PURVEYORS OF THE DREAM

...All of us have a right to work all of us have a right to a more meaningful life...

...Her audience already did...

...Nevertheless, those who have dismissed them grandly as beneath their notice have missed a lot and know little about the woman's side of American life...

...All our children see are people greedy for things and money and getting them through some idiotic process of chance...

...No doubt we women are right to complain about having been led down the primrose path of consumerism...

...Veterans of the new feminism who were there thought that it was a conservative gathering...

...By serving the needs of women these magazines became great selling agencies...

...Abigail McCarthy Between 30 and 40 years ago these magazines began to abandon romantic fiction in favor of articles of self-revelation interviews with, and articles about, celebrities and case history features such as "Can This Marriage Be Saved...

...The program is to be called "Women in Passage" and its purpose is to produce "through a continuing dialogue among these leaders, a faithful assessment of how most American women feel about today's and tomorrow's 'passage' for women...

...asked one speaker rhetorically...

...Olga Madar, president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, said that the "democratization" of women's organizations meant nothing unless it included the training of grass roots women in the skills of community development and political action...

...The media, she said, have done much to distort the meaning of feminism...

...And that everyone will eventually share the dream...

...But it was an important meeting...

...serious sociologists ascribe the dubious position of woman in American life to a concerted effort on the part of American Business to reduce women to consumers only...

...Sixty-seven percent of them are living below the poverty level...

...She was clearly unprepared for the forest of hands which sprang up but she had her written speech before her so she went on rather lamely to say, "But if I gave you Webster's definition, I'm sure you would all think of yourselves as feminists...

...They helped the woman in the upwardly mobile family, and the immigrant woman to learn how to dress, how to prepare nourishing food for her family, how to adjust to her world...

...There was some sharp questioning of this premise during the conference for those who had ears to hear...

...One had the feeling that Willie Mae Rogers who headed it for many years and Charlotte Montgomery who writes an investigating consumer's column and many other women who worked at Good Housekeeping had the interests of women of all readers at heart...

...They were an outlet for women writers...

...There was something to be said simply for the setting of standards...

...The basic premise has always been that there can be a happy marriage between American enterprise and the American dream...

...Another representative of the Screen Actors Guild was even more emphatic...

...But it would be quite unfair to call them just that...

...There are people who make these decisions news directors, top editors...

...Lourdes Miranda King, president of the National Conference of Puerto Rican Women, had bleak statistics about the distance between the citizens of Hispanic origin and the dream...

...to say about her own industry, the greatest purveyor of the dream...

...Over 54 percent of Hispanic origin women make less than $3,000 a year...

...In the last year there were 2,873 job-days for men and 361 days for women...

...We should be aware of what motivates them...

...At the present time we are being kept ignorant of the real statistics of unemployment...

...The averages do not tell the story...

...Kathleen Nolan, president of the Screen Actors Guild, had hard things (Continued on page 285) Abigail McCarthy (Cont...

...The Institute was well run...

...Cynical exposes of the Good Housekeeping Institute and its Seal of Approval have been written, but the magazine did maintain standards for the products it advertised...

...Never in their memory had women made breakthroughs in times of economic scarcity for workers...

...On the other hand the media people and some of the planners seem to have been too cautious in their estimate of the conferees...

...over 11 percent are unemployed...

...What was actually happening, of course, was that a mass circulation women's magazine was setting about the task of finding out where mainline women "were at" in the hope of directing its own appeal accordingly and one supposes, since Good Housekeeping is only one part of a large publishing empire, Hearst Publications having some effect on the direction women will take...

...Artificial barriers are being perpetuated...

...They were a means of communication...

...Actors' employment is figured in job-days...

...Without exception many of the conferees with whom I talked had questions about the purpose of the conference but all of them appreciated the opportunity to come together to meet other women, to learn what the fruits of cooperation might be...

...Good Housekeeping may be purveying the best dream of all that of women really getting together to face up to whether our system has betrayed them or not, what to do about it, and how to do it...

...Phyllis Garland of Ebony said, "The danger is in what is not being communicated...

...There were much higher rates of unemployment among youth, minorities and women, and excessive unemployment in the central cities...

...The development of the advertising artist, illustrator, and commercial photographer depended on their market...

...Good Housekeeping, for most of its ninety-one years, was one of the latter...

...Don't be fooled by the women on TV," she said, "they are surrounded by men...

...The Congress was to launch what the magazine called "an ambitious and unique new program" involving women leaders of America's 'foremost organizations and institutions...

...They saw the conference as a place to pool information and resources...

...PURVEYORS OF THE DREAM Readers of Commonweal who are not as indiscriminate and omnivorous readers as I may see no significance in the recent Congress of Presidents held in New York and sponsored by Good Housekeeping magazine...

...We know about the exploitations of the more bizarre aspects of the new feminism in the talk shows and the sorry picture of women in TV advertisements, but we seldom reflect on the scarcity of opportunity for women in the serious side of the industry drama...

...she concluded...

...Finally, there were two ways of looking at the first meeting of the Congress of Presidents...

...How many of you would think of yourselves as feminists...

...It is almost a hundred years ago that women's magazines began to flower in this country as a result of the discovery that women were the prime consumers of goods and services...

...the economic short-changing of women at the work place is being perpetuated by economic powers...

...Women had confidence in its certification of a product and, for the most part, their confidence was justified...

...To sell their soap, and cosmetics, yes, and oil, they have replaced the drama, in which people had goals and heroes and explored the problems of life, with game shows...

...They have taken away the dream," she said, "and they have taken it away for their profits...

...We are being pitted against each other male versus female, old versus young, black versus white, black sister versus black brother...

...But before the stimulation of desire became the highly manipulative art it is today, these magazines provided a chart in an uncharted world and some had much more sense of responsibility than others...

...Fifteen percent of Hispanic households are headed by women...

...Among those of directly Puerto Rican origin, 33 percent are headed by women...

...They were necessary to women...

...They went along this path so rapidly that at one point a critic called them the "genteel por-nographers...