Interview Shelby Butler

I interviewed my friend; Shelby Butler, she is a 20 year old woman. She has had many life experiences that lead her to believe that she is a feminist. She thinks the society is male dominated, and women should be more recognized. She wants respect and equal rights. She thinks a woman can do whatever a man can do. She says, she thinks the most major problem is sexism, where woman aren’t recognized as much as a men. As she explains to me, there are many ways to define feminism, but it also has a lot to do with what type of life experiences you have went through. Shelby says it’s at least a common ground where women and men can give equal rights to people of inequality. She says, she mostly sees these inequalities of the domination of a man, because she is a white woman. She says, she understands that there are other inequalities for others, but she mostly sees it with men domination. Shelby says, that she talks with other men about this subject and that most of them are in denial of the situation and think women have the same rights as men do. In reality they really don’t, it’s proven in our society that males hold the power. In Peggy McIntosh’s articles she explains that, “Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women’s disadvantages” (McIntosh, 1988, p. 75).

            When she noticed that she started to become a feminist was around the age of 13. She says, she was more of a tom boy and outspoken. Shelby wanted to do the things that the boys do. She says, she is still the same to this day. I noticed that she doesn’t always “do gender”, in the appropriate way she is more masculine then feminine. She knows how to act like a lady, but most of the time she chooses not to. So she gets a lot of repercussions for not doing so. She explains to me that when she dresses more like a lady she is treated way different than when she is dressed more masculine. She told me an example that she has noticed is when she goes to the store and is dressed more like a women she notices more men opening the door for her, but when she dresses more like a man she notices that no one helps her with the door if so it rarely happens. In Judith Lorber’s article she states that, “Everyone does gender without thinking about it” (Lorber, 1994, p. 126). I agree with the author and Shelby, most people don’t even think about “doing gender”, because it was instilled into them as a child, and the people around you don’t notice because that’s what they think is normal. People think that women should be more feminine than masculine, but that doesn’t always happen.

            Shelby says that she loves being a feminist because she loves being independent and not having to depend on anyone besides herself. She considers herself hard working, and always trying to make lives for women easier. She also believes that there are a lot of downfalls of being a feminist. Like how sometimes when you become outspoken too much there are repercussions for those actions. Like how she complains to her manager that it’s unfair that the men get to do stock while she gets stuck cleaning the bathrooms. At her job the men do not have to clean the bathrooms, but the women are not allowed to do any stock at her place of employment. When she complains to her manager, the manager always explains to her that women should clean the bathrooms because it’s the easiest job, while the men should get the harder jobs. She believes that both of the tasks are hard and that either the man or the woman should perform them. From the article Judith Lorber written says, “Whatever a task is done by women it is considered easy, and where it is done by men it is considered difficult (Mencher 1998, 104) (Lorber, 1994, p. 127).  Lorber disagrees with this statement, but this is what men think about women. That women are weak willed and can’t do what men can do. Inequality will be a problem for many generations until everyone including the media change the preconceived notion of what being a woman is. Even though things have gotten a lot better it’s going to take many more to come even if that will ever happen.

Citations

Lorber, Judith. (1994). “The Social Construction of Gender.” 126-128.

McIntosh, Peggy. (1998). “White Privilege and Male Privilege.” 75-82.

