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The militant women have understandably aroused a good deal of fury and laughter, but like the extremists among the blacks and students, they have also drawn attention to some real problems. They have, for example, exposed the myth that a woman's income is mostly a supplement: a third of all women of marriageable age are not married; two-thirds of working women, whether married or not, work because they need the money. Thirty-six percent of the nation's families classified as poor are headed by women, as are most urban welfare families. Considered in this light, what seems a monotonous litany of the need for better wage scales and good day-care centers assumes more urgency (2,700,000 children need day-care centers; there are places for 530,000).
Men, for reasons entirely of their own, may soon agree to some of the changes the feminists propose, and indeed over 100 males are members of NOW. New studies show that many men actually want women to combine careers and families, that most women also want both careers and families, but that they think the men want them to stay home. (Just publicizing the studies ought to help eliminate this misunderstanding.) Moreover, what was once a natural and universally admired goal—to have a large family—may, with the threat of overpopulation, be seen as mere self-indulgence. Population experts are already proposing tax changes and legal restrictions to keep families small. As part of the same program, they suggest that women be given education and job opportunities equal to those accorded men.
With a new sense of selfesteem, which is essentially what the feminists are seeking, even those women who elect to stay at home might be happier, which would of course benefit men as well. To encourage self-esteem in women requires more self-esteem in men, who all too often nowadays build up their egos at the expense of women. As male and female roles in society grow more and more alike, masculine pride must depend increasingly on achievement and inner security rather than on machismo. But if the ego of the average man is not up to absorbing the new shocks there may well be a male backlash that will cause an even harsher collision between the sexes than society has yet experienced. The radical women have opened a Pandora's box. But that of course is their birthright. They are her direct descendants.
* England's Emmeline Pankhurst was more religion-minded, telling her suffragettes: "Trust in God: She will provide."