I watched the movie On the Basis of Sex the other day, about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and was reminded about how limited the choices were for women, until recently. Young women today have literally no idea how fortunate they are to have so many choices.
When my mother was a young woman she decided that she wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer. Her aunt Jenny had married a lawyer and they lived in Macon, a short train ride away. Mom went to see them. She had often spent time there. Her uncle, Harry, a prominent lawyer in Macon for many years, listened to my mother and then said "No, you can't be a lawyer. Just forget it. Women shouldn't be lawyers." He repeated this to my grandparents. Going to law school would have been really difficult, as Mom had to work hard to put herself through undergraduate school, but she was willing to try.
That was about 1952. In 1952, women were told they could be teachers, nurses, or wives and mothers. Most women stayed at home and raised their children.
I have been a paralegal for more than thirty years and I can tell you this: my mother is brilliant and would have made a fine lawyer. Her uncle was very traditional and felt like he was giving her good advice.
Perhaps he was thinking of the uphill battle she would face to get a job. In the movie, we see a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg [now a Supreme Court Justice] going from firm to firm, trying to get hired. She had a law degree from Columbia, and had attended Harvard Law her first two years. She was undeniably brilliant, yet no New York law firm would hire her. She finally got a job as a law professor.
I overheard an older attorney telling a young female lawyer once, in an interview [he had left the door open to the conference room for some reason] "If you come to work here we expect you to work as late as we need you to be here, not go home at 5:00." In other words, forget about a 40 hour work week. Most female lawyers I knew worked the same hours as the young male associates -- 60+ hours a week. Didn't matter if there were children at home. Career had to come first, if you wanted a job, much less any chance at partnership.
Back then the term "quality of life" was unknown.
Ginsburg's husband, who was also a lawyer, was shown in the movie helping cook dinner and take care of the children. That was highly unusual back then.
When I was coming along in the 1980's women had far more career choices. However, that doesn't mean it was [or is] any easier.
I have gone to work sick too many times to count, because I didn't want to lose my job. When I finally became a mom, in my 40's, I was told at one job that I needed to stop taking off so much time for things like taking my kids to the doctor, or meetings at school. I couldn't do that, as a single mom, and I eventually got laid off from that job. Publicly, the company said work/life balance was important but in my department the women who got laid off were ones like me, with families. It didn't matter that I always got my work done and got great performance reviews. That was just 11 years ago.
Women will always have to choose between work and family, and then we will have to live with the consequences, I suspect. Men have to make similar choices but they get far less criticism if they work 60 hour weeks.
Women now sometimes get criticized for staying at home to raise their children. When I was young, women who chose to stay home and raise families were not always respected. "You're just a housewife?" is a very demeaning thing to say. My mother was excluded from many conversations around Dad's colleagues because it was assumed that since she didn't work she couldn't grasp what they were talking about, which quietly infuriated her.
I hope and pray that women will get respect, in the future, for whatever choice they make, to stay home OR to work. To have children or not. Women need to support each other and not tear each other down.
I also hope young women will see movies like On the Basis of Sex, about the struggle for equality, and appreciate what their mothers and grandmothers went through. It's the only way to keep moving forward.
When women have lots of choices and men play an equal role in child rearing everyone benefits.