Interview With Granny

   For some reason talking about love never gets old to me. I think it's the idea that everyone no matter the race, age, sex, religion has looked for love at some point. It's kind of like the one thing that ties us all together. In my opinion love has changed from what it was fifty years ago to what it is today. Which led me to my interview with Granny. Both of my biological grandmothers passed but God blessed me with a new grandmother in Mrs. Annie or Granny Annie as I affectionately call her.
   Granny Annie is now 72 years young and acts as if she's still 21. She's been married to Grand Pa Joe for 49 years. Granny Annie grew up in Virginia before moving to Michigan at the age of 20 which is where she met Grand Pa Joe. I always find it to be intriguing how so many older couples can stay together for 40 and 50 years so I decided to interview Granny Annie on love. When I asked her to tell me what she felt love was she smiled and said "a drug, that you can't get enough of". She went on to tell me how the definition of love changes with the times. Each generation has a different view on it, what it means, and how much they'll put up with to keep it once they've found it. Then I went on to explain to her some of my struggles I have had with love and asked her if she could give me any advice. She listened carefully and said "you know the biggest difference between you and me is patience. I come from a time where we didn't rush things, we weren't perfect but we understood there's no time limit on getting what you want". I found that interesting because there has been many reports on how short my generations attention span is due to all of this new technology and things of that nature we want everything immediately, we have no patience.
   We began to talk about her and Grand Pa Joe and how they went through rough times just like any other relationship but they forgave each other and recognized that the connection they had was worth going through a struggle here and there. Then I asked if one of those struggles was infidelity and a little surprised she said "Um for him I'm sure he did but he made it hard for me to find out and for me I couldn't do that, us girls weren't like that back in the day. We're not like those girls on those rap videos now". When she spoke about this she kind of referred to Grand Pa Joe as if it was okay if he had cheated, in a "oh he's just being a man" kind of way. This made me think about the double standard that exist in society that's discussed in our "Sex, Power, and Intimacy" section. Where it's okay for men to be promiscuous and its frowned upon if a women is. I asked her if she felt this was okay for there to be a double standard and she said "It's the way the world is or at least the world I grew up in". I don't think many females of my generation would view it in the same light. It was a different time when they were growing up, men had all the power. Women couldn't even vote and weren't smiled upon to vote. Being a woman in the 1930s meant being a wife and taking care of home and the children. Through the years things have changed, women have gained more rights and freedoms. I feel like today women express their sexual desires just as much as men and don't feel bad about doing so. In the end me and Granny Annie had a great talk and I learned a lot. Some of it I can apply to my life but because of the change of times some of it I can't.

Interview with my Grandmother

I conducted my interview with my eighty year old grandma, Sally.  I have to admit I was a little bit nervous asking her about some of her roles as a women and how they have changed (or not changed, for that matter).  First, I will give my grandma's background.  Sally was born in 1931, a depression baby, she tells me.  Her mother, a first generation German woman and her father mostly an English man.  She tells me that her mother always reminded her of all the different illnesses she contracted as a young girl- rickets, whooping cough, pneumonia, and a congenital heart murmur to name a few.  She remembers, as a child, her father telling her mother that she could not work.  I asked her why she had thought he said that and she told me that “it would have made him look like he couldn’t provide for the family”, even though they were not well off financially.

At the age of 17, my grandmother married my grandfather, Franklin B., to whom she is still presently married- 63 years now!  My grandma tells me that all women married young.  She had just graduated high school and was married the summer after graduation.  She knew even as a child that her life would be that of a housewife and stay at home mom, as my grandma stated, “it was what was expected of you.”  She did not get a chance to go to college and she could not think of any of her female friends that went on to college.

My grandma reflected on her high school years when girls took typing classes and boys were enrolled in mechanics classes.  I asked her if girls could take the mechanics classes, and she replied, “Girls wouldn’t think of doing it.”  Shortly after her marriage to my grandfather, the women’s rights movement came about.  I asked her what men’s attitudes were regarding the women’s movement.  My grandma stated that, “Most men didn’t care for it.  I think it scared a lot of them.”

Patriarchy was such a dominant characteristic of every family during that era, and my grandma’s reflections show just how prevalent they were.  Patriarchy is defined as a “system where males dominate because power and authority are in the hands of adult men” (Shaw, Lee p.5).  Feminism was something that was undoubtedly frowned upon in my grandparent’s era.   Especially the equality and justice of women as defined in our textbook.  Even to this day, I do not think I could get either of my grandparents to proclaim themselves feminists, without laughing.

