Farewell, Larchmont

Those of us who came of age in the era when dads went to work and moms stayed home looked at Betty Freidan a little differently than her contemporaries.
She must have scared the women who drove their husband's to the station every morning, who wore housedresses and aprons, who mixed martinis and got dinner on the table every night by 6. Not that they loved the life they had, but it was the only life they knew.
And for the ladies at Larchmont Station, it may not have been fulfilling, but it had its perks, nights in the city, shopping sprees on Fifth Avenue, summers at the Jersey Shore or in the Catskills.
Unbeknownst to them, and their children, not all women of the 1950s and 60s had that life.
It was a less connected time. We didn't have a 24-hour news cycle. We didn't know everything that happened to everyone else.
That was good and bad. We weren't bombarded by fake news, but we also didn't have a handle on people who weren't just like us.
The Larchmont Ladies may have been dissatisfied, but there were far more women who didn't have the advantages of Catskill summers and Bonwit Teller charge plates.
"The best poverty prevention is a paycheck," former Vermont Governor Madeline Kunin told a roomful of professional women at the Journalism and Women Symposium in Essex Junction, VT.
Kunin was from the generation that was scared by Freidan, but she herself wasn't scared by much of anything.
A graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, Kunin wasn't prepared for the reception, or lack of it, when she applied for newspaper jobs.
She was prepared to move ahead in any career she chose, journalism, politics, academia. And now, author and speaker.
She talks about the feminist movement of Betty Freidan and its broader implications. "She asked women to make the most of their education which is asking for peace and prosperity," Kunin said. Countries that repress women are repressing themselves. They can't maintain prosperity without women."
She counts the US as one of those countries in the sense that it celebrates traditional male values.
"The business community is opposed to family friendly values," she said, even when they are multi-national companies that abide by those values in the other countries in which they operate.
Kunin inspired not only the students and young professionals int he audience, but also the experienced professional women.