's attitudes toward family roles and child rearing are changing:

• The majority of women no longer favor traditional marriages. In 1974, 49 percent of American women said they favored traditional marriages in which the husband is the money-earner and the wife the homemaker and child rearer; however, in 1985, 57 percent of women were convinced that a better marriage is one in which the husband and wife share responsibilities of careers, housekeeping, and child rearing.

• Couples want to have fewer children. In 1941, when men and women were asked what they considered the ideal number of children to have in a family, the median ideal number was 3.7. That number dropped to 2.8 in 1986.

These statistics on demographics and attitudes indicate that the role of women in American society is changing. Marriage and motherhood are no

128 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP

SEX

DISCRIMINATION

THE MODERN

FEMINIST

MOVEMENT

LEGISLATION FOR EQUALITY

PROFESSIONAL

WOMEN

longer perceived as a woman's only areas of responsibility. Women now compete with men for professional training, employment, leadership positions, and political power.

For many years, discriminatory laws and practices barred women from entering male-dominated spheres. Feminists have drawn attention to inequal­ities between the sexes and have succeeded in breaking down many of the barriers that kept women from professional and economic advancement.

Although inequalities still exist, American women have many more rights than they did a hundred years ago. During the nineteenth century, women did not have many of the legal rights they take for granted today. They were not allowed to vote, buy liquor, hold certain jobs, file lawsuits on their own behalf, or retain custody of their children after a divorce. These laws were seen as necessary on the basis of "romantic paternalism," a concept held by men in power that it was their duty to protect women. This attitude persisted despite the women suffragists' campaign for the vote and other freedoms. Although the women's suffrage movement began in the 1830s, it was not until 1920 that a constitutional amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote.

In more recent decades, women have secured many rights as a result of the modern feminist movement, which gained momentum in the 1960s. When Betty Friedan (born 1921) wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963, declaring that motherhood and housekeeping do not provide the fulfillment women want, she articulated a discontent that many women of her generation were feeling. With this book, Friedan became the standard bearer of the modern feminist movement. In 1966 she founded the National Organization for Women (NOW). Feminists demanded greater access to jobs and political power, equal pay for equal work, and an end to the condescending way in which men often treated women.

The women's movement has helped bring about legislation that ensures greater equality of the sexes. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 guarantees that men and women filling the same jobs will receive the same pay. Job discrimination on the basis of sex was prohibited by the Equal Rights Act of 1964. In 1972, Congress barred gender-based discrimination in all federally supported edu­cation programs. The same Congress passed a law making it easier for women to qualify for loans and mortgages. A 1978 amendment to the Civil Rights Act protects pregnant women from job discrimination.

Legislation prohibiting sex discrimination has benefited many women, especially those in professional or technical fields. Women have entered many male-dominated professions. In 1980 over 8 percent of the graduates of military academies for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard were women. More and more women are training to become accountants, doctors, or lawyers and are filling other high-salaried positions. In 1960 women made up only 16.4 percent of the nation's accountants, 3.3 percent of the lawyers and judges, and 6.8 percent of the doctors. By 1980 the proportion of women in these high-paid professions had risen considerably: 36.2 percent of the accountants, 12.8 per­cent of the lawyers and judges, and 13.4 percent of the physicians were

women.

Women are securing more leadership positions in business and industry.

THE CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN 129

Women in Institutional Leadership Positions,1970 and 1980

	TOTAL NUMBER		NUMBER		PERCENTAGE
	OF POSITIONS3		OF WOMEN		OF WOMEN
	1970	1980	1970	1980	1970	1980
Industry	1,543	1,499	3	36	0.2	2.4
Banking	1,189	1,095	2	25	0.2	2.3
Utilities	476	668	0	29	0	4.3
Insurance	362	783	3	9	0.8	1.1
Law	1,076	1,259	12	23	1.1	1.8
Investments	417	550	3	5	0.7	0.9
Mass media	213	235	9	16	4.2	6.8
Foundations	121	402	9	59	7.4	14.7
Universities	656	481	11	51	2.1	10.6
Civic and Cultural	438	536	70	45	16.0	9.0
Government	227	258	10	20	2.5	7.7
Military	24	17	0	0	0	0
Total	6,733	7,783	132	318	1.9	4.1

WOMEN IN POLITICS

^a Presidents, all corporate directors including officer-directors; senior partners in law and investment firms; governing trustees of foundations, universities, and civic and cultural organizations; secretaries, undersecretaries and assistant secretaries of federal executive branch, senior White House advisors, congressional leaders, and Supreme Court justices; four-star generals and admirals on active duty.

