Rebecca Traister talks with Nora Ephron about Politics, Life and the Future of Women

ladies and gentlemen please welcome to this stage the amazing Nora Ephron Rebecca tracer and Alison Stewart I want to start our conversation tonight with a little story about not really well-known professor in 1976 who was writing a piece about women in history about puritanical funerals and women really exciting stuff until she got to this one line she wrote and it was well-behaved women seldom make history there was Laurel Thatcher Ulrich who's now a professor at Harvard and that phrase was repeated by a journalist 20 years later and picked up by young feminists and put on bumper stickers and t-shirts we've all seen them so Rebecca does this apply to women seeking political office yeah I mean quite obviously I think we see huge numbers of ill-behaved women and actually that's one of the one of the interesting things about some of the women who may be very unpopular with this audience but I've developed a kind of rugged admiration for say Sarah Palin because she goes rogue well despite despite the fact that I disagree with every word that comes out of her mouth the fact is the thing that made me turn to become a supporter of Hillary Clinton is that she was defying every prognostication I did not start out in 2008 as a supporter of Hillary Clinton but then I kept watching her make everybody go nuts because she wasn't abiding by any of the rules they kept saying she'd be out by Super Tuesday should be out but you know and she wouldn't leave the race and she was driving Chris Matthews around the bend and that's not hard to do I know I know that's not and everyone was so pissed off and I was like you know what she's hilarious this is fantastic and it made me I mean there was more to it but that was part of what what I admired about Hillary Clinton and for that matter about Barack Obama when you had different kinds of people in the race they didn't have to behave according to old scripts and in a sense watching Sarah Palin especially as she's become less and less of a threat and therefore it's a lot easier to be a loser abused by her I mean the she doesn't follow any scripts and I think there was a very smart piece by mark Leibovich in The Times this weekend about comparing her crazy crazy bus trip to Mitt Romney's announcement that he was gonna run for president and Palin wins that I mean as far as being entertaining and changing the way you know they're sure it's sort of reality show presidential style but that's not necessarily so much worse than the you know Harkin steak fry that we've that has the the model of how people have become president or politicians in the past so yes I think women behaving badly makes for good fun politics there's a project called the White House project and the goal of the White House project is to get more women to run for office to get more women in local seats I'm gonna screed from their website by filling the leadership pipeline with a richly diverse critical mass of women we make American institutions businesses and government truly representative ad women everything changes that's their their motto why nor why haven't gotten involved in a political process we've seen the number of women in Congress this year that decreased rate would decrease this year like a half a person yeah but I'm wondering what what do you think holds women back from running for office I don't know what is what are the statistics in terms of governors and local offices you know I don't I can't answer your question because when I was growing up there were no women in public office mm-hmm Margaret chase Smith was in public office so even though there are only what 14 women in the United States Senate 1717 that is 17 times the number there so you know I I feel as if it's it's slow but it's changing women are in politics and nobody nobody you know it used to be that in order to get elected to almost anything your husband had to die and then you got his seat that was hell that was how a lot of senators women senators in the 50s and 60s ended up in the Senate briefly but that's not true though that was gonna be I mean not the death heart but that was the Hillary Clinton model when everybody talked about hillary clinton as part of a dynasty it's very interesting that that is how all the first women got and before the 50s and 60s back when the very very first one in sort of pioneer women in the in the pioneer states in the western states some of them got elected to office first and it was because their husbands had held a seat and everybody was very upset about the idea of a clinton dynasty for good reason but in fact that was just as the first woman she was just following one of the only models that has allowed women to get into office in the united states and elsewhere but especially meaning in the united states i do want to read something from your book you talk about the women's rights movement and it's in the chapter do you the d-word from Norris book I remember nothing right my first marriage ended in the early 1970s at the height of the women's movement Jules Feiffer used to draw cartoons of young women dancing wildly around looking for themselves and that's what we were all like we took things way too seriously we drew up contracts that were meant to divide the household tasks in a more equitable fashion we joined consciousness-raising groups and sat in a circle and pretended we weren't jealous of one another we read tracts that said that personal is political and by the way the personal is political although not as much as we wanted to believe it was but the main problem with our marriage is was not that our husbands wouldn't share the housework but that we were unbelievably irritable young women and our husbands irritated us unbelievably tell me what your question is about well the about going through what you were going through during the women's movement well I think you know I think that there the women's movement of my era of the 70s was was many things but one of the interesting things about it and I think Robin Morgan said this was that divorce became a political act you know we had all gone to college you know it at Wellesley the motto of the school was non Minister re said Minister re which was not to be ministered to but to minister but it was always the big joke was not to be ministers but to be ministers wives and if you were really interested in medicine you were supposed to marry a doctor that's that's what almost everyone and you know in my generation thought life was about was that you married your life and and so you know and we all entered into marriage you know we all change the rules we all pretended that's we all thought that's what we were supposed to want and then we got very cross because if it's it's not a good deal so so then we all stopped doing all the things we were you know and and and everyone walked out it was was just a wave across the country I divorce you I divorce you I divorce you really and you know I mean it's divorces of is a very interesting subject I mean as you know we've started a vertical on Huffington Post about divorce because it you know as I always say you know marriages come and go but divorces forever but but it is you know it is like reproductive choice it is something women were not allowed to do it's it's amazing how brief the history of divorce is it was impossible to get a divorce until this last century anywhere anywhere and in some places you still can't get one and and so I'm I'm always I'm just completely riveted by it as as a subject and we all are we all love reading about other people's divorces you are in front of Rebecca tracer you

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 7,459

Rating: 4.8139534 out of 5

Keywords: Rebecca Traister, Nora Ephron, Allison Stewart, 92Y, 92nd Street Y, Women, Politics

Id: IRcfRncPYi0

Length: 9min 42sec (582 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 16 2011