As Baumgardner and Richards state in their article “A Day Without Feminism”, “..girls probably take home ec; boys take shop or small engine repair.  Boys who want to learn how to cook or sew on a button are out of luck, as are girls who want to learn to fix a car“(p. 31).  This was a restatement of what my grandma had told me about the type of gender stereotyped classes school kids were put in.  There were not any alternative options for kids who wanted to fit out of the gender stereotype.  My grandma had also mentioned that she would have loved to be on a track team, but they just did not offer it to females in school.  This is also reflected in our text “A Day Without Feminism”.  Girls do get physical-education and basketball, but not sports like soccer, running, nor are there any varsity sports for girls.

I learned a lot of new things about my grandparents and just how much they were affected by our very overbearing, patriarchal past.  It was interesting to see how my grandma put up with and sometimes subs ceded to society’s expectations.  Will I let this negatively change my perspective towards my grandparents?  No, never.  Do I wish my grandma was given more opportunities as a woman in her generation?  Yes, of course.  I think the chains of patriarchy held back my grandma and many other women from becoming all that they could and wanted to be.

Works Cited:

Baumgardner, J., & Richards, A. (2000). A day without feminism. In S. Shaw & J. Lee (Eds.), Women's voices feminist visions classic and contemporary readings (pp. 30-33). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Baumgardner, J., & Richards, A. (2009). Women's voices feminist visions classic and contemporary readings. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Sally B. - phone number available upon request.

Interview with my grandmother

For this blog entry I chose to interview my grandmother. Kathryn B. was born on February 18, 1942 in a small town outside of Hershey, PA. She grew up in a small home with her Mom and Dad and three older brothers. When I asked about her childhood she mostly talked about how she was always trying to hang out with her brothers but they rarely wanted her around because she was so young. Some of her favorite memories included going to Hershey with her family and driving through Pennsylvania. Her mother stayed at home and my grandmother helped around the house and went to school. When she was 12, they moved to Detroit, Michigan where her father had a job playing the trumpet for a local band. My grandmother loved to go watch him play and drink sodas with her best friend. When she was a teenager she got a job as a soda jerk downtown at the Hudson store. Her brother still did not want to hang out with her but she still tagged along because she was older then. I asked my grandmother to tell me more about her role in the house and what her mom did. She said that she always helped with cooking and cleaning but she also had her own job and did her own thing. After she graduated from high school, my grandmother went to Wayne State University to attend their nursing program. She was only in the program for a couple weeks; she left after being heartbroken by patients who would come into her life and go. Also, the blood was too much for her stomach to handle. After she dropped out of the nursing program my grandmother decided to get a job but unfortunately she did not have a lot of skills. She first worked as a switch operator but grew tired of that job. After she took a couple prep courses she got a job with Ford Motor Company, where she worked for over 40 years.
All of this surprised me because she lived a normal teenage life like I sort of am doing. She did not get married right after high school and she said that was because she wanted to travel the world. This reminded me of the article in class “The Feminine Mystique.” My grandmother worked at the Ford Motor Company first as a secretary. She mentioned that that was a typical job for someone with her skills; they also mentioned this in the article “A Day Without Feminism.” Although she tried to go to college and finish with a degree, she found that it was too hard to work full time and go to school. After she started at Ford Motor Company she met her husband Dudley. They had one child, Michael, and then my grandmother became pregnant with my mother, Kathy. Unfortunately, my grandfather left my grandmother when she was pregnant with my mother. This was hard for my grandma because she had to work full time and take care of two very young children. This was not typical back in those times; there were not a lot of single mothers. My grandmother said that she was very busy but still found time to play cards and drink gin with her friends. What helped her most was moving in with her brother’s ex-wife who also had children. The two women worked together to take care of their children.