Although woman's share of political representation is still small, the election or appointment of a woman to political office is becoming more common. Sandra Day O'Connor (born 1930) became the first female Supreme Court justice in 1981, and in 1984, Geraldine Ferraro (born 1935) made history when she ran on the Democratic ticket as the vice-presidential candidate.

25 т

Recent Increases in Women Elected Officials: Congress and State Legislatures

1971 1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983

Ш Women in the U.S. Congress

В Percentage of women state legislators

130 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP

PROGRESS FOR WOMEN

PERSISTENT DISPARITIES

EARNINGS GAP

In addition to these professional and political gains, the heightened aware­ness of women's rights has brought progress in other areas. Corporations have redressed past sex discrimination by providing compensatory back pay to female employees. Federal agencies and other institutions have officially adopted non-sexist language. For example, the word "chairperson" replaces "chairman," and "mail carrier" is used instead of "mailman." In the area of education and scholarship, women's history has emerged as a new field of study. Within this discipline, scholars are reexamining the events of America's political and social history from a feminist perspective.

Despite the progress the women's movement has achieved in many areas, many goals have not been reached, and new conflicts have surfaced. Dis­crimination and inequalities still persist. Even after the adoption of legislation such as the Equal Pay Act, the difference in earnings between men and women has not changed in more than forty years. On average, working women still earn only two thirds of the average male salary.

Median Annual Earnings	of Full-Time Women Workers as
Percentage	of Men's Earnings
(selected	years 1955-1985)
	Annual
1955	63.9
1960	60.8
1965	60.0
1970	59.4
1975	58.8
1976	60.2
1977	58.9
1978	59.7
1979	60.0
1980	60.2
1981	59.2
1982	61.7
1983	63.6
1984	63.7
1985	64.7

EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

Even when men and women are doing similar work, the gap in earnings is wide. For example, although 81 percent of all elementary school teachers are women, the median teacher's salary is higher for males than for females. On average, female college graduates continue to earn less than male high school dropouts. While professional women have benefited from the new legislation regarding hiring and promotion practices, they represent a minority: most women are still paid less for equal work.

The women's movement suffered a major setback when the states failed to ratify a constitutional amendment to guarantee equal rights to all, regardless of sex. Feminists argued that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) would simplify the legal enforcement of equal rights and would provide more uniform legal protection for women. This amendment, however, encountered strong opposi­tion from both men and women who vehemently disagreed with the goals and

THE CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN 131

ANTI-FEMINISTS

PREDICAMENT OF WORKING WOMEN

assumptions of the women's movement. Well-known anti-feminists Phyllis Schlafly (born 1924) and Midge Decter (born 1927) argued that the ERA would disrupt family life, encourage homosexual marriages, and take away women's exemption from the draft. These anti-feminists defended traditional role divisions and asserted that taking care of children, husband, and house­hold was rewarding. According to anti-feminists, the insistence on fulfillment through work and on equality with men in all spheres has placed a strain on the family. Furthermore, it has left women with the double burden of family and career.

Some feminists, including Betty Friedan, have acknowledged the predica­ment of working women. It is difficult for a professional woman to become highly successful if she must divide her energies between duties at home and those at work. Women who choose a successful career instead of a family sometimes wish they could have both. Many women who do manage both careers and families complain they are overworked. In some families, working husbands and wives share the housekeeping and child-rearing duties. But statistics continue to show that most working women still do a greater share of the housework than their husbands.

Arranging and affording child care is another burden on working parents. Day care centers for pre-school-age children are often expensive. Some cor­porations are responding to women's needs by adapting the workplace to meet the demands of working mothers. Some factories and companies now run child-care nurseries on their premises. In addition, many companies and federal agencies have established a new system of working hours called "flex time," which allows workers to arrange starting, quitting, and lunch hours according to individual and family needs. Many people feel that solutions such as these need to be more broadly instituted to relieve pressure on women and families.

