Women Who Make America, Part III
While the demonstrations and sit-ins of the decade before were over, women were not one done in the 1980s and 1990s. Women like Geraldine Ferraro, Meg Whitman, Sally Ride and more began to infiltrate male-dominated professions. As women began to gain independence in America, the issues of pay parity, sexual harassment, and violence towards women were brought to the forefront.
Video Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MERYL STREEP: By the 1980s, most of the demonstrations and sit-ins were over. But women were not done upsetting old ideas about what they could do with their lives.
SUSAN DOUGLAS: The women's movement changed in the 1980s. Women were no longer in the streets, but slowly, but surely, they were getting into college presidencies, into university boardrooms, into corporate boardrooms. There was Sally Ride, the first female astronaut.
LINDA ALVARADO: During that time, there was just a rapid growth of what women were doing. Even when I saw a woman's byline in the newspaper, it gave me an adrenaline rush.
BRENDA BERKMAN: In 1982, we opened up the New York City Fire Department to women firefighters. And in the big scheme of things, I felt like I was doing something that was important, that if I could convince little girls and the general public that women had the capability to be firefighters, then women could be anything.
GERALDINE FERRARO: I proudly accept your nomination for vice president of the United States.
MERYL STREEP: Of all the doors being opened by women, none was a more stirring symbol than Geraldine Ferraro's historic run for the vice presidency in 1984.
NANCY PELOSI: When we learned that she was going to be the nominee, it was something quite spectacular, but nothing as spectacular as the night that it happened.
[APPLAUSE]
Thunderous, and in a room packed and jammed, delegates giving their tickets to their wives or spouses or friends so women could be on the floor. That was a moment.
- Geraldine.
[CLAPPING]
Geraldine.
[CLAPPING]
GERALDINE FERRARO: The issue is not what America can do for women, but what women can do for America.
[APPLAUSE]
MERYL STREEP: Feminism had given millions of women the key to locked doors in the world outside and in themselves.
HILLARY CLINTON: It reaffirmed my very fundamental sense of independence and my identity that I was certainly no better, but no worse than anybody else. It had to be a meritocracy. But the Women Not Wanted signs should come down.
MERYL STREEP: In the 1980s, as women entered the ranks of formerly all-male professions, they faced questions about how to look and how to act.
MEG WHITMAN: There were not many women role models so you'd find guys that you admired how they conducted themselves or how they approached the job. And you said, OK, I can try some of what they're doing.
MERYL STREEP: When she was hired in 1979, Meg Whitman was among the first female executives at Proctor and Gamble.
MEG WHITMAN: We used to dress in suits with a skirt and a jacket with button down shirts and a little bow tie because that was sort of our interpretation of the man's tie. I'd look back at those pictures today, and I think, what were we thinking? But it was our attempt to be feminine, but fit into what was then a male world.
LINDA ALVARADO: And in order to succeed, we had to try to look the part. So I put on my pinstriped suit, my white shirt, and then, of course, we had to have the tie.
MERYL STREEP: Linda Alvarado was typical of the pioneering generation of female executives in the 1980s. A Latina from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Alvarado began working on construction sites when she was still in college.
LINDA ALVARADO: Inside the San-O-Let, outdoor toilet, there would be pictures of me drawn in various stages of undress or invitations to do things or just discouragement. And quite frankly, I did think about quitting. But over time, for as many men that were drawing pictures of me, there were other men beginning to wash them off, men who realized that their own daughters and their wives were trying to pursue careers.
MERYL STREEP: In 1976, Alvarado founded a construction business of her own with a $2,500 loan from her parents. One of her first commissions was a series of 10 small bus shelters.
LINDA ALVARADO: They asked us to come in for a meeting. So I went in with one of my other employees, who was a guy. The project manager came in and says, I'm running a little bit late. I need coffee. And he pointed to me, and he said, could you go get me some coffee? So I got up and I got the coffee. And the reason I got the coffee is that I wanted to get to the table.
MERYL STREEP: As she brought in projects on time and on budget, Alvarado's company grew.
LINDA ALVARADO: I started having these visions that I could build a high rise. And so we bid on a renovation of a hotel. People were saying, just wait till she fails. She'll be out of business soon. And in reality, the project was so high profile, it worked for us, not against us. People could see that a woman had built this project. What women were looking for is not that guarantee that they would succeed, but at least the opportunity to try.
MERYL STREEP: Women desegregated the workforce not only in white collar careers, but in tough blue collar jobs as well.
BARBARA BURNS: My dad worked in mines, and as did his dad and his brothers.
