Public Meeting
May, 19??
Will Women in Lemuria Only Be Allowed Certain Jobs?
QUESTION: I noticed in reading your book something that puzzles me because the liberation of women in the last thirty, forty years in this country, and probably it’s spreading all over the world, is I noticed about this City of God after the turn of the century, when that’s formed, it seems like there’s a statement in there that’s contrary to everything that’s happening to women now. It implies that women are going to be nothing but wives and raising families and not working like they are now.
RICHARD KIENINGER: Nothing but? I think people have been depending for a long, long time on good motherhood in order to —
Q: I know, but how are you going to get women to change the way they are now when they’re invading all kinds of things in society and different positions?
RK: I’m not going to try to do that. Not me.
Development of
Succeeding Generation is Most Important
Q: What is going to influence them to give up this idea?
RK: I think one of the things that I need to clear up is that the need for women to be educated equivalent to what men are educated is very, very important. In developing a civilization, it isn’t just developing technology and making more money and having more comforts that are important, in the development of that society; it’s the development of young people to new capabilities, the ability to be happy, to have a grasp of what the Universe is like because they’ve been developed to have high intelligence. That requires the efforts of men and women both. Now, women have been driven into the work place by the fact that you can’t make a living as a family unless the husband as a professional is making very good money, and even then, they sometimes seem like they’re not able to make ends meet. Men don’t like to have to work 45, 80 hours a week. 20 hours a week would probably be more comfortable, because then you could spend time with people whom you like rather than having to be in a sales position or a manufacturing position day in, day out. I don’t know that women necessarily want to be in industry or in the professions any more than men do. Most men that I know would be much happier not having to spend so many long hours doing what they have to do in order to provide for their families. As a matter of fact, most of them complain that they’re spending so much time providing for their families, they don’t have a chance to be with their families, I have read so many figures from so many places of how much direct taxes, hidden taxes and interest on loans that people take up, particularity to buy their home, consume of a person’s income that if those were kept down to a minimum, then a person would really not have to work more than about twelve hours a week to support his family, his wife and children, much as it was back in the early part of this century. Women have every right to be in the professions, to get all of the education that they want, to work in laboratories, to be doctors. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that you do that sort of thing before your children are born and after your children are grown. With people living into their 70’s these days, there’s no reason why a person can’t take off, say 16 years, to raise their children, maybe twenty years to raise two children, and then go back to what they were doing. I think a person, man or woman, is more stimulated mentally by actually getting out and doing things with other people in sort of a professional way. I don’t know that any man or woman should have to pick food out in the fields for 16 hours a day, from sun up to sundown; that’s inhuman, so far as I’m concerned, particularly since there’s machinery that can be developed to do most of those kinds of things anyhow. I don’t know that people feel all that enlightened banging away at whatever they’re supposed to do in a factory for eight hours a day. I mean, that’s fatiguing and it’s almost demeaning in some ways. The world will never work in such a way that you get something for nothing. You do have to work, you have to create, you have to gather things which are available from -
What Will Make Women Go
Back to Being Family Caretakers
Q: But what puzzles me in the book, Richard, is the fact that it is implied that women are going to give up all that they’ve accumulated now, as far as professions, positions and everything, and going back to being nothing but housewives and taking care of the family, and I just wonder how women are going to be influenced to do that when they’re working in just the opposite way now.
RK: I think the pendulum will swing back. I think women are getting tired of some of the stuff that they have to put up with day in, day out.
Q: They seem pretty, you know, all for the way it’s going right now.
RK: Why should they be in the position where they don’t get as much money for the same job as their husbands?
Q: Well, that’s right; I agree with you there.
RK: And I think that women have demonstrated that they’re as capable of doing the things that men have been traditionally doing for along, long time, maybe even better, more conscientiously, perhaps. I think they’ve proven all of those kinds of things already. Women I know hate to get up and go through the same routine and drive to work and do the things they have to do and then come back again and maybe have to make dinner for themselves when they come home. It’s not all that fun. They’re entitled to have the same —— they’re human beings, equivalent to what men are. Men are different in some ways; women are different in some ways. But mentally we’re created the same, and I think that’s the basic thing. Jews believed up to maybe 100 years ago that women didn’t even have souls. So much of our Christian philosophy is based on the ideas of Paul, who was a Pharisee and spoke primarily of Jewish concepts to his parishioners, and those kinds of attitudes, I should think anybody would rankle under. That kind of stuff should be gone forever, I hope. But as human Egos, we are all created identical. God doesn’t see a difference. Jesus ran into all kinds of criticism because he treated women essentially as equals of men, and even his own apostles were kind of taken aback by that. They were having to put up with all kinds of razzing from people who were not followers of Christ about their accepting women as equals.