I was proud to know how strong and hard working my grandmother was in order to take care of her family, especially since she was living a different life than most women in that era. She said that she found her life to be very tough but wonderful at the same time. Now that she is older, she is now retired and loves to travel. Her favorite things to do are shopping, talking and traveling. Just like me! Now my grandmother is living a typical grandmother life. She is always cooking and taking care of our family. My uncle is married but has no children of his own but my cousins from his wife’s side have children, who my grandma loves to spoil. Although I am an adult now, she still loves to spoil me like I am still her little granddaughter. Her plans for the future are to keep fit and healthy and to go back to Australia.
I believe that my grandmother is a very strong woman for dealing with what she had to back when she was a mother. Not only was she a homemaker but she was a full time employee at a booming company. She rose from being a secretary to working along with the top CEOs of the company which was not typical during that era. There were some similar things from our readings that my grandmother did but mostly she had a different lifestyle that she loved.

Interview with Dorothy Jean

Interview with Dorothy Jean

                        When I was twenty, I was so glad to move on with my life and get my own apartment. I was the oldest girl of seven children and had a lot of family responsibility. Little did I know how this would help and mold me to become the strong women that I have been now for sixty years.  So I thank my mother, and it is true that when you are a mother and older you respect your own mother for all she was and did for you and your family while growing up. However, she is unable to say those words about her mother.

            I only knew bits and pieces of my moms childhood until I had a career, was on my own and married. Sharing her childhood memories with her own children was something she never allowed herself to do. We did not know her deep secrets or even suspect any parts of her life were to dark to share. Mom, with a heart of gold and a laugh so spontaneous she would make you start laughing just watching her. She was an only child; left by her own mother at the age of eleven with a man she thought was her father. Turned out he was not. Eighty years old now. She will never know who her father was. This really bothers her. She forgave her mother when she showed up in her life when I was a baby and took care of her until she passed away. I loved my grandma, until I knew how she had deserted and treated my mother as a child. My grandma was from a family of twelve children, born to German immigrants. Her father wanted the girls of the family out the house early, being of no use to him in their family business. He did not care what became of them and her mother was too busy and had no choices, like Dorothy Allison quoted her mother saying in A Question Of Class (79). That’s the way my mom tells the story anyway. I am the only child in our family that knows this story. Hate is exhausting and my mother has chosen love, even though I believe she learned it from my dad and his family. They have been married for sixty-six years. That’s right, she was fourteen when they got married. They took a train down South and then returned to Michigan to tell my father’s family. My grandparents took them in and gave them their own space even with their own family of six children. They finished school and my father worked hard at Greenfield Village where he eventually became the glassblower. My mom graduated valedictorian of her class and they started a family soon after. Happy ending after as they soak up the sun in Arizona this February 2012.

            My mom wishes she had gone to college. The story speaks for itself as to why this wasn’t possible. It was also an era when women pursuing an education were frowned upon. My mom was happy, and did not really think about an education or job for years to come. Her plate was full in every way. More than she had ever imagined as she stood outside in the cold rain in only her nightgown, a few years before this time. Pushed out of the house one night and the door locked behind her as she was told that she was a burden that no one wanted anymore. She ran to her neighbors, my grandparent’s house. They took her in and she never returned to a house that had never wanted her. You don’t know that when you “live” there. It isn’t until you witness life in a home that reality stuns you, and you begin over.

            My mom taught herself shorthand and read as often as she could while raising seven children. Her English grammar is impeccable and my siblings and I mock how she is always correcting us and other people. It is our inside joke, but actually when she is not around, we find ourselves correcting each other’s children. When her last two children were home and in high school, she became employed as a secretary for an Intermediate School. It is one of the highlights of her life. When she has to write down her occupation on a form, she is proud to list Secretary rather than retired or housewife. The word regret will not be used when wishing her education could have extended beyond high school, but she made sure that all of her children went to college and claimed their right to an education and followed our passions. (23) I actually read her that paragraph from our reading and she loved it. I obtained my Associate’s Degree early on and she still proudly tells people how I had my degree by the age of twenty. You can only imagine how proud she of me now. Preaching to all her grandchildren about college is at the top of her list, but never making it about herself. Her past and that house are not relevant to the life she chose to never look back upon. Life for my mom is living for the day and being all you can right now. I believe she is a feminist who has beat the system of inequality for women not protected by their own mother’s or society.