MERYL STREEP: Barbara Burns grew up in the coalfields of West Virginia, far from the hotbeds of feminism.
BARBARA BURNS: I noticed early on that women were sort of submissive. And I thought, that is not for me. I'm not going to be like them and not have any money, not be able to buy anything or go anywhere. I'm going to be my own person, and I'm going to do what I want to do.
When I first went to work in the mines, I had my own bathhouse. And I came in one morning, and there were these pictures of naked men everywhere. Plus, the book was there, Playgirl. And I peeked out and I could see them lined up, you know, watching.
So I just took the book and was walking down like I was reading it. And when I got down there, I just said, thanks, guys. I don't know whoever brought this for me, but I've never seen one before. And I'll expect one every month. When I come in the next morning, everything was cool. All pictures, nothing, it was never mentioned again.
[APPLAUSE]
JOHNNY CARSON: This is a good night for a young comedian to appear because you're all in a great mood.
MERYL STREEP: Even in areas of show business traditionally off limits, women were making inroads.
ELLEN DEGENERES: Wouldn't it be great if we could just pick up the phone and call up God and ask him these things?
MERYL STREEP: Ellen DeGeneres was a struggling comedian in 1986 when she first appeared on "The Tonight Show," where a sure sign of success was to be invited to talk to Johnny Carson.
ELLEN DEGENERES: It was my intention to be called over to sit down because he had never asked a woman to sit down, especially on a first appearance. That's a big deal. He'd only asked four men to sit down on the first appearance.
Yeah, listen, if you weren't a bit-- sure, hold on. Somebody's at the gate.
I was just too scared to look at him. And then I finally looked over, and he was just like--
JOHNNY CARSON: That's very good.
ELLEN DEGENERES: Thank you. Thank you.
JOHNNY CARSON: Yeah, that's very clever and very fresh and--
ELLEN DEGENERES: Wow, that's wonderful hearing that from you.
JOHNNY CARSON: No, I mean it. It's good material.
ELLEN DEGENERES: Once I sat down with Johnny Carson, everything changed. That was the beginning of a whole different chapter of my career.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MERYL STREEP: For all their progress in the 1980s, many women discovered that getting a man's job didn't always mean getting a man's pay.
OPRAH WINFREY: Welcome to People are Talking. I'm Oprah.
MERYL STREEP: At 24, Oprah Winfrey was hired to co-anchor the Baltimore television show "People are Talking."
OPRAH WINFREY: I was getting paid $22,000, and the guy who I was co-anchor with was getting paid 50. So I went in to my boss, and I said, he's getting paid a lot more money than I'm getting paid, and we're doing the same job. And you know what my boss said? And this is in 1980. He said, why should you make that much money? In 1980, he said, why should you make that much money?
He said, he has kids. Do you have kids? And I said no. He said he has to put his kids through college. He has insurance. He has a house payment. Do you have a house? And I said no. [LAUGHS] And he said, so tell me why you need the same amount of money. And I said, well, because we're doing the same job.
I knew that if I filed a lawsuit, if I complained, that I would have been blackballed and I would have never gotten another job. And so I thought, I'll show you.
- The news is, I'm going to be on television.
- All right!
MERYL STREEP: As women remade the workplace in the 1980s, they began to see themselves reflected back in the popular culture. Sitcoms started featuring working mothers, stay-at-home dads, female cops, and female bosses.
- I went, over to a widow's house and put up a spice rack.
- You're hired.
MERYL STREEP: In 1988, Diane English, one of TV's first female executives, created the character Murphy Brown for CBS.
DIANE ENGLISH: We came along, following in the footsteps of Marlo Thomas and Mary Tyler Moore. We were the natural next step. She stood up for what she believed in. She didn't feel that she had to be politer or liked. She was, in many ways, my and Candice Bergen's alter ego. We would say, god, we wish we could say what she just said or do what she just did.
- I think it went well, don't you?
MERYL STREEP: The independent career woman was a staple in commercials, too, as advertisers spotted a new market-- women with their own money and a desire to spend it.
But side by side with this new empowered woman was an old stereotype, the objectified woman. Though portrayals of female sexuality were as old as advertising itself, the 1980s saw a shift toward an explicit deconstruction of the female body.
JEAN KILBOURNE: I was simply interested in what these images were all about.
MERYL STREEP: After a brief career in modeling, Jean Kilbourne became one of the first feminist critics to take on advertising's portrayal of women.
JEAN KILBOURNE: I began to see patterns, certain themes, for example, that women's bodies were often dismembered in ads. There would just be one part of the body that was focused upon. And I began to think about it in a way that I never had before.
