Mead Suggest Female Options

"The price exacted from an educated woman who associates with men and is granted intellectual freedom has always been maternity," Margaret Mead, anthropologist and author, said last night to a capacity audience at Rindge Tech Auditorium during a speech on "Options for Freer Women."

Limited Options

"Women are forced to make a choice," Mead continued, "of marriage and parenthood versus career and autonomy. Women are left with limited options." She said that, until fairly recently, women compromised, taking subordinate positions.

Since World War II, she said, "the number of well-educated, motivated women has dropped substantially. We've been setting up a way of life where women are suburban scullery maids, wait-ing for the plumber and living totally isolated."

"It was discovered in the 1960's that the best source of high-level cheap labor is women," Mead said. "And women had been advised that the more you succeed, the less attractive you are."

Anti-Lib

When asked her opinion of the Women's Liberation Movement, Mead said, "I think it's fiction. There never has been a matriarchal society." Mead was questioned further by members of the audience who implied that she did not understand the feminist movement.

"American men aren't really patriarchs," she maintained. "They're downtrodden. The only power they have is over their wives." Advising women to convince men that sex roles need to be changed, she said, "the oppressed always gain power from their oppressors."

Alternative Style

Mead proposed an alternative life style to that of isolated nuclear families: "clustering residential communities," which would include people of all ages, married and unmarried, who would have access to one another and share in a community. "There just aren't enough options for anyone today," she said.

Mead said that marriage in itself should not be a goal, nor should women be forced to take their husband's names. "But at Harvard, you can't get a degree with your own name if you're married," she said.