The Women's Freedom Network Newsletter May/June, 2000, Vol. 7, Number 3. Woman's Freedom Network Acceptance Awards National Press Club, Washington, D.C. What Would Have My Mother Thought of Women's Freedom Network? by Mary Ann Glendon

I am truly moved at the thought of being honored by a group that includes so many of this country's most gifted and independent-minded women. And I am especially delighted to be honored with Judith Kleinfeld, whose work is a breath of fresh air in the field of gender studies.

For some reason, ever since I was notified of this occasion, I've been thinking about my late mother. My thoughts turned to her initially, I suppose, because when you hear you're going to receive an award, you want to tell someone about it. And no one greets that kind of news with the same pleasure as one's parents. But if your parents are no longer around, you have to bottle it up a bit.

But then I began to think of how I would have described an organization like the Women's Freedom Network to my mother.

She certainly understood and appreciated women's organizations. She was active in many of them, mostly local groups connected to her Congregational Church.

And she certainly had a lively appreciation of freedom. So much so that, during World War 11, she left our small town in western Massachusetts to come down here to Washington and work for the Army Signal Corps. The way that happened was that she saw an ad in a puzzle magazine that said: "Do you like to do puzzles? Write us for free puzzles." She sent for the free puzzles and they came with a letter that said: "If you can solve these puzzles, we'll send you more free puzzles." She solved them and sent them in, but what came by return mail was not more puzzles--it was a letter from Uncle Sam offering her a job in the Army's code-breaking project. She took the job, and though it meant she was separated for a time from my father and me, we were very proud of her.

So she would have understood about women's groups and freedom, but so far as putting those two things together, I suspect she would have been somewhat perplexed. For her to have understood about the Women's Freedom Network, she would have to have known about the so-called women's liberation movements of the 1960's and 70's. But my mother did not live to see those movements at their peak, and if she had, I think she would have been skeptical, baffled, and disappointed.

Skeptical--because her own life experience would have caused her to doubt the claims now made by organized feminism that it was primarily responsible for creating new educational and employment opportunities for women. In the post-World War 11 years, those opportunities were being steadily expanded by a variety of factors, all connected to the advance of prosperity and freedom. My mother came back to Massachusetts after her wartime job ended--not because she had no other choices, but because she put a higher priority on marriage and family life. She and my father had two more children, and taught all of us that if we studied and worked hard, we had a good shot at being anything we wanted to be. It's not that there wasn't still plenty of discrimination against women. I can personally testify that there was! But with hindsight, it seems plain that sex-based discrimination was already on a course of extinction prior to the emergence of organized feminism.

I say she would have been baffled by 70's feminism because its curious combination of antagonism toward men and sexual aggressiveness was baffling! I believe it can only be explained by what demographers call the "marriage squeeze"--the shock felt by the women born in the early years of the baby boom when they discovered that there was a shortage of marriageable men in the usual age range year or two older than themselves.

And the reason I believe she would have been disappointed in 1970s feminism is that she would have perceived it as unsympathetic to her small-town Protestant values and her commitment to family life. Because she herself liked and admired women who had succeeded in business and politics, she would have felt let down by a movement that did not respect her choices--raising children, doing volunteer work, substitute teaching, painting water colors. And she would have been indignant at its indifference to the situations of women like my sister and me, who were trying to raise our children while remaining in the labor force.

And so I'm sure Sarah Glendon would have understood the need for independent, freedom-minded women to have a "network"- say, a Women's Freedom Network. I think she would have expected her daughter to support such a network. And I know that she would have been pleased and proud if she could have known her daughter would be honored by such a network.

Thank you very much.