Beyond Gender: The New Politics of Work and Family

by Betty Friedan

"A basic restructuring of our economy is needed now," writes Betty Friedan in her latest book, Beyond Gender. "And this restructuring can't be accomplished in terms of women versus men, black versus white, old versus young, conservative versus liberal. We need a new political movement in America that puts the lives and interests of people first. It can't be done by separate, single-issue movements now, and it has to be political to protect and translate our new empowerment with a new vision of community, with new structures of community that open the doors again to real equality of opportunity."

As the author of The Feminine Mystique and head of the National Organization for Women, Betty Friedan helped spark a movement that revolutionized the fight for equal rights and opportunities for women. Now, in Beyond Gender, Friedan argues that the old solutions no longer work. The time has come, she contends, for women and men to move forward from identity politics and gender-based, single-issue political activism. Without yielding on particular women's issues, she calls for a "paradigm shift"—a transformation of the intellectual and political structure within which those issues are viewed.

Friedan's "new paradigm" embraces the entire world of work, family, and community, where some of the most crucial questions of 1990s America have been raised. To explore them, Friedan initiated a conversation among policy experts, scholars, corporate and labor leaders, journalists, and political thinkers. Guiding their conversation with her own reflections, Friedan explores the social anxiety caused by corporate downsizing and displacement of middle-aged male employees—including the impact on working wives who suddenly become their family's sole provider. She confronts the expansion of part-time and temporary work due to outsourcing, which disproportionately affects women workers. She describes the loss of community life and community space in the fast-paced, consumption-oriented suburbs. And she discusses the breakdown of family structure in many parts of American society.

Beyond Gender combines enthusiasm, curiosity, scholarship, and practical expertise as it revisits the relations among jobs, home, and society. Once again, Betty Friedan has challenged her readers to rethink the context within which they view both the relations of the sexes and the relations of the marketplace.

Genres: Feminism, Gender Studies

132 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 1997

About the author

American feminist Betty Naomi Friedan (née Bettye Naomi Goldstein) wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963 and cofounded the National Organization for Women in 1966. This book started the "second wave" of feminism.

Reviews

[José M Centeno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Betty is brilliant, and has incredible access to people from every kind of organization making up the USA community. I only give it 4 stars because I don't think companies will stop exploiting people efficiently. The book is also really close to finding another "work alternative": Alternating periods of overworking, and sabbaticals, also known as the FIRE movement Vicky Robin was promoting in the 90's . I wish we could go back in time and watch Vicky and Betty chat for a few hours.

[Lauren M · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit clunky to read but feels very relevant to the challenges America is facing today, related to family and work balance.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

HER NEXT-TO-LAST BOOK, DOWNPLAYING ‘SINGLE-ISSUE MOVEMENTS’

Betty Friedan (1921-2006) was one of the earliest ‘founders’ of the modern women’s movement. She co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) and was its first president. She also was one of the founders of the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC).

She wrote in the first chapter of this 1997 book, “I feel again a sense of urgent change required. With all the reservations, mistakes, omissions, and downright objections my own feminism has surmounted these years, its liberating force for women, for our whole society, has always prevailed. But my inner Geiger counter does not lie. What I sense here is something basic, something that cannot be evaded or handled at all in the usual feminist terms. What I sense is the need for a paradigm shift beyond feminism, beyond sexual politics, beyond identity politics altogether.

“A new paradigm for women and men… the more I’ve thought about this---and begun to try and make it happen---the more I realize a lot of other people from very different groups and political persuasions than mine are moving in the same direction. There’s a mounting sense that the crises we are now facing, or denying, cannot be solved in the same terms we use to conduct our personal or political or business or family lives. They can no longer be seen in terms of gender. The old paradigm still shaping our thinking may be keeping us from seeing these problems for what they are, much less solving them.” (Pg. 2-3)

She observes, “The energy of the leading feminist organizations has been focused on abortion or on sexual politics… Ought not at least as much energy go into breaking down the remaining barriers to women’s earning and advancing in our economy to equality with men? Key to that… would be to change the structures that make it very difficult for American women to combine childbearing and advancing in business and the professions. I discovered that the countries where women’s earnings were virtually equal to men’s… were those with strong national policies on child care, parental leave, and flexible working hours.” (Pg. 8-9)

She recounts, “When I left the presidency of … NOW in 1970, sexual politics was already dividing our strength… In ‘The Second Stage,’ published in 1981, I proposed coming to new terms with family, with motherhood, with men, with careers, going beyond the impossible dilemmas of the old paradigm, the male model or its sexual obverse. My views were bitterly attacked by Ms. [magazine] and other voices of what was becoming ‘politically correct’ feminism, as if I was betraying the women’s movement. I was deeply hurt by those attacks but had no desire to mount a divisive counterfeminist movement. In my writing, I took on a new frontier instead, the denial of age defined only as programmed deterioration from youth to terminal senility. I bowed out of feminist organizational politics altogether, except when asked for help.” (Pg. 6-7)

