THE

POWER

OF

Today's elderly are a group within society suffering from grave contradictions as they are suddenly thrust into a situation where they need to establish a new self definition. In most cases, being suddenly flung from an active to an inactive category, being classed as old and obsolete, experiencing a damaging drop in income and standard of living, and facing empty days and empty homes because the children have left, are tragedies that have serious psychological consequences.

We assume that elderly people prefer to complacently sit and watch the remainder of their lives pass by. In the next few decades, our entire youth-oriented culture is going to suffer severely for its narrow orientation as the birth rate continues to decline and the necessary services for elderly people to lead meaningful lives are continually neglected.

Aging is a trial no matter how stoically women face it. It is an ordeal of the imagi. nation, a moral disease, that affects women much more than men. In an era when our life span is the longest, almost two-thirds of this time is spent in worry over aging. It is more a social judgement than a biological eventuality.

Brought up to be never fully adult, woman are deemed obsolete earlier than men. A woman's value lies in the way she represents herself by her ever-perfect face and sexually desirable body. Because women are considered mindless sex objects, the loss of beauty through aging or disfiguration greatly affects her self-esteem.

The advantages of age, such as wisdom, growth, experience, power, and professional fame are not available to women as they are men. A woman's value is in her youth and sexual usefulness as an attractive wife and mother,

Aging in women is a process of becoming obscene sexually. There is no equivalent nightmare about men. Good looks in a man is a bonus, not psychological necessity of maintaining normal self-esteem. It is thought irresponsible for women to do what is normal for men: to leave their appearance alone. The flabby bosom, wrinkled neck, spotted hands, thinning white hair, waistless torso, and veined legs of an old woman are felt to be obscene. That old women are repulsive

POSITIVE AGING

is one of the most profound esthetic and erotic feelings in our culture.

Where it is a sign of virility and competence for an older man to marry a much younger woman, society is repulsed by older women who take younger lovers. The usual view of a marriage between an older woman and a younger man is that the man is seeking a mother, not a wife, and she is considered predatory, willful, selfish, and exhibitionistic. If she has a career or holds public office she suffers disapproval. Her credibility as a professional declines and her "respectability" is compromised.

All this happens because such a marriage subverts the very ground rule of relations between the two sexes, that is: whatever the variety of appearances, men remain dominant. Women are supposed to be the associates and companions of men, not their full equals, and never superiors.

Society further punishes women for growing old by restricting them to narrow domestic and aid-oriented fields. After her children have grown and are independent, the home becomes empty with little to do. The work that women do outside the home rarely counts as a form of achievement. Most employment available to women mainly exploits the training they have received since early childhood to be servile and supportive. They have menial, low-skiHed jobs in light industries which offer a feeble criterion of success. Older women especially are chronically underpaid, receiving barely minimum wage with no benefits. They are forced to take these jobs because few, if any well paying companies hire women who are considered to have no · future in a career,

Because they have earned less, social security and pension benefits are less. Too often an older woman finds herself accepting her long-dead husband's social security benefits and denying the credit she earned for long years of widowed work because he earned more. She is also paid smaller insurance premiums per month because the money she deserves has to be extended to accomodate her longevity. Companies that she gave 30 years of her life to move out of town and take her pension with them.

Most women share the contempt for women expressed in the double standard about aging to such a degree that they take their lack of self-respect for granted. In protecting themselves as women they betray themselves as adults.

Women have another option. They can aspire to be wise, not merely nice: to be competent, not merely helpful: to be strong, not merely graceful: to be ambitious for themselves in relation to men and children. They can let themselves age naturally and without embarrassment, actively protesting and disobeying the conventions that stem from this society's double standard about aging. They can remain active adults, enjoying the one, erotic career of which women are capable far longer. Women should allow their faces to show the lives they have lived. Women should tell the truth and demand their rights as complete human beings.

Union Women Make More

N

RIKE

4444

ON STRIKE

page 6/What She Wants/November, 1974

Organizing unorganized women workers was made the top priority of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), a newly formed, national organization of women in unions, at its first National Coordinating Meeting in Chicago in September. Women in unions earned 70% more than non-union women in 1970. Of the 35 million working women only 4 million are organized into unions and protected by collective bargaining agreements.

Presently few women are in leadership or policy-making positions within unions. Increasingly women have been forced to sue not only their employers for discriminatory prac tices, but their unions as well. Unions agree to discriminatory contracts with employers, condone discriminatory practices in the workplace and overlook the particular needs of women. Even though the number of working women has increased since 1966, the proportion of women in unions has decreased. Sexism pervades the unions and directly affects their policy toward women and is particularly

detrimental to the non-union woman. The Coalition has a two-pronged strategy-organize women to get more power within their own unions and, work with unorganized women to educate them about unions and organizing techniques.

Four Cleveland women are on the National Coordinating Committee of CLUW. In Ohio CLUW is reaching out to thousands of union women, inviting them to join CLUW and to participate in building strong local chapters. Other priorities for CLUW chapters to consider taking action are: equal pay, equal rights and equal opportunity; women's legal rights; adequate maternity benefits and child care; fair hiring and promotional practices and affirmative action on the job and within the unions. The Cleveland area convenor is Jean Tussey, 3054 Euclid Heights Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44118. The chapter received its national charter in September; meetings are held the fourth Sunday of the month. All union women are encouraged to get involved.