MERYL STREEP: To Kilbourne and other feminists, reducing women to sexual objects stripped them of their humanity, thereby removing the barriers to violence.
JEAN KILBOURNE: The big argument was always, oh, advertising is trivial. It doesn't influence us. Whereas my theory was that when you turn people into objects and you trivialize them, that makes violence more likely. So far from being trivial, it actually plays a huge role in encouraging violence against women.
SUSAN DOUGLAS: Research shows that repeated depictions of women being dominated, being violated, being overpowered by men naturalizes the notion that that's what should happen. It's OK. It's the natural order of things.
MERYL STREEP: Images of violence against women were nothing new. As early as the 1950s, violence was so common, it was the stuff of jokes on primetime television.
- Bang! Zoom!
[LAUGHTER]
MERYL STREEP: In the confines of a man's home, custom decreed his wife's body belonged to him.
GLORIA STEINEM: There was no word for battered woman, domestic violence. There's no word for it because it's called life.
MERYL STREEP: Mark Wynn was a police officer who had grown up in a violent home.
MARK WYNN: I knew what violence against women was because I watched my mother being abused by my stepfather. But it wasn't defined until the mid '70s. There were no laws that defined violence against women. There were no police policies that instructed officers to to investigate these crimes.
MERYL STREEP: Many women knew from experience that reporting their battery to law enforcement would be futile. Tracey Thurman's story was typical of the time. She was 21 years old and living in Connecticut with her husband, Buck. For eight months, he threatened and beat her. Each time she called the police, they did nothing.
TRACEY THURMAN: Buck even laughed because-- haha, you know, the police ain't doing nothing about it. One police officer's, oh, if you weren't married, it'd be a lot easier. You know, and I was like, well, I am married. And what do I do about it?
MERYL STREEP: After Buck threatened her again, Thurman called the police one last time.
MARK WYNN: It took them over 25 minutes to respond because the responding officer stopped off at the station to use the bathroom.
MERYL STREEP: By the time the police arrived, Buck had stabbed Tracey 13 times. They did not arrest him. When the officers returned to their patrol car, Buck broke Tracey's neck.
TRACEY THURMAN: He stepped on my head, left me partially paralyzed.
MARK WYNN: They'd finally arrested him when he was climbing on top of her body in the ambulance on the gurney. It was horrific case of unbelievable police misconduct.
MERYL STREEP: Even in cases of rape, law enforcement often looked the other way, blaming violence on the victims themselves.
LINDA FAIRSTEIN: Rape, unlike other crimes, has always been viewed as a victim precipitated crime. She must have done something to ask for this. Was it that she dressed provocatively? Was it that she drank too much? Was it that she flirted with the man who ended up attacking her?
MERYL STREEP: Linda Fairstein was named director of the country's first Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit in New York.
LINDA FAIRSTEIN: The year before I joined the office, more than 1,000 men were arrested in New York City for sexual assault. 18 of them were convicted. That's how bad the laws were.
MERYL STREEP: Gradually, however, feminists began redefining the very nature of violence against women. Domestic violence and rape were not about anger or lust. They were about power.
SUSAN BROWNMILLER: Rape is nothing more or less than a process of conscious intimidation to keep women in a state of fear. The average rapist was not an unusual person. He was a young man who wanted his way, who considered sexual aggression to be part of masculinity, and who got away with it.
- No more rape. No more rape.
MERYL STREEP: Female activists pushed back hard against violence. They marched in Take Back the Night rallies. They published articles and books. And they successfully pressed for laws making it easier to prosecute rapists.
LINDA FAIRSTEIN: Corroboration was eliminated in most states. So you had a woman being able to testify based on her own credibility about a sexual assault. Rape shield laws were instituted, which meant that the victim could take the stand and not be cross-examined about her entire sexual history.
MERYL STREEP: Emboldened, victims of violence also began to stand up for themselves. In 1984, Tracey Thurman sued the police department for gross negligence on the day of her attack in the many days leading up to it. In a landmark verdict, the jury awarded her a multimillion dollar settlement.
LISA MYERS: Largely because of Tracey Thurman, Connecticut recently enacted what many consider the toughest family violence law in the country.
MERYL STREEP: Known as the Thurman Law, Connecticut statute became a model for other states.
[SIRENS]
Though epidemic levels of violence would continue, women became less afraid to leave their abusers or accuse them in court. And battered women's shelters and rape crisis centers finally gave them a place to escape.
MARK WYNN: It wasn't strong leadership and politicians. It wasn't police leaders or judges. It was the women's movement which forced lawmakers and police executives to stand up and say, enough was enough.
