Power Relationships Among Women

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By Susan Woodworths sech og 101 Buy pr As women's roles and options have expanded in the twentieth century and individual women have become more powerful in different arenas, the power relations among women have changed as well. Merle Hoffman, social psychologist and Executive Director of Choices, a women's health center in New York State, has written a lengthy analysis of women and power called "Seeing the Light: Reflections and Analysis on the Nature of Power and Its Relationship to Women". She describes how the active sphere of women moved from home and family in the nineteenth-century to the workplace in the twentieth century. This shift has affected power relations between men and women, particularly as women began to understand the limitations of the female role as defined by men. The traditional jobs open to women in the work world have no more potential for real power than the role of mother in the domestic sphere. Ironically, in most cases the home represents possibly more rewards in terms of child-rearing and creative home-making.

Ms. Hoffman maintains that despite commonly held beliefs that power corrupts, is misused, and overextends itself, power in and of itself is neither good nor bad. The context in which it is used and how it is perceived lends the moral judgment.

Role schizophrenia which many women experience when they work outside the home is one of the key issues in Hoffman's analysis of female power relations. Societal roles and expectations and the messages of popular culture frequently conflict. The working woman is told that she is working only temporarily, until the economy rights itself, but in fact economic necessity and popular culture encourage and reinforce her choice to work. The limitations and mythology of the female role, however, have condi→ tioned her to the extent that pursuing serious goals or making collective demands for better wages and working conditions are difficult, painful processes.

A second primary factor in the power relations Hoffman defines is that although the corporate arena offers a wider choice of roles and functions for women, there is no guarantee that women will actually have access to them. The apparent mechanisms that open the avenues to power are 1) imitation and 2) emulation of those who have power, have worked for and deserve their power, and have others' respect. Particularly during the 1970's, according to Hoffman, power was held up as something desirable and a goal to strive for. As Hoffman points out, however, the "attributes, language and trappings of power were socially recognized and immediately accepted as male".

The role conflict experienced by women seeking power cannot be underestimated. Although women traditionally have been taught to be passive, submissive, accepting, giving, emotional, etc., powerful women are expected to adopt aggressiveness, competition, drive, direction, etc., as their working mode. The powerful woman must deal not only with the male power structure and the men in it, but often as a token woman, she also must deal with other women. The ambivalence and conflicts she feels are reflected and reinforced by other women in her environment who are less powerful.

This ambivalence toward powerful women has several components. Hoffman states that women see each other as role models for their own ambitions, but judge each other quite harshly using specific sex role criteria. These judgments isolate powerful women from others and often render them ineffec-

tual as leaders. Men use the same criteria to judge powerful women, but it is this divisiveness among women that prevents solidarity and collective action by women on their own behalf

Powerful women are expected to be "superwomen" in the traditional sense: more patient, more

SWSIC pamphlet

caring, wiser, more understanding, more willing to sacrifice their own goals for others, almost to compensate for the power they possess. Less powerful women perceive these women as a source of serious competition as well, further limiting the possibilities

of support for the leader. The scarcity of female mentors for young women is a statistical fact, as is the attrition rate among female executives at all levels.

In addition to the "super-woman" expectations imposed by female employees on their female superiors, the female boss withstands severe criticism if she does not measure up to traditional standards of feminine beauty. Competition among women has been largely limited to competition for men and male approval, with the prize of marriage and children. The basic requirements are physical beauty and sexual attractiveness. Working women still use these criteria against each other to minimize or dismiss the effectiveness of other women. Powerful women are expected to maintain a "ladylike" image and behavior. Hoffman emphasizes that the powerful woman can expect severe social censure if her image and behavior are too confident, too aggressive, i.e.,

too male.

Merle Hoffman makes a strong case for the dangers that lie in unexamined adoption of male attitudes toward power. One of the most negative criteria that women use to undercut each other is the approval or disapproval of personal relationships to men, marriage, children and male institutions in general. Some women are seen to be "better" than others because of whom they married, who their boss is, what their sons do, etc. Because the chances of achieving power and status in the working world are small, the result for some women may be the need to (continued on page 12)

White Women's Luxury

By Trilby Blockum-N’goma

Examples of womanhood were set before me daily like a good meal one eats and takes for granted. I was supported, taught and loved by women who were both strong and gentle. I grew up knowing that our oppressors had gained strength from us, as their children quietly suckled the tits of our mothers. 1 grew and I learned that we were expected to scrub your floors, cook your meals and bed your husbands in order to maintain our own families. Yes, it was an unspoken understanding that we were expected to be the strong ones, the ones to be the spiritual glue that held it all together. It was a legacy that I gladly accepted and could never afford to question.

The sixties brought forth puberty and all its womanly secrets. I struggled to understand many social issues like why some areas are called suburbs and others ghettos, the reasons behind the frustration that led to burning of our neighborhoods during the Hough riots and what made the verbal college students such a threat to the power structure. I searched for answers to social problems, but I never thought about the women's movement which was becoming increasingly verbal.

The seventies found me finishing high school and then college. I had worked since the age of fourteen so it was only natural that I should defray my college expenses. By this time I had begun to listen to some of the issues concerning women. I had begun to see that women were an oppressed group in our society. It seemed that we have many suffocating roles written in granite that are next to impossible to break out of. I was as sympathetic to these, issues as some liberals who understood the racial situation but failed to get involved. For the most part the movement for

me was just another white women's luxury that they would soon grow tired of. From what I could see, the

A rape can occur in a dark secluded room

It can occur between women out of a conscious struggle

for change

one can have Power

and the other only her principles to support her

if there is an abuse of power then

you'll find women being victimized by other women

and

if by chance you stand and watch refuse or refused:

to get involved then

you too are guilty of rape.

feminist organization seemed too imitative of their white male counterparts in terms of power structure and the role of the black woman, We were a valuable

(continued on page 13)

October-November, 1982/What She Wants/Pass 7