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Rich Adrienne, “Claiming an Education”, 1979. Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions, 2012

Allison Dorothy, “A Question of Class”. Identities and Social Locations: Who Am I, Who Are My People?          

 Susan 517 588 1265 

Blog #1

                                                                 Blog #1

My mother was born in 1952 and grew up around the times when gender discrimination hindered woman’s lives. She did not live a stereotypical life of the 1960’s. Under unfortunate circumstances my grandmother had to divorce her husband during an era when it was looked down upon. My grandmother had to support her family and her brother, who was blind, on her own income. My mother is now a homemaker who luckily was given the choice to stay at home and raise a family. During my interview with her I learned about her growing up with a single parent and the obstacles of having a career for both my mother and my grandmother.

 Growing up my mother was the only child from a divorced family. Amongst her peers most of her classmates and neighbors had a nuclear family. In my mother’s generation most adults looked down upon divorce, especially Catholics. All the stay-at-home mothers on my mother’s street got together often to socialize and play cards, while my grandmother was away at work. On Sundays all the families would go out for the afternoon, but my mother had to stay in with her uncle, who was a blind World War ll veteran, since her mother was working the late shift.  

In, “A Day without Feminism,” Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards explain that in 1970 there were no child-care centers. Therefore, women were more inclined to stay at home with their children (31). This explains the hardship my grandmother went through as a single parent trying to work and take care of her child. My mother stated that when my grandmother had no one to watch my mother, she would be forced to bring her to work, potentially jeopardizing a climb in her career.  The article also stated that when a couple would divorce back in 1970 one person had to be at fault, and that if a father asked for custody he would receive it. In my grandmother’s case, her husband was at fault being that he was an abusive alcoholic. From this my grandmother received the house along with custody of my mother.

            After the divorce, my grandmother took classes at Wayne State University to become a housekeeping supervisor at a hospital in downtown Detroit. From watching her own mother struggle as a single working woman, my mother decided when her family became stable enough on one income, she would be a full time home-maker. Her only job was working on the assembly line at Ford, sewing the car seats. She was pushed to quit since Ford would not give her another maternity leave after already having two children. After she quit, she became a stay at home mother as she always aspired to be, and happily raised three children, and was able to be there every moment for them.

            Both my mother and my grandmother worked a stereotypical female job, and only worked alongside women. In, “A Day without Feminism,” Baumgardner and Amy Richards talk about how women were predominantly secretaries, domestic workers, or worked in low waged service jobs, which relates to my mothers and grandmothers occupation as a factory worker and a housekeeper (32). Women were stuck at these jobs because of their gender roles. In, “The Social Construction of Gender,” Judith Lorber explains about the stratification system and how men are ranked higher than women, describing how job roles are still gendered (127). My mother did the domestic labor and child rearing because she was more suitable to do so, in her situation. My mother never went to college and did not want to work while raising a family. Since her job paid less than my father’s it was obvious that she would be the one to stay home.  

            From this assignment I learned that the articles we read are an exaggerated perspective from what actually happened. When I asked my mother if she felt that she was ever discriminated because of her gender, she responded no. On the other hand when I picked apart the interview and asked questions beyond what she answered, I was able to notice a few overlooked situations that proved the existence of discrimination. I was really surprised how much stigma there was on divorce back then, and how far we have come in present day. I am proud that my grandmother was successful in life and overcame obstacles put in her way, and I am also thankful for having a mother who was able to stay at home and be there for me throughout my life.

           
 

Works Cited

Baumgardner, Jennifer and Richards, Amy. “A Day without Feminism.” In Women’s Voices,

 Feminist Visions.  2010.

Lorber, Judith. “The Social Construction of Gender.” In Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions.

 2010.