- If you mess with women, you're going to have to deal with the women's movement.
MERYL STREEP: Having fought back against violence in the 1980s, women began expressing ownership of their own bodies in new and sometimes provocative ways.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
When Madonna Louise Ciccone exploded out of the New York club scene in the 1980s, she was not only heralding her own sexual freedom, but that of her generation.
SARA M. EVANS: Madonna was such a powerful figure in the popular culture. And I think there were a number of feminists who were a little bit horrified about her choice of self presentation as a very sexual being.
MADONNA: To the feminists, I would like to point out that they're missing a couple of things because, you know, I may be dressing like the typical bimbo, whatever, but I'm in charge. And isn't that what feminism is all about?
DIANE VON FURSTENBURG: Women should use their sexuality. We have lots of advantages. I mean, makeup, clothes. We could show our legs. We could charm. I mean, lots of things that we can do.
SUSAN DOUGLAS: Madonna was very important to young women in giving them some chutzpah and ownership over their sexuality. She staked a claim to girls and women, having sexual agency that they could own.
MERYL STREEP: The idea that women owned their own sexuality flew in the face of traditional male prerogatives.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
For decades, as they poured into the workforce, women had endured a culture of male sexual aggressiveness so common there wasn't even a name for it.
- What we call today sexual harassment was, you know, people commenting on your shirt, your legs, your butt. You had to laugh it off because if you weren't cooperative and cheery about all of this, you couldn't survive.
DOLORES HUERTA: I remember working and having to run around the desk every night. How can I get out of here without the boss trying to, you know, make a pass at me?
MERYL STREEP: But by the 1980s, many women had had enough. Coal miner Barbara Burns was one such woman. In 1984, her dream job had turned into a nightmare when she was recruited to work for Smoot Coal by company president Paul Fazenbaker.
BARBARA BURNS: One day, he said that he was the king, and that was his kingdom and we were the serfs. And if he wanted to hug us or kiss us, he would. And I told him, I said nobody kisses me unless I want them to. He started stalking me, calling every evening, make sure I was home just to keep track of me, and just really making my life miserable.
MERYL STREEP: After months of sexual harassment, Burns contacted attorney Betty Jean Hall.
BARBARA BURNS: Smoot Coal Company had four, maybe five, lawyers. They said that I had pursued Mr. Fazenbaker and had, in fact, had seduced him. Then they offered to settle with us. And I told Betty Jean. I said, I don't think I should settle. I said, there was no affair. If there was, I didn't remember it.
MERYL STREEP: Burns won her suit after a long legal battle, one of the significant early victories in the history of sexual harassment law.
BARBARA BURNS: Well, the day that the order came down from the Supreme Court was about the happiest day in my life. I mean, it was just unbelievable. You know, we just felt like celebrating.
MERYL STREEP: As sexual harassment surfaced as a real issue in the workplace, one case would raise it to the level of national melodrama.
- I am very pleased to announce that I will nominate Judge Clarence Thomas to serve as associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.
MERYL STREEP: In 1991, the Senate Judiciary Committee met to consider the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas. As they wrapped up their confirmation hearings, the committee got word about a former employee of Thomas, who had privately accused him of sexually harassing her years before. Initially, the all-male committee refused to hear from the woman, whose name was Anita Hill.
PATRICIA SCHROEDER: This is a hearing for a Supreme Court justice. It's going to be there for life. And you would think that if someone who worked with them had important things to say, they would want to hear it. Wouldn't you?
MERYL STREEP: A group of congresswomen, including Pat Schroeder and Eleanor Holmes Norton, refused to accept the committee's decision.
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: We decided that some of us had better get over to the Senate, or this was going to be a done deal.
And I do not believe that Professor Anita Hill should be left to stand alone without being heard.
PATRICIA SCHROEDER: We marched to the Senate, knocked on the door, and they said we don't let strangers in here, which all of us, our hair almost stood on end. And we said, uh, we are not strangers. We're your colleagues from the other side of the Hill, thank you very much. And furthermore, the entire media corps is out here. And do you want us to go tell them what happened?
MERYL STREEP: Under growing pressure, the Judiciary Committee conceded. Hearings were reopened, and Anita Hill was called to testify.
- Can you tell the committee what was the most embarrassing of all the incidences that you have alleged?
ANITA HILL: I think the one that was the most embarrassing was his discussion of pornography involving these women with large breasts and engaged in a variety of sex with different people or animals. That was the thing that embarrassed me the most and made me feel the most humiliated.
MERYL STREEP: Thomas vigorously denied the allegations.
