Thursday Favorite Things…
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Lynn Doyle, a talk show host for Comcast did a show for the 91st anniversary of ‘Women’s Equality Day.’ She posed the question, “Does a woman’s choice to marry and motherhood limit her chances to be equal?”
I have been pondering this question for years. I’m still pondering.
I do not think that motherhood limited my choices. I would say it did however limit my time. I was hired for every job I wanted. I received nearly every promotion I applied for (there were two I didn’t get and the reason shocked me but that is for another post) and I started several businesses. Like most working mothers, I was full of guilt.
I was the first female assistant manager of a Pizza Hut Restaurant in Newport, Rhode Island in 1978. I had to wear a red dress. The male management wore black pants, white shirts and red ties. It is so surreal to even write that, now. The ‘manager’ was forever trying to get me to climb the ladder steps into the attic of the restaurant. I was so naïve I fell for it the first few times. After that I just said no. That nasty manager would ‘try’ to get me to quit by calling me into work for imagined emergencies and I would have to scramble for a sitter. I realized what he was doing and began to say no to him. He was being teased by other managers because he had to work with a female assistant manager, the poor thing.
My husband was in the Navy and away ‘at sea’ at that time. I was the mother of a three- year- old daughter and a 10 month- old- son. The other Navy wives talked about me and gave me dirty looks because I left my kids with a babysitter while I worked. Oh those were the days.
That manager was eventually fired for stealing money (which he tried to pathetically blame on me.) Shortly after the new manager arrived I moved back to the Philadelphia area. I was hired at a Pizza Hut there, soon found out I was expecting again and the manager was so kind. He was a family man with a wife and children. The rest of the employees were young adults and could not do enough for me. Believe it or not I had a portable crib in the back room and the baby came to work with me while I was breast feeding.
I went pretty far with that company and must say for a single mother (which I suddenly was) the benefits and salary were great. Before I left the company, there were many women in leadership positions. The uniform changed to grey pants and white shirts for all management.
One thing I did notice about some of those other women was their meanness. I had no idea what exactly made them so aggressive. Where they bitter because of the climb (the one up the ladder in a dress) or did they simply think they had to be aggressive so men would not push them around.
When I went to work for my area’s largest newspaper as a specialty advertising rep I was a bit taken back by the ‘older’ newspaper men that clearly despised women in any leadership position. I mainly ignored them but did have to push back pretty hard a few times. Most of the women in management positions at this newspaper also seemed overly aggressive and just plain mean. I ignored them for the most part as well but being as sensitive as I am it was difficult at times.
As an author, I have been surprised, no shocked at the support of other writers, especially other women writers. For the first time in my life I am able to enjoy and share my ups and downs and not be made to feel like a cry-baby. I cannot help but wonder if this is a shift in other industries as well. Oh there are still the ‘mean’ girls out there. Now a day’s it is the moms that make the choice to stay home with or home school their children that get ridiculed by some mean working moms. They are too young to remember the days of climbing ladders, in dresses.
What remains the same is the guilt that mothers feel no matter what choice they make.
There are mean girls on both sides of the political aisle. There are still men on both sides of the political aisle that bully women in politics. The good news is women are being elected. The bullying could be stopped if women on both sides of the fence would just put their foot down and say enough.
My answer to Lynn’s question has to be no. The choice to marry and/or have children does not limit a women’s chance to be equal. Women all over the world have successful careers, marriages and children.
