Tag: Women’s Rights

On a Tough Job Market

Sandy completed her university education and was ready to begin her career. A bright and ambitious young woman, she had entered Stanford University at the tender age of 16 in 1946, one of the few women at that time to be in higher education. Most girls her age were looking for a serviceman who had recently returned from the recently ended World War 2 and wanting to get the house in the suburbs and the 2.5 kids and start living the American Dream. Sandy’s dreams were therefore different than those of her peers, and that trait would be a touchstone for her for all of her life.

Born on a farm in Texas, she was raised with her siblings on a large cattle ranch and farm her father had purchased not too far from Duncan, Arizona. While the land provided a comfortable income, young Sandy didn’t grow up a spoiled girl; instead, she learned hard work on the farm, and was able to take care of herself while out on horseback, shooting small game, and even learning how to do some basic automobile maintenance–all things that girls her age didn’t know at that time. And, when her undergraduate studies were finished, Sandy decided to go to law school, also at Stanford.

It was right before she graduated that she met the love of her life, a man named John. And, even though John was a year behind her in law school, the pair got married half a year after Sandy graduated with her law degree. It was then that Sandy came face-to-face with the cruel reality of the post-war American business world–no one wanted to hire a female lawyer. The competition was fierce because the mandated priorities for hiring lawyers at that time was to give those jobs to returning GIs who were attorneys. It was a man’s world, law was.

And what Sandy quickly discovered was that law offices were incredibly eager to hire a woman with a law degree–as a legal secretary only. That was pretty much the story that she encountered as she made her way from one interview to another. “We can offer you a secretarial position,” was something that Sandy heard so much that she would sometimes say it out loud with the person who was interviewing her simply to amuse herself.

Finally, Sandy realized that the only way she would be able to break into the law profession would be to offer her services pro bono. Then, once she had a position, she knew that her intelligence and ability would make the employers see that she could do the job and then offer her a paid place in the firm or organization. And, that’s basically what happened. In San Mateo, California, this capable and proud young woman proposed that she work for the county attorney’s office for free for a few months. At the end of the time, if her work was acceptable, she said that the office would then decide to keep her and pay her or, if it wasn’t up to their standards, then they would let her go. The county attorney agreed. What did he have to lose? The worst thing for him was that he would have a few months of free legal work, and if there were errors, the office would catch them. At best, he would find a capable attorney. So, Sandy was given a desk–out with the secretaries, of course–and she got to work.

I don’t have to tell you that at the end of the trial period, Sandy was hired. And that first step in that tough job market was the last roadblock to a stellar career. The county attorney found that what everyone would soon know about Sandy, that her work was exemplary. She would go on to do legal work for the US Army, some political campaigns, was assistant Attorney General for the State of Arizona, and she also served in the Arizona State Senate beginning in 1967. She then served on the Arizona Supreme Court. No longer would she be stymied by being a woman in a man’s profession. In between her rise in the legal profession, she and John raised three sons as well.

And then, in 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor as the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.

On a Cultural Change

Statisticians say that soon, and possibly even now, the nation of India is the world’s most populous. The country is hardly a monolith, with a wide range of cultures and mores, beliefs and practices as well as a disparate history spread across a country that is the seventh largest in area. However, one constant cultural tradition had endured in India for hundreds of years: Women experienced lives that had fewer rights and choices than men have. Now, that was often the case in the western world as well (see the differences in pay rates for women verses men even today in most western nations), but India’s discrimination against women often bordered on servitude. But the culture has experienced change in the prospects for women mostly in the past 100 years. Most of that drastic change has occurred in the past almost 40 years due to an interesting addition to the lives of most Indian families.

The typical Indian family used to be patriarchal, hierarchal, and relegated women to specific roles and jobs within the family. For example, traditionally, women in India couldn’t own land or have any sense of self-determination. Multi-generational households depended on keeping the men as the decision-makers and keeping women in the supporting roles. Again, this was true to a degree in the west as well, but in India, the oppression was somewhat harsher before the 1900s. Change began happening during the period of British control of India (one of the few good things to result from that period, perhaps); women were granted more rights, and a few upper class Indian women were even allowed to serve as governmental administrators.

And that’s an added layer of oppression for women in India, historically: The Caste System. The upper class, made up of priestly families, is followed by an administrative class, a skill worker and famer class, and then a laborer class is at the lower end. Even still, there is one more class below the laborers–the untouchables, the poorest of the poor and lowest of the low. The British not-so-subtly used this caste system throughout their occupation, using the upper classes and Christian Indians in governmental positions almost exclusively.

However, women in India were given the right to vote at almost the same time women in the United States were given it–1921. But the combination of a tight family organization and the caste system kept most women from achieving their dreams and ambitions.

That began to change dramatically in the 1980s, and it changed for an unusual reason. You see, the change began to happen because of the purchase of a consumer item by most Indian homes. It has been documented that, in the year 1988, for example, five of these items were sold in India every minute, and the purchase of the item radically changed women who were exposed to it. The women of India were introduced to other women through the item; they were able to see that there were options to the lives they were living and those their daughters could have in the future. And the laws in India in the modern era meant that there was nothing legally the men in the families could do to stop the women from pursing their dreams and goals. They began shunning old traditions, according to one source, and they began to become more independent. They began practicing self-determination without the control or interference of the men in their lives. That means that today an entire generation of Indian women have reached their 30s with this new mindset and this new-found freedom of self-determination.

And what was the instrument of this radical change in India society among the women there?

Television.