CLARENCE THOMAS: This is a circus. It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a Black American, as far as I'm concerned, it is a high tech lynching for uppity Blacks, who, in any way, deign to think for themselves.
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: I did not expect what Anita Hill had to say. And if I was stunned by what she had to say, I was even more stunned by the reaction of the Senate.
- All we heard for 103 days is about a most remarkable man. And nobody but you has come forward.
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: Their treatment of Anita Hill felt as though she were once again being sexually harassed, and this time, in front of the whole country.
ANITA HILL: There is nothing in my background, nothing in my statement. There is no motivation that would show that I would make up something like this. And I guess one really does have to understand something about the nature of sexual harassment.
MERYL STREEP: Broadcast live over three days, the hearings riveted and divided the nation.
- Y'all watching?
- Mary Jo, we have a big rehearsal tonight and if we stay mad about Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, we'll never remember our lines.
MERYL STREEP: Initially, the senator's obvious sympathy for Thomas seemed to sway a majority of Americans.
- Oh, puh-leez.
CLARENCE THOMAS: I, Clarence Thomas--
SARA M. EVANS: The committee went ahead and confirmed Clarence Thomas. But that national conversation that erupted had political implications.
- Gloria, did we, as women, lose anything because of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill?
- Yeah, we lost a lot, like faith in the Senate, for instance, OK. But I think we gained slightly more than we lost because the education on sexual harassment was enormous. And now the complaints are up 500% in the states.
MERYL STREEP: The Anita Hill case made sexual harassment a household phrase.
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: At the time, I was in college. So my household was 14 African-American women. Here we were, empowered young women off at college. And the notion that we might go into a workforce that would treat us in this way was truly eye opening.
SARA M. EVANS: Millions of women found themselves sitting down the men that they know and love and saying, this really happens. Let me tell you about it.
MERYL STREEP: One year after the hearings, as more women came forward to corroborate Thomas's behavior, polls showed that a majority of Americans believed Anita Hill.
ANITA HILL: I was trying to do my duty as an ordinary American citizen. And I simply told the Senate investigators the truth.
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: There's no question Anita Hill inspired others to come forward. But Anita Hill did something even larger for women.
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: Immediately after those hearings, in the next election cycle, it was the year of the woman. And it was the year in which a record number of women were elected to the US House of Representatives.
[CHEERING]
MERYL STREEP: A record 24 women were elected to the House. Five new female senators more than doubled their number in the Senate. These victories in the wake of the Anita Hill hearings gave the women's movement a new jolt of energy. To many feminists, it looked like the decade of backlash might finally be over. But as the '90s progressed, new fights about the role of women in society would again roil the country.
In 1992, a single storyline on TV's "Murphy Brown" would trigger a heated debate during the presidential election season.
DIANE ENGLISH: We made a decision to give Murphy a child. She had gotten pregnant by accident with her ex-husband. She elected to have the baby. And it never even occurred to me. It never occurred to any of us that there would be an issue with it.
- It doesn't help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.
DIANE ENGLISH: I was sort of gobsmacked. You know, it's like, wow, she's not real. She's not a real person, hello.
- Good evening. We begin tonight with family values and the make-believe woman and her make-believe baby.
DIANE ENGLISH: A debate began in the country, really, that went on for the whole summer following the airing of that episode.
MERYL STREEP: But if a fictional TV character could become a controversial issue in the presidential campaign, it was a real woman who would split the country in two.
[CHEERING]
Hillary Clinton, wife of Democratic nominee Bill Clinton, was unlike any prospective First Lady in history. An accomplished lawyer, she was not content to play the traditional political wife.
HILLARY CLINTON: When I was the First Lady of Arkansas, I had been my husband's partner on really significant policy efforts on education and healthcare and children's welfare and the like.
- Never in a presidential campaign has the candidate's wife become such a strong symbol of the campaign's strength and weakness.
MERYL STREEP: During the campaign, Mrs. Clinton's professional ambition and occasional slips of the tongue alienated large parts of the country. At one point, questioned about possible conflicts of interest between her career and her husband's, she seemed to belittle stay-at-home mothers.
HILLARY CLINTON: I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life.
SHIRLEY CURRY: I was not impressed with her at all. I felt like that she would rather put down women when she said, well, I'm not going to stay home and cook cookies.
MARIE G. WILSON: She did not feel the cultural ideal of wife and mother, even though she was one. If you look at any of the president's wives, the First Lady is still supposed to be the wife, the mother. Boy, when Hillary would step over that line, she got hammered more than probably anyone in this country ever has.
