By Clare Marie Celano
Do the daughters we raised in the 1980s take for granted what it took to get them to the point where they are today?
Today’s world is miles away from the one I grew up in, where a female U.S. president wasn’t even a thought on most women’s dream radar. And, whether she is your choice or not, the fact that Hillary Clinton is the Democratic candidate for the U.S. presidency is a milestone for women, something unheard of when I was young.
Progress for our daughters outside the hearth and home has taken place, but it’s not enough if they are not well versed in the long path traveled to get them there.
“Binge” watching the series “Mad Men” brought it all back — the unfairness, the fight to the top, what women did for love and the trip up that proverbial ladder to that corner office, along with the successes and failures we have been privy to as women raised in the 1960s — what can be referred to, for us, as the “Dark Ages.” And, I don’t think our daughters have a clue.
“Mad Men” takes place in the 1960s and 1970s and centers around an advertising agency, money, power, ambition and the rise to the top. It also focuses on women trying to make it in a man’s world during the era of Civil Rights, the Vietnam War and the birth of Women’s Rights — the era I grew up in.
Watching the show reminded me it was every bit a “man’s world” back then, but bit by bit women were becoming part of it, albeit sometimes clawing their way up the ladder — by whatever means they could muster.
Many of us, including me, stood by, watched, waited and hoped, while others did the hard work for us. Too afraid were we to rise up and speak our mind for fear of repercussions in our homes, our families and our workplace.
Looking back, I remember things my girls will, fortunately, never have to deal with, things like getting terminated from a job for being pregnant. Until the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978, women could be fired from their workplace for being pregnant.
In 1970, I was pregnant with my first child and was forced to take maternity leave when 6 months pregnant. Many places would not allow women to work past a certain month whether you were capable or not.
Today, women can go from the board room or from a waitress job at the diner to the delivery room if they choose to.
In 1972, the mortgage broker refused to take my decent full-time salary into consideration along with my husband’s admittedly bigger one. The theory was women would work for a while, have kids, quit and no longer contribute to the mortgage. Can you imagine trying to get away with that today?
Women of my generation raised our daughters to believe they could do anything, be anything, have everything, but did we tell them enough about what the world was like before they were born, when we were young and unafraid. I know I didn’t.
We changed the world for future generations of women, but I’m not sure our daughters understand this – and maybe it’s our fault. The table was already set for them when they arrived for dinner.
More and more women today are entering nontraditional roles, but those of us over 60 came from a world when this wasn’t even remotely possible.
Case in point, the U.S. Army graduated its first two females from U.S. Army Ranger School in 2015, according to an August 2015 article retrieved from www.npr.org.
Capt. Kristen Griest, 26, and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver, 25, became the first women ever to successfully complete the U.S. Army’s Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia. And they completed the course to the same standards as their 94 male classmates.
Put that up against the fact that women couldn’t get an Ivy League education in the past. Yale and Princeton didn’t accept female students until 1969. Harvard didn’t admit women until 1977.
In the 1960s, a bank could refuse to issue a credit card to an unmarried woman. Even a married woman needed a husband as the primary applicant. As recently as the 1970s, credit cards in many cases were issued with only a husband’s signature. It was not until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 that it became illegal to refuse a credit card to a woman based on her gender.
In some states, women were not even allowed to participate in jury duty back then.
According to an August 2014 article retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/living/sixties-women-5-things/
“It wasn’t until 1973 that women could serve on juries in all 50 states.”
The rationale?
“Women were too fragile to hear the grisly details of crimes and too sympathetic by nature to be able to remain objective about those accused of offenses.”
The article also states that in 1960, the birth control pill was approved for use as a contraceptive, but was illegal in some states and could be prescribed only to married women “for purposes of family planning, and not all pharmacies stocked it.”
Additionally, up until 1975, every state had a “marital exemption” that allowed a husband to rape his wife without fear of legal consequences.
It wasn’t until 1993, and “largely in response to the women’s rights and equality movement,” every state and the District of Columbia had passed laws against marital rape, according to www.criminaldefenselawyer.com.
The news is good these days though, and Clinton’s presidential nomination proves that. There are also lots of little signs that things have changed.
LEGO introduced a line of female scientist playsets, creating toys for females in professions such as oceanographer, aerospace engineer and astronaut, among others.
I recently saw a little girl about 4, dressed as “Supergirl,” a new choice of dress-up for girls which can function beautifully alongside a Disney princess.
We just want to have the same choices and opportunities men have always had — and our daughters need to know it.
Clare Marie Celano is a Greater Media Newspapers correspondent.
