Journalist Quindlen touts female strides

URBANA – Anna Quindlen's own family tree illustrates the progress the country has made in the lives and rights of women, in just three generations.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and novelist called it the "greatest societal change in the history of the country." Quindlen was the keynote speaker Wednesday afternoon at the Biennial Conference for Women at the University of Illinois.

Quindlen's mother, the daughter of Italian immigrants, knew if the family had any money to send a child to college, it would be her brother, not her, even though her art teacher said she had talent.

She followed the expected path – marriage and raising five children. But she kept a portfolio of her old watercolors that she sometimes got out and showed her children, and she painted on the shells of the hard-boiled eggs she sent in their school lunches.

Quindlen's father had high expectations for her, and she worked hard to be taken seriously in a world run by men. She became the third woman to write a column for the New York Times editorial pages. She is now the author of five novels and several nonfiction books, and she writes a column for Newsweek.

Her daughter "takes for granted that women work and help run the world," Quindlen said.

She has met women who are doctors, astronauts, three-star generals – and a former first lady who is now a senator and presidential candidate herself.

"As a child, I saw no women in positions of authority," Quindlen said. "I knew no women who worked for pay. The money they had was given to them by men. ... That's not the world the girls we know, the girl I love, see today."

Her daughter may not see a glass ceiling in the workplace, or be denied entrance to a law school or medical school.

She and other young women will see struggles on a personal, rather than political, level.

"They're going to hit the glass ceiling in the kitchen," Quindlen said, "when they're transformed from a junior executive with a Palm Pilot to a full-time mother of two with oatmeal in her hair."

When Quindlen speaks across the country, young women will inevitably ask her how she managed to combine work and family.

"In all my years of speaking on college campuses, I've never been asked that question by a young man," she said.

"That's because they think they're going to combine work and family by getting married."

Women still face inequities in daily life. Quindlen sees women driven to be the perfect mother, a "manic motherhood" she says is not good for moms or kids. Children won't have the pride of ownership in their accomplishments, or learn from their mistakes, if their mothers ensure they don't make any mistakes, she said.

"The message we send our children is terrible, that being their mother is a drag, powered by fear, self-doubt and conformity," Quindlen said.

In contrast, her mother didn't play on the floor with her children, and Quindlen was left to wander the neighborhood while her mother cared for younger siblings. But she was a source of unconditional love.

"Where she was always felt like a safe place," Quindlen said.

"The idea that was enough is a tough sell now."

Still, she sees women as more contented than men, less apt to define success in terms of money or status. They are more likely to make connections with other people, share decision-making power, and embrace health care, child care and educational issues.

"It really is a description of what Americans want in their politicians," she said. "America should reach out and grab our skills because it badly needs them."

Quindlen said the advance in women's rights has resulted in men taking a larger role in raising their children, employers being more understanding with employees dealing with health issues, greater prosecution of sex crimes and domestic violence, and young women growing up with everyday equality.

"I only wish we'd gotten started earlier, so my mother could have gone to art school," she said.

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