Madeleine M. Kunin, former governor of Vermont and ambassador to Switzerland, told an audience of about 80 on Tuesday that it’s high time women were able to fully realize the goals that feminists set in the 1960s. And, she said in an upbeat message, achieving those goals is possible.
“Social critique, prodded by grassroots activism and the law, has created change,” Kunin said during a talk at the Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA).
Kunin’s latest book, The New Feminist Agenda: Defining the Next Revolution for Women, Work and Family, shows how feminists in the second half of the 20th century paved the way for improved rights and freedom for women in the United States today. For example, women now comprise nearly 60 percent of college undergraduates and half of all medical and law students. Most women today work outside the home, and families with two wage earners are the norm. Still, Kunin’s book points out, while women have changed, social structures surrounding work and family have remained static.
In her talk, Kunin highlighted three major areas that need to be reformed in order for women to enjoy full workplace equality: Access to affordable, high-quality daycare and early childhood education programs; paid maternity and family leave; and workplace flexibility.
Kunin said in order to make gains in these arenas, women — and men — need to push to change federal and workplace policies as well as the culture around these issues. And she offered the audience her recipe for making change: One part each anger, imagination and optimism. Each of the ingredients is key, she said, but optimism is what actually brings ideas to life.
“You have to believe that it’s worth it, that if you take the risk of saying when something isn’t right, that something good is going to happen,” Kunin said.
She urged the audience of Five College students, faculty and staff and members of the local community to voice concerns emphatically enough to get the issues they care about on local, state and national leaders’ agendas. However, Kunin added, it’s not enough just to complain. If you want to truly effect change, you must get directly involved in working to make that change happen.
“If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” Kunin said.
This event was hosted by CPPA and co-sponsored by the Center for Research on Families; the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center; Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at UMass Amherst; and MotherWoman.