Motherhood Vs. Sisterhood

By John Leo .

Betty Friedan has dubbed it a "deceptive, backlash book." Erica Jong has called it the kind of work that "could start a revolution" and "serve as blueprint for a new era of feminist activism." Those heated reactions were only a small part of a new controversy slowly beginning to churn in U.S. feminist circles. Its focus: a newly published 461-page study that examines why, despite the furor of the feminist revolution in the '60s and '70s, women in the U.S. labor force remain substantially poorer than their West European counterparts. The book's most startling claim: the feminist movement itself may be responsible for some of that discrepancy.

Author Sylvia Ann Hewlett, 40, pursues that analysis with a wealth of fact, interviews and occasional personal reflections, in A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women's Liberation in America (Morrow; $17.95). The book is the product of three years of research by the author, an economist and director of the Economic Policy Council, a Manhattan-based think tank. Hewlett was increasingly struck by the income disparity between European and American women, a plight she illustrates with cold statistics. As of August 1985, Census Bureau figures show that women in the U.S. earn 64 cents for each dollar earned by males, up only 1 cents since 1939. European women, by contrast, have been gaining on men much more rapidly. In Sweden, for example, women now average 81% of male annual earnings, up from 71% in 1970. In France, women's wages are 78% of men's, and in Italy, the figure is 86%.

America's divorce rate, one of the highest in the world, holds down female earning power, says Hewlett, and so does discrimination against women workers. But she thinks the major factor holding women back is their continuing burden in the home, particularly the responsibility of child rearing. Hewlett writes: "Ninety percent of women have children, and . . . it is precisely during the childbearing years that women fail to make the grade in the career struggle."

Particularly striking in the U.S., she says, is the absence of social legislation and universal social support for working mothers. No fewer than 117 nations guarantee maternity leave, and the U.S. is the only advanced democracy not on the list. Though women employed by major American corporations are mostly protected, she observes, more than 60% of U.S. working mothers have no right to take maternity time off. "American superwomen are meant to have children on the side, on their own time, and the less said about it the better," says Hewlett. "In this country there is little appreciation of the fact that having children is a societal imperative as well as a private choice, that children are a nation's collective future."

The British-born Hewlett, mother of four children, gained some of her knowledge about that problem the hard way. Part of the inspiration for Lesser Life grew out of her own agonies in juggling career and motherhood while teaching economics at Barnard College in the 1970s. Barnard granted no maternity leave at the time, and Hewlett claims that her inability to get time off during a difficult pregnancy contributed to her miscarriage of twins. Hewlett also relates that her department chairman warned that she might not gain tenure if she got pregnant again. Eventually she was refused tenure.

Hewlett was particularly struck by the hostility of feminist colleagues at Barnard, the women's branch of Columbia University, toward her efforts to build both a family and career. One accused her of seeking "a free ride" when Hewlett spoke out for a college maternity policy. "My concern was especially acute because I knew that I was a privileged person," she writes. "I was not poor, black or single, and I had an abundance of marketable skills. What happened to working mothers who were more vulnerable than I?"

Hewlett concludes that U.S. women are the cultural victims of two antagonistic traditions: "the ultra-domestic '50s with its powerful cult of motherhood" urging women to stay in the home, and "the strident feminism of the '70s," urging women to "clone the male competitive model." Both have lingering negative consequences. The '50s tradition continues to hinder the struggle for greater social support for working mothers. It has also led many modern feminists in an ideological direction that culminates in a "blind spot" toward the crucial issues of motherhood and family. Argues Hewlett: "The chic liberal women of NOW have mostly failed to understand that millions of American women like being mothers and want to strengthen, not weaken, the traditional family structure. For them, motherhood is not a trap, divorce is not liberating, and many of them find the personal and sexual freedom of modern life immensely threatening."

Hewlett thinks that American feminists made a crucial mistake in focusing their energies on a struggle for formal equality with men, rather than on increased benefits for women, such as those won by European feminists. The problem with the Equal Rights Amendment, Hewlett contends, is that it would prohibit women from receiving any benefits not also available to men. She writes: "The last thing most American feminists would admit is that working mothers might just need special concessions to give them a shot at equal opportunity." Hewlett reminds readers that many dedicated feminists of previous generations, including Eleanor Roosevelt, opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because they thought it would undermine laws and reforms aimed specifically at helping women.

Early reaction to Lesser Life has been sharp. Feminist Author Jong, writing in the April issue of Vanity Fair, agrees with Hewlett that "American feminism has had, historically, a strong antichild bias," and calls for a revitalized, prochild feminism. Reviewing Hewlett's book in MS., Author Robin Morgan asserts that the image of feminism as antimotherhood is "true in terms of fabricated media image but false in terms of reality." Feminist Pioneer Friedan in an interview said that she resented Hewlett's implicit attack on the ERA. "She's in effect joining the right wing," said Friedan. For her part, Hewlett regrets that the flap about feminist differences seems to be overshadowing her book's "passionate plea to do better by women and children." Says she: "Action is more important than sitting around trying to decide who is the purest feminist."