MERYL STREEP: Bill Clinton went on to win the election, but Hillary remained a polarizing figure as First Lady, particularly when her husband asked her to spearhead his administration's healthcare initiative.
HILLARY CLINTON: When Bill asked me if I would work on healthcare, I said of course, because it was one of his highest priorities. It was certainly something near and dear to my heart. Oh my goodness, it was just such a firestorm.
I really understood that, to some extent, it was because there were different expectations about the First Family of the nation. There were greater concerns about the influence that the First Lady might exercise on policy. And I think that, you know, it was a great lesson for me.
MERYL STREEP: In the months after the defeat of her healthcare bill, Hillary retreated from her very public role, adopting many of the traditional duties of First Lady. But in a less overt way, often while traveling abroad, Mrs. Clinton continued to advocate for women's issues.
In September 1995, at an International Women's Conference in Beijing, she confronted repressive regimes all over the world by asserting the basic justice of women's rights.
HILLARY CLINTON: --that human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights once and for all.
MARIE G. WILSON: When she stood up and said that women have all the rights that accrue to men in this world, it changed the language of human rights and women's rights all over the world in one fell swoop.
MERYL STREEP: In Hillary's careful balancing of her image and her ambition, she was accommodating the country's deep ambivalence towards feminism. It was an uneasiness felt not just by men, but by a new generation of women, too.
By the mid '90s, young women who had grown up with the movement had come of age, starting families and careers of their own. For many of them, the old battles seemed far removed from their lives. Abigail Pogrebin is the daughter of Ms Magazine co-founder, Letty Cottin Pogrebin.
ABIGAIL POGREBIN: I think my mother was angry about a lot of things and turned that anger into action. I don't feel that anger. And sometimes I'm ashamed to admit it.
MERYL STREEP: Pogrebin grew up at the very epicenter of the women's movement. At age seven, she appeared in the popular feminist TV special, "Free to Be You and Me," with actress Marlo Thomas.
- Is it ever, like, really a terrific thing to have a twin sister?
- Oh, yes.
- Like, when?
ABIGAIL POGREBIN: "Free to Be You and Me" was the highlight of my career at seven years old, and it's really all been downhill. It had a very simple message. You can be anything you want to be.
- (SINGING) Some mommies are doctors.
- (SINGING) Some daddies are bakers.
- Or welders.
- Or painters.
BOTH: Or funny joke makers.
ABIGAIL POGREBIN: I think that the reality of adulthood as a woman and as a woman who wants to have a family is not that simple. I'm free to be a mother and I'm free to have a career. But how do I reconcile both?
MERYL STREEP: Women like Pogrebin were the beneficiaries of their mother's hard won victories. They had good educations, marriages of equality, and well-paying, satisfying jobs. In Pogrebin's case, a career as a television journalist.
- If you could just read that again, we need it little picked up.
MERYL STREEP: Though grateful she and others like her also felt let down by their mothers feminism.
ABIGAIL POGREBIN: I don't think I was prepared for the ambivalence of motherhood and career. I don't think my mother really ever laid out how complicated that was going to be or could become. So when I hit it, and pretty much every friend in my life did, I felt a little bit like I was hit by a truck and that I hadn't been given the tools to respond.
MERYL STREEP: Pogrebin's job required her to travel frequently abroad. After the birth of her first child in 1997, she reached her breaking point when assigned to a story in Africa.
ABIGAIL POGREBIN: I had got to the tarmac and sat on that plane. I just burst into tears. And I just said, this isn't right. Nobody told me that that could actually hit me that hard.
MERYL STREEP: Pogrebin quit her all consuming television job. Instead, she worked shorter hours from home as a writer, relying more on her husband to support the family.
- It's Benny and mom.
ABIGAIL POGREBIN: I think, if my mother was honest, she probably wasn't thrilled with that choice when I made it. And I think part of why she wasn't thrilled was because she wanted to believe I could do both.
- (SINGING) I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you're a man.
MERYL STREEP: Throughout much of the '80s and '90s, women were told incessantly that they could do both-- build a thriving career and still be a wife and mother.
- For your 24 hour woman.
MERYL STREEP: At a time when 65% of mothers were in the workforce, many because they needed the paycheck, popular culture packaged a new icon, the superwoman.
ARLIE HOCHSCHILD: There was an image in a lot of ads-- I called it the woman with flying hair. She was just always on the go, going fast, on her way, child in hand, you know, briefcase in another, as if she embodied the two quite separate worlds, just by being super. Well, that's crazy making.