132

_{PART в Texts}

SECOND THOUGHTS ON HAVING IT ALL

by TONY SCHWARTZ

WICE during the past month, colleagues approached 38-year-old Rebecca Murray and volunteered identical assessments of her life: "You are the woman who has everything," they told her. The notion staggered Rebecca. "I have never, ever thought of myself that way," she says. But it's not hard to see what her co-workers had in mind.

For the past eighteen years, Rebecca has been married to the same man -Robert, now 42 - and their marriage remains strong. Their five-year-old daughter is pretty and bright. Rebecca works as a records manager for a large financial institution and earns $40,000 a year - with plenty of potential to move up. Robert makes $43,000 a year as the business manager for a publishing house. Freelance writing brings in another $5,000 a year. He is a novelist, and although his advances have been small so far, that could change with a single success. The Murrays' combined income of nearly $90,000 is more than four times the salary earned last year by Robert's father, a construction supervisor in Florida, and a lot of money by nearly any standard. What's more, they pay just $450 a month for a rent-stabilized apartment on a pretty street on the Upper West Side. Among other things, they can afford the $8,500 a year it costs to send their daughter to a private day-care center where the ratio of children to teachers is four to one.

But none of this compensates for what Rebecca feels is missing in her life. "Time," she says. "I don't have enough time for my child. I don't have enough time for myself, and I never have enough time for my husband. He gets whatever I have left at the end of each day, and usually that's nothing. I don't want to leave my child in the mornings - and she doesn't want me to go. I'm fine once I get to work, but once the day starts winding down, I get very anxious to rush to my kid. I can't wait, I want to be there in a second, and sometimes the subway is interminable. At the same time, I'm aware that I'm looking at an evening that's not going to be relaxing. Realistically, I'm facing three more hours of work — the child care — and I've already put in a full day at the office."

Rebecca reached her breaking point on a subway during rush hour last summer. "I was standing on this miserable, crowded, hot train," she remembers, "coming from a job that doesn't give me all that much pleasure, to pick up my child, who'd been away from me the whole day, to go home to an apartment so small that my husband and I sleep in the living room on a futon mattress." That night, Rebecca made a decision. "There's such a thing as quality of life," she told her husband, "and this isn't it." . ..

THE CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN 133

©The Choices ThatBrought Me Here

by Amanda Spake

SPECIAL ISSUE: SMART MONEY

_M

OPRAH, INC.

Mogul with A Mission

A MONEY TO SECUR YOUR FU

How Much Do You Make Other Nosy

PLUS Our Guide

Recently, I went to an all-female dinner party in Washington on the occasion of a visit to town by Frances Farley, a woman with the important but unenviable task of running for Congress in the State of Utah. As Frances impressed the crowd with her tales of fighting a pro-ERA campaign in a Mormon state, my ear tuned in to a conversation about a different sort of modern female dilemma.

"But do you really want to get married?" one woman asked a friend of mine. "I wouldn't mind," my friend responded sarcastically. "But I'm about to give up. I don't think there's a man left out there for me." This woman is a successful television reporter

for a primetime news show. She is attractive, well educated, and highly paid, respected in her field, 35 years old, and she has that same bitter tinge in her voice I've heard so often among a certain group of women. My group, to be specific. ...

They are successful, achievement-oriented women, bom in the 1940s and early 1950s. Most of us came to adulthood in the 1960s and discovered the key to a "meaningful life" was not necessarily marriage. As one woman put it, "When I was growing up, having a husband and family was absolutely irrefutable, assumed for all women. The 'extra' that we would try for, was to have a career."

We baby boomers were unique in that we were the first generation of American women to accept, on a mass scale, the awful truth that the traditional female roles we had been raised to emulate, wife and mother, would not be enough to sustain our lives - emotionally or economically. So we have developed a new set of nontraditional female values — ambition, competitiveness, assertiveness, and the will to win — values that fit neatly into our struggle for "meaningful work". I call it feminist determinism. . . .