Jeanne Coletti 586-610-2509

Interview With My Grandmother

For this blog I chose to interview my grandma, Pamela Kynaston. She was born in 1946 and raised in Tuscan, Arizona. I chose her mostly because she is a great story teller, and also because she grew up in a smaller city in an area of the US that I'm not really familiar with. During the interview I mostly asked about her childhood through high school and early adulthood. 
     My grandma is the oldest of three children; herself and her younger brothers. The first thing I asked her was if she was more of a girly-girl or a tomboy. She quickly replied that she was definitely a tomboy. She talked about how much she liked to play outside, and how she wasn't too interested in dolls. She had a little white mouse for a pet and used it to terrorize her grandmother. It was not much of a surprise to hear that my grandma was like that - usually it was more acceptable for a girl to be a tomboy, but not so much for a boy to be girly. I expected that, because of this, she spent a lot of time playing with her brothers, but she said that they were pests and she really did not like to be around them when they were young. The most interesting thing I learned about all this is that my great grandmother was absolutely fine with my grandma playing in the dirt and wearing overalls instead of dresses. In fact, my great grandmother worked outside of the home a lot, which at the time was looked down on. This was especially true for my great grandma, as she was a part of the Mormon Church, and all women of that group were supposed to stay home, have babies and raise them - they were never to work. 
     I was not aware of these things about my great grandma, but with this new information I proceeded to ask if my great grandma had been a feminist. My grandma replied, "No, I don't think she would have called herself that. But my mom was very against the idea that all women should stay home and be completely dependent on their husbands financially. She was the youngest of 7 kids, so she learned to become independent at a very young age." So my great grandma was probably an advocate of women's rights, but maybe not a feminist. I told my grandma that great grandma Trudy must have been a pretty cool lady.
     Even moving away from childhood, my grandma's experiences with her sex, race, and gender are sort of outside the norm of what we have been learning is generally true. Not only was her mother supportive of women's rights, but she was supportive of my grandma being whoever she wanted to be. Also, my grandma went to a high school in Tuscan where white students were the minority. Her school consisted mostly of colored students, specifically black and Hispanic. My grandmother never felt any animosity or overall prejudice towards colored people, and felt that, from what she could remember, everyone was treated pretty equally. . 
     Moving ahead in her life, I asked my grandma about college and different career choices she had. She responded that at first she never had to worry about what she wanted to do because she wanted to be a nurse. She stated that generally, if a woman was going to go to college, they would go for teaching or for nursing. My grandma originally wanted to go to a two-year nursing school, mostly because she was more of a C and B student and wasn't fond of general curriculum classes. However, her father pressured her to go to the 4-year university so that she could also teach if she wanted to. Unfortunately, my grandma did pretty well in her nursing classes, but not so well with the others. She became frustrated and eventually dropped out. She mentioned that her dad was very strict with her, and had many plans for what he wanted her future to be. While, again, it is a little different for this time period for the father to pressure his daughter into more school, my grandma insists that she would have become a nurse if she had gone to the school she first wanted to attend. 
     Finally, we move into my grandma's young adulthood. She and my grandfather got married at ages 19 and 20 - they've been best friends since they were 10, and were also high school sweethearts. At this time my grandma had gone to a year of business school, but again, had to drop out because of the marriage. I asked her if this was something she was pressured to do or if it was just necessary. She said that not only was it necessary, but it was also the norm. My grandpa was going to college, and if they wanted to be married and live on their own, my grandma was going to have to work to put my grandpa through school. She got a job as a secretary, and said it worked out very well. Unfortunately, because of the way things were, my grandma, a woman, had to put a man's dreams ahead of her own. 
     My grandma said that some of her happiest moments in life were dating my grandpa and leaving the house she grew up in. She said that her two younger brothers got a lot of their parent's attention because one was sickly and the other was very, very smart. Not only that, but as I mentioned before, her father was very strict with her, probably because of her sex; he did not even allow her to ride the bus to school until it was no longer possible for her to be driven there. She was so excited to be with my grandfather and finally have someone pay attention to her, and so excited to be on her own and make her own rules. She is grateful to her mother for not pushing her to be the stereotypical obedient, quiet, baby-machine woman of that time. She and my grandpa have always both worked hard as a team, even when they did start having children. 
     Learning more about my grandma's history and her and my great grandmother's personalities was very enlightening, and showed me that there is always an exception to the rule. I mostly thought about the "Feminine Mystique" excerpt, about how all women were supposed to live a certain way: skip college, get married, have children, care for children, etc. This idea of a perfect life was especially directed at white women. However, in most respects, my grandma went against the grain. I do not believe she experienced the problem with no name. I also compared almost everything she said with the article, "A Day Without Feminism," and found that some things were true, but for the most part, my grandma did not have many spectacular privileges or oppressions. And even though that sounds almost boring, I know my grandma had and has a great life with a wonderful family, and always, always, great stories. 

