“That all pretensions to being self-made hide the reciprocal truth, that we have unpayable debts to the world around us, to our community, to our forebears, to the ancients, to nature, to the gods.” 

 Author: Lewis Hyde

International Women's Day is celebrated annually on March 8th. It offers an opportunity to reflect on progress made.

My maternal grandmother was born toward the end of the nineteenth century in 1887.  She had an elementary education and possibly high school, but no professional training of any kind.  College was almost unheard of for women then.  (By 1900, less than 3% of women went to college.)  She married, learned homemaking skills, and had seven children, one of whom died of a childhood illness almost unheard of in these days of modern medicine.  Her husband abandoned the family in the midst of the Depression in 1936 when the youngest child was still in elementary school. She was left with six children to feed, no income, and no marketable skills. On top of that, middle-class married women seeking employment during the Depression were often met with hostility. In the 1930s, 26 of 48 states had laws prohibiting their employment. Women who were married at that time had to surrender many of their rights to their husbands, including the right to own property.)  Fortunately for the family, she was able to rely on her brother for enough financial support to get by.  After his death, her children went to work to help support the family. To the day she died, she had few possessions of her own and lived with her oldest daughter’s family. 

My mother was born in 1920, the year women in the US were finally given the right to vote. As a young girl, the family had little money, but she proved to be a talented dancer, winning a scholarship to study at a prestigious studio in Manhattan.  She was 16 years old when her father walked out.  Despite the financial support of her uncle and a job taken by her older sister, the straits the family were left in necessitated her dropping out of high school in her senior year and going out to work. Despite that, she continued dancing and won a spot to appear at the New York World’s Fair of 1939.  She later returned to night school and obtained her high school diploma. Afterwards, she obtained a certificate from a business school which allowed her to work as a secretary for a male executive. At the beginning of World War II, she continued dancing with the USO. She also volunteered with the New York Auxiliary Fire Department run by the U.S. Army, patrolling the streets at night to check for blackouts when the sirens rang. College was neither affordable nor was it considered an option by her. (Women's magazines of that era promoted the virtues of motherhood and homemaking, condemning those who became involved in areas outside the women's sphere. The number of women in college was still less than 10% of the population.)  During the war, she married my father and had six children.  My father was a man of his time (despite his own college education), in that he believed the man should be the sole provider.  He didn’t want my mother to work outside the home. 

I was the first female in both my father and mother’s families to continue her education and receive a college degree.  My bachelor’s degree was received in 1971 from a school founded in 1870 but which only opened its doors to women in the 1950’s! My father felt that a college education was an important goal—for his sons.  He believed that more education was wasted on girls because they would just marry and become mothers.  My mother took pains to help me with my studies and felt that a college education would be beneficial for me— as long as it prepared me for a traditional ‘woman’s career’ like nursing or teaching.  She made it clear that finding a husband should be my first priority.  Though my father was skeptical of the value of a college diploma for me, he didn’t prevent me from pursuing it as long as I paid for it through scholarships and jobs. In later years, he came to appreciate that I was able to have many outside interests, be a mother, and have a teaching career.  My husband, for his part, has always supported my need to learn and I think he finds me a more interesting person because of it.  

My daughter is also a college graduate, and my husband and I always told her she could be whatever she aspired to. From the beginning, we had high expectations for both she and her brother to become intelligent adults who could contribute to society— meaning we wished for BOTH of them to get good educations and develop many interests and skills. We didn’t expect them to finance college themselves, although both had part-time jobs during those years to supplement their expenses. My daughter now has a career she enjoys and for which she’s paid no less than a male with the same expertise. She lives in a society where she can marry if she chooses but is under no pressure to do so and can support herself.  By law, she CANNOT be fired from her job for either marrying or having children.