Q: Maybe I haven’t made myself quite clear, I have nothing against women doing anything they want to, as far as I’m concerned. The more they do, the better it is for them, mentally and physically. What I mean is that in the book it states that women are going back to doing nothing but being wives and family raisers, and I wonder, with this surge now that’s sweeping the entire world of women’s liberation, will the women accept anything like that again?
Woman 1: May I answer that? Not everyone is going to the Nation of God. So in the end. probably the only ones that will be attracted to it or choose it would be women that could work into a situation like that. You see this library here? This is what women with children under six, they spend hours a day working with their children and teaching their children. There’s a lot more now to childrearing than there used to be. So that’s part of the answer right there.
Woman 2: I guess I have something, too. It seems that in the book, it was stated that women would have only a few places that they could work. In this one place, it said that they could only work in the women’s apparel mart, or as teachers and as nurses, and I have a question about that. However, I would think that nursing, maybe in a more enlightened society, would cover all of the healing arts, and that’s quite a bit. Almost everybody that I know is into healing now, and so if that were the case, you wouldn’t have just male doctors. And also, teaching, I think, will be elevated to a higher position than it is now. It will be an honor to be a teacher, and I think men and women will be teachers of the children. So that’ll take care of a lot of professions, and otherwise, you know, a lot of business now is nothing but his silly stock market schemes and marketing schemes that are all pretty much houses built on sand. If you take away a lot of the technology that’s kind of stupid, like a lot of laboratory testing and things, then it just -- I think there will be women who will want to be scientists, and I question that, so may they can further that through what they call nursing or something. I don’t know.
Q: You mean women shouldn’t be scientists?
Woman 2: No, I believe they should, but I’m just wondering how the Brotherhoods would answer that.
RK: Well, if you will recall, the teachers who spoke with me suggested that women should not marry before their late 20’s and men should not marry before their early 30’s. So what were women going to do from the time that they’re, say, 18, ‘til they’re 28? Just sit around at home and sew samplers or something like that?
Woman 2: Some may want to be scientists and botanists and biologists and things.
RK: But it’s fun to do that for about ten years , but everything gets old after about ten years, even raising children. But there’s no way out of that one, once you get started in that direction.
Woman 1: So what you were saying, essentially earlier, is that a lot of things they won’t be doing for pay.
RK: Correct.
Woman 1: They would be scientists, but they wouldn’t have to go out and earn their living necessarily, or be out in the rat race.
Man
1: I was just going to comment
on the same thing that
RK: Right, particularly if he is in a governmental-type position.
Man 1: So they can just fill in for him if he is unable to attend or to go work for some reason.
RK: They’re truly equals.
Man 1: So there is an incredible quality of education and ability that is hard for us to imagine in this kind of cultural setting.
RK:
Particularly in this day and age, where the
governmental policies have really been to diminish the effectiveness of the
educational system so that children are really just required to become
technicians, not part of the elite who are in a position of making decisions of
which way the government or industry goes. You know, that’s
reserved for those whose families are already up there. There
was in the newspaper a sample test that was given to people who graduated
from grammar school just a century ago. It was just basic kinds of things about
geography, mathematics, grammar and things of that sort. They found that most
college graduates were lucky if they answered 50% of those questions correctly,
and this was normally answered by 13 and 14 year-olds.
They were expected to know those answers. If they were
going to go to high school, they had to pass that test. I don’t know what the
educational system is doing or why it’s fallen to such a low state, but just about
everywhere in the world other than the United States, the children, if they are
going to school, which is considered a privilege, are accomplishing a great
deal more academically than they are in this country. That seems to be the
plan. I think when real education takes place, and Dr. White spoke to me
several times about my disappointment of how little I seemed to get out of
college, it was just kind of a more intense repeat of what I got in high
school, he said there has to be a university established, perhaps in the Nation
of God. I thought it was going to be earlier than that. But
obviously, it hasn’t been, where people are really going to learn something.
That doesn’t seem to be happening today. As a matter of fact, 50% of the seniors in this particular