Blog 1: Interview Project; Interview an older woman

My choice for the first blog project was to interview an older woman. I decided on this because the other option left me with very limited resources because I don’t really know any active feminist. When deciding on who to interview I had several women to consider and the one I chose was my mother and one of the main reasons I chose her was because I thought this would be a good way for me to learn more about her and how she became who she is today. My mom is 71 years old, she was born in 1940 and her childhood was full of a mixture of happy and sad events. My mom was raised very poor, so she didn’t have all the “normal” things that kids had growing up. Her and her mother moved a lot and struggled to have food to eat. They didn’t have a car, or phone and they either walked or rode a bus to where they needed to go.  As she grew up and was in high school, she got a job in a department store to help to pay for things. She wasn’t in too many activities but the ones she did participate in were the traditional female activities, baton, cheerleading, acting, band. They didn’t have girls sports in her high school, which reminded me of one of our readings, A Day Without Feminism and even though that story was based on the life in the 70’s there were multiple similarities to my mother’s time. I quote, “The only prestigious physical activity for girls is cheerleading, or becoming a drum majorette” (Baumgardner & Richards, p.31).

 My mother did not attend college, it was not an option, they were too poor and it was not the “norm” at that time to go to college after high school, only the privileged went to college. And that statement from my mother is very consistent to a lot of the readings so far. My mom graduated high school at 17 years old, by 18 she was married and she had four kids in a very short period of time, she says this is what was considered the way of life for women then. This statement takes me to the reading Excerpts from The Feminine Mystique(1963), “By the end of the nineteen-fifties, the average marriage age of women in America dropped to 20, and was still dropping, into the teens. Fourteen million girls were engaged by 17” (Friedan, p.1). She said that for 10 years she did not work, she just raised her kids and kept the home, all of my brothers and sisters are very close in age and the reason my mom says is because they were Catholic and didn’t believe in birth control and that is what she was meant to do was to have babies. As the kids grew, she finally got her first real job as a personnel assistant; without any kind of degree, just her high school certificate, which reminded me of the reading The Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls Conference, 1848; where it is stated the “he has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her” (Staton, p 2). She progressed from one level to another, becoming the director of human resources and the benefits manager, all without any education beyond a high school diploma and her employer did not required her to gain any even though she kept getting promotions. She would get her certifications on her own accord to stay current with the times. She was in that profession for 28 years, then moved on to the insurance field and is currently still in that profession.

My mother is a woman that was raised in an era where women weren’t considered to be deserving of education, sports, or any other things that were deemed to be a “mans” thing. She followed the traditional rules of society and what women were meant to do and be according to society. When I asked her if there was anything she wished or would have done different she replied, no that is what I knew and loved.

Works Citied

Baumgardne,r Jennifer and Richards, Amy. A Day Without Feminism. 2000

Friedan, Betty. Excerpts from The Feminine Mystique. 1963

            Staton Cady, Elizabeth. Modern History Sourcebook: The Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca
                 Falls Conference. 1848

                Rochelle Foghino. 269-767-7700