'The women's movement is all around us...'

Activist, feminist and author Letty Cottin Pogrebin shares her thoughts on women's plights, rights and fights, past and future

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (courtesy photo)

On the day after an inauguration ceremony in which women stole the show — from the first Latinx Supreme Court justice swearing in the country’s first female, Black, South Asian Vice-President; to a fire chief speaking with both her voice and her hands; to a 23-year-old Black poet who left the nation speechless — I had the privilege of interviewing Letty Cottin Pogrebin for a webinar produced by the Sarasota chapter of the Brandeis National Committee.

Pogrebin has been an instrumental figure in the women’s movement for the past half century, as a founding editor of Ms. magazine, an editorial consultant on what is still the seminal book on non-sexist child rearing, “Free To Be, You and Me,” and the author of 12 books and countless articles on women’s issues, feminism, Judaism and social justice.

Though she says she “came late” to the movement after graduating from Brandeis (in 1959) and spending a dozen years in the book publishing industry, she continues, at 81, to serve as an eloquent spokesperson on issues of women’s rights, Jewish-Black relations and dialogue between Jews and Palestinians.

After four years of a “President who shall be nameless” appointing hundreds of conservative judges and a Supreme Court justice (Amy Coney Barrett) she believes may threaten the future of the 47-year-old the Roe v. Wade abortion decision, Pogrebin was riding an emotional high when she spoke to a virtual audience of about 125 locals and Brandeis alumni on the topic of “Women Today and Tomorrow: What to Cherish, What to Change.”

“Yesterday was…I don’t even have the words for it,” she said, speaking from her home in New York the evening after the new administration was installed. “I keep calling it ‘feminist heaven.’ … Normalcy became extraordinariness all day.”

But that day would never have come without “the disobedient women…the indefatigable women who said we just aren’t going to sit down…who believe, as Susan B. Anthony said, that failure is impossible,” Pogrebin said. “That is what I cherish; to not give up, to not be defeated, to not be disenchanted, to not feel as if somehow or other, it’s all lost, to spring back.”

From the suffragettes’ efforts to win women the right to vote more than 100 years ago, to today’s battles over equality of opportunity, pay and respect, the women’s rights movement has never been a smooth arc of progression. That’s something Pogrebin learned early on.

She remembers sitting with other staff members at Ms. when the Roe v. Wade decision came down in 1973 and thinking, “Okay, this is it. This was the big one. And now everybody's just going to jump on the bandwagon and they’re going to see the justice in our cause and the need for equality, liberty, for inclusion, diversity and how half the human race can be neglected, ignored, unheard. And everyone is going to get it and in a little bit, it will be over, it will be done.”

And then came the Reagan administration and “the backlash. And suddenly we see that what we have, what we thought we'd achieved, can be unraveled.”

As with any movement — be it anti-war, civil rights, Black Lives Matter or #me too — the forward momentum begins again with marches and mass action showing solidarity. But a protest like the Women’s March on January 21, 2017, which drew more than 8 million participants nationwide, is just a beginning, Pogrebin said.

“A march does not produce legislation. What changes our lives, if you look back, is always our laws. And our laws change our behaviors. That’s how it works. The holy troublemakers, that happens first. We call that activism and I call it holy work. And then it makes it safe for legislators, for judges, to think in new ways and see new ways and then behavior changes right along with it.”

From protest to societal change can take “10 or 20 years…or in some situations, 100 years,” but each step forward leaves a building block for those who follow. Which brought Pogrebin to another thing she cherishes: “What we’re leaving for young women, which is an open horizon and a bunch of wonderful role models.”

As for what remains to be changed, there is no dearth of agenda. The U.S. has a particularly dismal track record on family issues like affordable child care, paid maternity leave, personal time for emergency family care and guaranteed health care. Because these have often been seen as “women’s issues” and assigned a lower priority, “once again, it’s up to us to be the squeaky wheel.” Pogrebin said.

Despite her very real concerns about a possible reversal of Roe v. Wade, she is optimistic that the next “wave” of feminism will be even stronger, thanks to the “the intersectionality between the women’s movement and issues-oriented groups of every sort.”

“The women’s movement is not in the past,” she concluded. “It’s all around us. It isn’t just marching down Fifth Avenue. It isn’t just young women in t-shirts and cutoffs. It’s everywhere.

“You don’t hear that horrible line, ‘I’m not a feminist, but…’ anymore. I hear people express feminist orthodoxy in the most radical, wonderful terms. I would not make those kinds of movies, I would not sing those lyrics, but we’re all struggling for the same thing: freedom of choice, the ability to simply realize our dreams.”