Transcripts

KATE WILLIAMS: Steinem said most industrialized democracies include abortion as a part of the country's contraceptive program, but not the US. She said the patriarchal system that runs this country wants to control the production of its children and citizens. And she attributed the recent Supreme Court decision to standard male bias. She said the court's prejudice will only add to the suffering of one of the least powerful groups of people in the country, poor women. She said the decision will either force those women to bear children they can't support and don't want or force them to return to butchers for illegal and dangerous abortions.

GLORIA STEINEM: The Supreme Court, if you look at the three decisions in this case which established this precedent, said very plainly that all constitutional rights are off all individual rights, everything. All bets are off because the state has a right, state has an interest in compelling or as they said, encouraging women to have children. In other words, they flat out stated that women are the means of production, and the state has to control women. That's what they said.

KATE WILLIAMS: Asked whether or not the decision greatly increased the division between pro-choice and anti-choice people, Steinem said no. She said recent polls show that 60% to 70% of Americans support the right of women to choose. Steinem said women must continue to use their proven methods of gaining their rights, voter power, consumer power, and nuisance power. She said the AAUW exerted its consumer power in electing to have their conference in Minnesota, a state that has ratified the ERA. Originally, the convention was scheduled for Missouri. But the AAUW along with 15 other national groups have chosen to boycott states that don't support women. Three more states need to ratify the amendment before it can become a part of the constitution.

And Steinem said it's important to continue to apply financial pressures to states and groups that don't find it expedient to pay women equally. She said even though an increasing number of women are working, employment remains a critical problem. She said one way women can earn a better living is to get into non-traditional women's jobs, not just the executive positions but blue collar positions, too.

GLORIA STEINEM: And the second thing, I think, is that we support and applaud our tokens. We have to have a lot of courage and whom we need to so women can dream of being whatever they wish to be, that those tokens have very little impact on the lives of most women, that those token inroads into all-male fields. So that what we additionally need to do is to look at the so-called pink collar ghettos at these fields of service work, clerical work, and so on that are almost totally female where equal pay for equal work doesn't help because equal to whom? To the woman who's waiting on table next to you and who's poorly paid to-- where you really need a massive wave of organizing like the '30s to upgrade and honor and decently pay these female, mostly female professions.

KATE WILLIAMS: Gloria Steinem, editor and writer for Ms. Magazine, she said it's important for people to understand that women are not trying to gain power to be superior, but that women are trying to humanize both males and females. I'm Kate Williams.