As it turns out, women's new marketplace values are antithetical to building the solid, interpersonal relationships between women and men we took for granted. Men, society, and often women themselves, still expect women to embody primarily "feminine" values - cooperation, nurturance, and impulse to yield. These are the same values traditionally used by women to attract, create, and sustain long-term relationships with men our own age. Men, that is, whose own interpersonal values — and their resulting expectations about women - changed very little. ...

Mormon state: here: Utah, where the Mormon Church is predominant. It was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 and called itself the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day

Saints."

134 AMERICA IN CLOSE-UP

°How to have a successful Christian Family

by Jerry Falwell

The greatest heritage Christian parents leave their children is the love and training they receive in a Christian home.

Apart from our devotion to Christ, my wife, Macel, and I love and live for our children. Everything we talk about and plan around is for their benefit and welfare. The longer we live, the more we want to invest in them. They mean everything to us. Our first obligation is to rear godly children, for it is God who gave them to us. The greatest desire of our hearts for our children is that they each find God's will and live in it all their days.

Families in search of religious freedom, determined to work and enjoy the fruits of their labor, tamed this wild continent and built the highest living standard in the world. Families educating their children in moral principles have carried on the traditions of this free republic. Historically the greatness of America can be measured in the greatness of her families.

But in the past 20 years a tremendous change has taken place. There has been and continues to be a vicious assault upon the American family. More tele­vision programs depict homes of divorced or single parents than depict the traditional family. Nearly every major family-theme TV program openly justifies div­orce, homosexuality, and adultery. Increased divorce has broken family loyalty, unity, and communications, with increased insecurity in children who are the victims. Many such children harden themselves to the possibility of real love, for fear they will be hurt again. ...

A commentator from a major network once asked me, "What right do you Baptists have to promote your ideas about the family being the acceptable style for all of humanity?" I replied that it was not Baptists who started the family; it was God Almighty, and He is not a Baptist. The family is that basic unit that God

established, not only to populate but also .to control and contain the earth.

The happiest people on earth are those who are part of homes and families where they are loved and shielded. When I have had a long, hard day, often in a hostile environment, it is great to walk into my home and know that there I will find my wife and children, who love me. Home is a haven to which I run from the troubles of this world.

I am for the family. I am committed to helping families win the undeclared war that is ravaging American homes. Each family is a battleground for the conflict going on today. The consequences of defeat are tragic.

In the war against the family today, the first weapon is the cult of the playboy; men (they say) do not have to be committed to their wives and children, but should be some kind of "cool, free swingers". Sexual promiscuity has become the lifestyle of America. Men satisfy their lustful desires at the expense of their families. No nation has ever been stronger than the families within her. When the family begins to falter, when that basic Christian unit is destroyed, we are on the precipice of real peril. ...

No wonder we are raising up a generation of children with no respect for authority, civil or other­wise. They have been reared in homes where there is no authority and in which there is no guidance or leadership. Children need love, discipline, and par­ental example. When they grow up without ever learning what the Bible has to say, without ever learning what prayer is, and without ever having been brought into and trained by a good, Bible-believing, soulwinning local church, they become weak people who in turn reproduce weak homes.

Another weapon against the family is the feminist revolution, the counterreaction to the cult of the playboy. Women say, "Why should I be taken advan­tage of by chauvinists? I will get out and do my own thing. I will stand up for my rights." Feminists say that self-satisfaction is more important than the family. Many women who lead in the feminist movement promote an immoral lifestyle.

More than half the women in this country are currently employed. Our nation is in serious danger when motherhood is considered a task that is "un­rewarding, unfulfilling, and boring". A woman's call to be a wife and mother is the highest calling in the world. My wife is proud to be called a housewife. She does not consider her lifework of making my life happy and of loving and shaping the lives of our precious children inconsequential or demeaning. Women who choose to remain in the home should never feel inferior to those working outside, but should know they are fulfilling God's command for the home. ...

THE CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN 135

_Families

Changing Faces Of Families

The profile of American families is rapidly changing. Over the past 15 years, the percentage of children under 18 living in families with three or more children has dropped by more than half. At the same time, the percentage of children living in female-headed households has almost doubled.

75

50

25

Three or more children

One child

Living with two parents

Living in

female-headed

household