She observes, “Now I see the impossible paradox for women: women are achieving what begins to look like equality because the men are doing worse. Is their loss really our gain? Women are benefitting from the changs in the economy, with more control over their lives than their mothers ever dreamed of. The great majority work at jobs that may not be the greatest but give them a life in their forties and fifties, after their kids are off, though the juggling of children and job in their thirties is tough. Many women are doing as well or better than those downsized men.” (Pg. 12)

She suggests, “Might this not be the time for a shorter workweek as an alternative to downsizing? This would meet the needs of women and men in the childbearing years and people throughout life as they continue further training, education, and work. This would help older people who shouldn’t be pushed out altogether and who would welcome a less rigid schedule. Could it also meet the needs of employers who prefer to hire temporary part-time workers if we fight to have such work covered by pro-rated benefits? We have to have new thinking about competitiveness, new thinking about the bottom line, new thinking about benefits, new thinking about work in terms of time and family, and new definitions of success if we are going to build a new paradigm.” (Pg. 18-19)

She argues, “I try to pull it together. Either you can go the route of focusing on what women make compared with men or you can go the route that everything has to be done in terms of the whole society and the whole economy. Trying to come to a new paradigm, we have to be very careful that we see it all. For example, you can’t talk about a shorter workweek without talking about getting pro-rated and portable benefits, and ending discrimination against part-time workers. If a new coalition begins thinking in those terms, then it isn’t just for women, just for men, just for minorities, just for older people, it’s for everybody, it’s a new community. People in our society want a new vision of community.” (Pg. 34)

She asks, “I wonder, is the feminist focus on gender issues adequate to today’s problems? The current economic and political reality is being muddled by this idea that there’s an eternal gender war, which explains everything and which we can never overcome.” (Pg. 67) She continues, “Do we of the middle class… get some relief from our own fears and frustrations by scapegoating welfare mothers, racial minorities, women, older people? Focusing on our own special issues, do we ignore at our peril deeper economic causes and political dangers? Do we lock ourselves into no-win dilemmas by sticking to this narrow single-issue focus, blinding ourselves to the larger power to create alternatives if we held a common vision, a new dream of American possibility, a new paradigm?” (Pg. 68)

She argues, “There’s been a false polarization between feminism and families. In recent years we have seen ‘family values’ or ‘the family’ used in attacks on feminism and on the women’s movement for equality, as if the two things are opposite. The term ‘family values’ is then used as a flag. At the Beijing conference on women, for example, a woman’s control of her own reproduction … or women working, are viewed as a threat to family values.” (Pg. 83)

She continues, “Yet when I say there has to be a new vision of family and community some of my feminist friends are resistant to the discussion of family. They say we have been defined too long in terms of family, and we have to think of ourselves first, of women first. Yet if you analyze the values that are implicit and explicit in the Beijing conference, you will see that those values are the values of people first, a concern for the well-being and the welfare of women, men, children, or old and young.” (Pg. 83-84)

She explains, “As a mother of three and grandmother of six, I’m one feminist who is a passionate believer in the value and importance of families. To turn our back on the values that have rightly been associated with women … are something I as a feminist would strongly object to and so would many others… We need to talk about what we mean by family values and how these values can be dealt with, strengthened, and affirmed in terms of today’s realities.” (Pg. 84)

She notes, “we come back again and again to the growing numbers of single-parent families and the absence of fathers in vastly increasing numbers of single-parent families as a major cause of economic and social stress and perhaps a generational cycle of poverty and pathology… We need to deal with… what directions in public and private policies and moral discourse might result in more responsible participation of fathers in the raising of children.” (Pg. 98)

She concludes, “a basic restructuring of our economy is needed now… and this restructuring can’t be accomplished in terms of women versus men, blacks versus white, old versus young, conservative versus liberal. We need a new political movement in America that puts the lives and interests of people first. It can’t be done by separate, single issue movements now, and it has to … translate our new empowerment with a new vision of community… that open the doors again to real equality of opportunity for the diverse interests of all our children---a new evolution of democracy as we approach the new millennium.” (Pg. 116)

Betty Friedan was somewhat forgotten by the women’s movement by the time of her death, but her nervous intuitions in this book about the economy, etc., are still valid concerns (although simply having shorter work weeks hardly seems an adequate solution) of all of us.