Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 24, 1990 TAG: 9003242553
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
And gathering, it seems, some new material for her Pulitzer Prize-winning column:
On Virginia Military Institute's admissions policy: "It's a dinosaur-like tradition," said Goodman, after a morning of interviewing VMI cadets and commanders for a future column. "You can't make the argument to exclude women any more than you can make it to exclude blacks."
On the '80s: "I could've picked a better decade out of a hat."
And on the more mundane things of life, such as waiting for a USAir flight Thursday night: "The airline said, `We're in an overbooked condition' - like somebody else was responsible."
That's Ellen Goodman, constantly combing our culture, always searching for the meaning behind the event.
Her job is to chronicle change. Her beat is American society.
After a morning at VMI and an afternoon of news conferences, Goodman spent the evening eulogizing the 1980s. And it wasn't a pretty sight.
Addressing a crowd of about 1,700 at Roanoke College, Goodman, 48, talked about women and values, about politics and her hopes for the future. A featured speaker for the Henry H. Fowler Public Affairs lecture series, Goodman intertwined stories of her own personal struggles and gains, using the women's movement as a historical backdrop.
And she spoke as if she were reading from a collection of her columns - thought-provoking, witty and no-holds-barred.
What was so bad about the '80s? "We spent most of the '80s fighting arguments we thought we resolved in the '60s," Goodman said.
"We encouraged landscaping of our lawns but we ignored the environment . . . We had anxieties that led not to political activism, but to self-doubt."
The conflict between individualism and globalism - the "I" and the "we" - got miserably out of whack, resulting in a narrowing of our world vision.
"And then we discover last December," Goodman added drily, "that Ronald Reagan has fluid on his brain."
But first, a modified history lesson of the women's movement, Goodman-style, on the events that led up to those ominous '80s:
In the '50s, we heard the first rumblings of rebellion. In the '60s - when Goodman launched her career and became a mother - women gradually started to search for individualism but were limited by demands at home.
"I stayed at home till my daughter was 6 weeks old. I was the only working mother with a preschool child in the city room of the Detroit Free Press," where she also was the second woman news reporter on staff.
"All my colleagues stopped me in the hallway and said, `And who takes care of your child?'
"About the 18th time someone asked, I said, `Oh, I leave her at home with the refrigerator open and it all works out."
Nowadays, only 7 percent of mothers don't work outside of the home, Goodman said.
"The last woman to be affected by the change was that wonderful woman in the `ring-around-the-collar' commercial. My sister once said the revolution would be here the day that woman turned to her husband and asked why he didn't wash his neck.
"And now, even she's gone."
In chronicling the '70s, Goodman evoked laughter with her "Day in the life of Superwoman," which included:
Waking up
Getting her 2.3 children out of bed
Feeding them a grade-A nutritional breakfast
Sending them off to school
Getting into her $600 Ann Klein suit
Leaving for her $50,000-a-year job
Running 6 miles after work
Fixing a gourmet dinner
Leading a family discussion about the checks and balances of the U.S. government
Tucking the kids into bed
. . . "and then Superwoman is multiorgasmic till midnight."
A mythological creature of the '70s, Superwoman is still with us, Goodman said. But the '80s turned her into Superdrudge.
In the '80s, more women took over traditionally male roles. But men, Goodman added, didn't return the favor.
"Women have been more successful at getting into the male's world than getting men into care-taking roles."
What's her prediction for the '90s?
To get better, this country has got to become more caring, Goodman said. And that translates into addressing child-care concerns, the environment and getting more women into political office - all issues that tend to inspire Ellen Goodman's columns, now read in more than 430 newspapers across the country.
"It's a ripe moment for women to succeed in leadership . . . and to take their values with them. When women and politics get together, talk is of values.
"If we learned anything in the '80s, it's that the issues of care-taking are and must be intimately connected with public life."
Will the glass ceiling ever give way for women in the business world?
Are men going to become partners rather than helpers, as Goodman hopes?
Or will women be stuck riding the Mommy Track?
"These things are very up for grabs right now. And the scale will tip one way or the other in the next 10 years."
And Goodman will be there on the cutting edge of social change - as she has been for 25 years - to document it and to study it. And to tell us what it means.
by CNB