MERYL STREEP: In 1988, sociologist Arlie Hochschild completed a series of landmark studies examining how ordinary middle class couples were handling the strain of two full-time jobs. She published her findings in a widely read book called "The Second Shift."
ARLIE HOCHSCHILD: I actually got the title for the book from an interview with a woman who said, well, I go to work. I'm on. I come home. I'm on. I sleep a little and go back to work. And I'm on. And I feel like life at home is a second shift.
MERYL STREEP: Hochschild found that while most families needed two incomes to survive, neither husbands nor companies had adjusted to the needs of full-time working mothers.
ARLIE HOCHSCHILD: Women were changing, but the jobs they went out to and the men they came home to didn't change. So it was like a stalled revolution.
MERYL STREEP: It wasn't that the movement had completely ignored the problems of working mothers. In the 1970s, women helped win passage of a bill providing a national system of daycare, only to have it vetoed by President Nixon. After that, Congress never again dealt seriously with the issue.
SARA M. EVANS: They never helped families rework the relationship between family life and work outside the home. And the result is that we still have a structure of jobs and professions that assumes workers are men and that men have wives.
MERYL STREEP: Some women have managed to have it all by staggering their work and home lives. Maria Shriver was a successful television journalist in the 1980s before returning to full-time parenting.
MARIA SHRIVER: My mother used to always say to me, you can have it all over a lifetime. Look at it as a marathon. So if I looked at my 20s as a great time in my career, my 30s and 40s were a great time to build my family. And then now I'm in my 50s, and I'm kind of reimagining all over again.
MERYL STREEP: But in her advocacy work for the poor, Shriver has come to believe that the dream of having it all is unattainable for many.
MARIA SHRIVER: There's so many working class women for who the can you have it all debate is like, are you kidding? I'm working two jobs. I'm single parenting. Or, you know, my husband and I are working. And we can't get by. We can't make it. So let's not talk about having it all. Let's talk about reality.
MERYL STREEP: In fact, in the last two decades, the burden on working women has only increased as wages have stagnated, hours have lengthened, and more and more women are raising their children alone. By 2010, working women, especially single women, were more likely to be poor than men. According to Labor leader Karen Nussbaum, the women's movement itself is partly to blame.
KAREN NUSSBAUM: I do think there was a failure of the women's movement to focus more on the economic issues of working people. It should have been about creating an alternative that worked for most women. And that alternative would have included childcare. It would have included community services. It would have included after school care where your kids could get cared for by adults. None of that happened. And I think that's the great failure of the women's movement.
MERYL STREEP: As long as so many women are falling through the cracks, some argue, the feminist revolution will remain unfinished.
RUTH SIMMONS: I do think that the movement has not focused enough on all of those women at the poverty line, trying to support families. The social problems that arise from the fact that those women are held back goes to their children, their grandchildren. And it continues a kind of hopelessness.
- What's mom doing?
MERYL STREEP: With the superwoman ideal unattainable, working women have had to look for help where they can find it, especially from men.
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But while men have taken on more of the domestic duties, change has been slow.
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: It is stunning how much the realities of home life still feel like something from the 1950s. Even with a wonderful husband, even with a great partner, even if you're married to a man who is himself a feminist, somehow you end up doing all the laundry and 90% of the grocery shopping.
SHERYL SANDBERG: My husband is an amazing partner, but doesn't feel guilty. I feel guilty.
MERYL STREEP: Sheryl Sandberg is the chief operating officer of Facebook and a mother of two. She has publicly urged men to take a stronger role in the home.
SHERYL SANDBERG: My brother-in-law once said to me that he was babysitting. I was like, dude, you're not babysitting. You're the father. That's called fathering, parenting. It's not babysitting. We need to live in a world where men do half. Women let them do half. And being a parent's not a full-time job for a woman and a part-time job for a man.
MERYL STREEP: The continuing imbalance between men and women at home is only one measure of how the women's movement has fallen short of its own aspirations. Nearly 50 years after the battle for equal pay began, women still only make $0.77 for every dollar earned by a man. On Capitol Hill, there are more female senators than ever. But they are still just a fifth of the total.
ELIZABETH WARREN: And despite the odds, you elected the first woman senator to the state of Massachusetts.
MERYL STREEP: Perhaps most insidiously for feminists, pro-life forces have intensified their push to roll back access to abortion and even contraception.
- Suddenly contraception, reproductive rights, birth control has roared its way forward into a national issue.
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: To the extent that there is an unfinished feminist revolution, I'm shocked that it's not even finished on the issue from 1974. Like, I can't believe we are talking about the birth control pill.
MERYL STREEP: In the face of these retrenchments, older feminists have openly questioned why their daughter's generation is not marching in the streets.
