OCR Text |
Show 8S ' The Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday, October 6, 1985 Karen Shepherd and Network : Exploring womens issues See the KITCHEN KING for "the" Designer Look at a fraction of the cost. Continued From What you get, 1 dont. Theyre only giving out so many favors. The magazines orientation toward career women also turns other women away. I have women who, when I give a speech, tell me, Youre putting down housewives. You must think S-- 5 New Improved CABINET FRONTS for beauty or investment See the new European look variety of styles & colors. We replace your old doors and drawer fronts with new Formica doors & theyre not OK. Thats not true. drawer fronts. cabinets sides bottoms and fronts. self-intere- st See our beautiful show rooms. Call for FREE brochure and demonstration. No obligation. Free estimates. in-ho- HOME & BUSINESS SPECIALTIES 2313 SOUTH HIGHLAND DRIVE JESS BRUNO 487-406- 3 Owner Mgr. 0 D D D Silvtrmd Ktmtsi D Cabins Quality Pre-Fabricat- D ed D Kits from D $7,500.00 Model open for Display! q Custom g Homos To Evanston t D 0 D D :To Heber SPECIAL DISCOUNTS D DURING MODEL D D CONSTRUCTION 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Daily II FREE BROCHURES 0 Call or Write: D To Park D ! Cy SILVERWOOD HOMES P.O.Box 1495, D Park City, Utah 84060 (801)649-277- 7 To Satt Lake City Cirera-- a 0 - 0 q read us, because I think that being a homemaker is the hardest and most satisfying profession there is. And, I think that every housewife should turn to her husband and say, This marriage for me is really my equivalent of a small business. W'hat is my equity position? Is half of the house mine? How much am I earning for my labor? But, of. course, housewives dont do that. So, when they get divorced, the womans income decreases 73 percent, the mans income increases 42 percent. Homemakers have no equity position in their profession. . . . They can easily go from riches to rags in a divorce. As a matter of fact, there are a least 40,000 women in Utah right now who are called displaced because, either through death or divorce, theyve ended up impoverished." One consequence of this line of reasoning, in Shepherds view, is that women must learn to take economic responsibility for themselves. They must not plan on being cared for by a man, because statistics show that two in three marriages end in divorce. Since fewer than 33 percent of divorced men make child support payments, a woman must be prepared to support not only herself but her children. Im one of the rarest women in the world married 22 years, same marriage, says Shepherd. I feel lucky. Im not typical, and I would never advise my daughters to expect to have the same situation. 74 DODGE POWER BLUE. Si 600 000-000- EXCEL COND STEERING. AIR DART 0 MR A OF SALT LAKE SOLD HIS CAR ON THE 2ND CALL CLASSIFIED 237-200- 0 WANT-AD- S thats what ment. There was nothing in Utah to help a working parent know what to do about children. There was absolutely, in the state of families, not one single resource. This state of families that we have is set up for an old world that no longer exists. In Utah, 15 percent of all families are traditional father works, mother families stays home with children. Fifteen percent. And yet every employment system is structured for that 15 percent. That kind of family is held up as the worthy ideal, and if youre not that kind of family, youve somehow done something wrong; you ought to try to get back to that This state of families that we have is set up for an old world that no longer exists, said Shepard. In Utah, 15 percent of all families are traditional families father works, mother stays home. Fifteen percent. And yet every employment system is structured for that 15 percent. homemakers D I wish, I would give anything if I had more housewives reading Network. I would like to have thousands. Obviously theres a financial there, but just from the point of view of the cause and the point of view of being a religious zealot, which Ive been accused of being, I would really love to have them We recover your existing Family Connections supple- FAMILIES IN WHICH BOTH parents work outside the home, and those headed by a single parent, face different problems than families in which only one of two parents work outside the home. Shepherd claims that Network was the first local publication to recognize those concerns with its a husband, as a that I started this business and I worked these incredible hours and I had all these hopes and dreams for myself and my career? Well, I'm not the person he married. The transition that we have had has certainly been uncomfortable, if not painful, at times, and I think its been duplicated in every household in Utah to one degree or another, because women cannot change without radically cutting into the comforts of their husbands. Those comforts are profoundly held and dearly craved and hard to let go of. wage-earne- Shepherd hastens to point out that her husband has been supportive of her work, both emotionally and financially. He is, in fact, a in Webster stockholder Publishing. THE PERSONAL GROWTH in her marriage has been mutual, she says. Prior to becoming a businesswoman, she says she never really understood the pressure of being responsible for meeting a payroll. She couldn't appreciate why her husband, who ran his own business, was preoccupied with it during his hours home. Now she understands, and she is convinced that she never could have grasped it had she not had to meet a payroll herself. The changing roles of women have economic ramifications, pristine state as quickly as you can. As soon as you get over this crisis, get your wife out of the market and back home. Shepherd believes that kind of thinking denies reality. Its just not going to happen. First of all, women arent going to go home, because servitude is not a pleasant situation. Secondly, I dont think they can go home. I think the standard of living is falling, but people's aspirations are not, in terms of what colleges they want their kids to go to and what they want their lifestyle to be. Womens changing roles have created great stress within families and between men and women generally. Networks motto for women and for the men with rewhom they live and work flects the magazine's concern with personal relationships, according to Shepherd. I really think that the biggest revolution of all is in relation ships. She uses her own marriage as an example. What in the world does it mean to Vince (her husband) in terms of what his life expectation for himself was as a fa- ther, as we write about. r, Men, I think, are alternately sad, angry, wishing it were like it was, denying how it is. I think thats going on all the time, and Shepherd said. I just read a paper, for example, on the wage gap. There is not a wage gap between single men and single women. There is only a wage gap between married men and married women. There are so many advantages to being married for a man and so few advantages to being married for women, in the narrow sense of career. Thats where the wage gap is. Job discrimination against married women extends beyond monetary compensation. Women face discrimination when they become pregnant, when 'hey relocate with their husbands, when their employers feel they dont really need the money and arent really ambitious, Shepherd says. She says she has undergone her own transition as she has grown with the womens movement. I was there in 1972 when everybody was rfutrageous, and we had more fun making everybody furious. I know what happens to people when you do that. It hurts them. I had a lot of personal gripes at that time, so that was a experience, but it no longer is because what I want to do is make people understand whats happening. I cannot make people understand whats happening unless I have their confidence, unless they think were reasonable, unless they think our information is grounded in fact, not political g hogwash. You will never find any feminist jargon in Network, because I hate jargon of all kinds and I particularly hate political jargon. Above all, my chief and most impassioned journalistic principle is you can't tell people how to think. She is optimistic about the future of Network and about the womens movement in Utah. What I basically believe is that people are absolutely Fathers want the best for their children. Mothers want the best for their children. Nobody wants to hurt anyone. When we start living in reality, when we start dealing with life as it really is, not life as we wish it were or as it used to be, people are going to do decent things. ra |