ARLIE HOCHSCHILD: I think what happened is that a generation of women told themselves, we're already there. Thank you very much, you older women. You did a nice job. And now it's done.
LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN: I don't see that urge toward activism, the passion. And that's what makes me fear that they'll have to lose almost everything before they realize they have to fight back.
MERYL STREEP: Indeed, many younger women actively dissociate themselves from the very word "feminism."
MARISSA MAYER: I don't think that I would consider myself a feminist. I certainly believe in equal rights. I believe that women are just as capable, if not more so in a lot of different dimensions. But I don't, I think, have the militant drive and sort of the chip on the shoulder that sometimes comes with that.
MICHELLE RHEE: In some ways, I'm still very traditional. I packed my husband's lunch this morning before I came to work. And I'm the one who does all of the laundry. I don't feel like I have to do those things. I just-- you know. But I think that's part of what feminism is now. It's not that you're eschewing all of the traditional roles. It's knowing that as a woman, you know, you can be whatever way you want.
MONICA CROWLEY: I think modern feminism now has sort of come full circle, where a lot of women are saying, I don't need a movement. I don't need female leaders to tell me what I'm going to get out of my life. I know what I want. And to me, that's the great victory of so-called feminism, is now we are here to say, I can reject the feminist movement. Or I can go out on TV and have a differing opinion from the so-called feminist leaders. And it's OK.
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MERYL STREEP: Many younger women argue that while their generation may do things differently, they are no less feminist than those who have come before them.
AMY RICHARDS: I think that young women have their own versions of what women of another generation experienced. I see a lot of the work that's happening around the environment, a lot of work that's happening around immigration reform, a lot of work that's happening with living wage campaigns and part-time leave for sick workers, is all being led by young feminist women.
SHELBY KNOX: I love the word "feminist." It describes my work. It describes the history that I feel like I come from. But I don't care if a woman calls herself a turtle, and she's doing pro equality work. The work is still being done.
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: These women know who they are. They're not about to march back. They insist upon expansions of their own limits that never crossed our minds. And even when they slow down, the trajectory is so clear that I'm not in the least bit worried.
MERYL STREEP: In recent years, younger members of the movement have refocused their energy on a new front-- abroad, where many women suffer in a state of servitude.
[BABY CRYING]
Sheryl Wudunn is a writer who has chronicled the plight of oppressed women all over the world.
SHERYL WUDUNN: Yes, there still is discrimination in the US. We still have problems. And we need to solve them. But the brutality that goes on against women in the developing world, in other parts of the world, is an order of magnitude more brutal than what we see here. And if you just see it for yourself with your own eyes examples of what goes on there, you just can't turn away.
HILLARY CLINTON: If the 19th century was about ending slavery, and the 20th century was about ending totalitarianism, the 21st century is about ending the pervasive discrimination and degradation of women and fulfilling their full rights.
MERYL STREEP: As the movement for women's rights spreads to new countries, those who inspired it can today look back on a successful, if still unfinished, revolution.
- Honey, when was the last time you baked a cake?
- Over my lifetime, there have been enormous changes. We have vastly more working women in professions and good jobs than we ever have in the past. So it's just been a revolution for women in this country.
- We know that we have the power to change!
- How can one not marvel at what has been accomplished for women by women? And can you ever think that that could be reversed? The answer is no.
- The women's movement has become an indestructible part of American life.
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: Every burst of energy for a new group has a moment which is legitimately called a revolution. Once that burst breaks through, that revolutionary moment may be gone, but the notions, the movement, the energy continues.
- Social change is, by definition, never complete. But there is a huge number of women whose assumptions about what they can be and do have changed unalterably.
- We changed the way people think about women and how women think about themselves.
Feminism really impacted how I saw
- Myself and how I went into the world and fought for equality and fought for a seat at the table.
Hi, everyone. I'm very happy to be with you tonight.
- It gave me courage. It gave me courage to do a lot of things, to think about a lot of things. I'm a part of the women's movement even if nobody ever knew it but me.
DIANE ENGLISH: The woman's movement is the biggest social movement in the history of the planet Earth because it affected everybody-- children, men, women. Everybody was affected by it.
- The House will come to order.
OPRAH WINFREY: Women began to understand that in order to get people's attention, you got to blow a loud trumpet. You got to beat the drum loudly. And nobody listens to you when you go quietly into the night.
- Now, the majority of people in this country know that if there is inequality, it's wrong, it's unjust. That men and women can do the same work. But we're all human beings. And the point is our individual talents. That's a huge change. Huge.
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