This is Friday,
so naturally I had an essay all ready to post. It’s a brief bit, complete with
pictures, about all the furniture and things my husband has made. You’ll enjoy
it, but you’ll have to wait. A featured
article in this morning’s N.Y.
Times really piqued my interest and
I had to hazard my own opinion on the subject: The Glass Ceiling.
Here are the
lead paragraphs:
Before Sheryl Sandberg, the chief
operating officer of Facebook, started to write “Lean In,” her
book-slash-manifesto on women in the workplace, she reread Betty Friedan’s “The
Feminine Mystique.” Like the homemaker turned activist who helped start a
revolution 50 years ago, Ms. Sandberg wanted to do far more than sell books.
Ms. Sandberg, whose ideas about working women
have prompted both enthusiasm and criticism, is attempting nothing less than a
Friedan-like feat: a national discussion of a gender-problem-that-has-no-name,
this time in the workplace, and a movement to address it.
Let me preface my remarks by saying that I didn’t read the
entire article and I’ve never read The Feminine Mystique. Just the topic alone
can set me thinking, without need to refer to what others may have thought. I’ve
got news for Ms. Sandberg in her quest to spur a women’s movement: all she’ll
really be doing is selling books. As for the “gender-problem-that-has-no-name”,
if it is still a problem of the proportions imagined, which I sincerely doubt, it
will now be with us for nigh on to forever.
Why do I consider myself qualified to comment on this? As the saying
goes: “been there, done that, have the business cards to prove it.”
In the late 60’s I became the
first woman officer of the bank at which I headed the computer department. This
was all back in the day when a CPU, with less capacity than my cell phone, was
the size of my refrigerator. At that
time the banks gave great benefits, but the salaries were relatively low. Because it was the new field of data
processing I was able to command a higher salary than some of my male banker counterparts.
I was in the right place at the right time.
Also because it was data processing I got relatively little
grief from males in my own bank because they knew relatively little about what
was going on. Data processing was a male-dominated field because there were
more males in the workplace, but because it was new to everyone, anyone, male
or female, was respected if they seemed like they knew what they were doing.
In the fifty years since the publication of The Feminine Mystique,
men have come a long way – and so have women.
The men are much more welcoming to women in the workplace. If the gal knows
her job, most men are now more than happy to accept the fact. It would seem like
the mothers of the late twentieth century have raised them that way. A few misogynistic
men will always be around, along with a few misandristic women, and they will
have to be dealt with when the need arises. Case closed.
Many of the gals who’d been with the bank for years were a
bit miffed, shall we say, when I was chosen for the computer department: why
her? It sounds mean of me to say this, but they didn’t
have the mindset I had for the job. All the bank’s employees were tested before
the bank converted to computerized accounting in the early 60’s – I was
originally a clerk in the Loan Department – and I came out on top with the aptitude
for the data processing field. When I
was made an officer of the bank I had a lot of the female employees asking me how
I did it. I didn’t set out to do it: I was just good at my job, and in the
right place in the bank’s newest department to be made an officer when they needed one there.
Over these years I’ve come to believe that while many women
doing the same job as men do get paid
less – that’s a sticky area addressed only when there are exact job
descriptions and pay levels in force – many women think they are as good as any man doing their job, but many times
they aren’t. I believe that unless the
higher-ups have their head in the sand, the latest crop of executives recognize
the abilities of their workers and pay and promote accordingly. Unless they are
totally oblivious to the bottom line – profits – they’ll want the best
performing people.
As more women realize their potential, decide on what they
want to do, and point themselves in the right direction, their numbers are
increasing in the upper echelons of business, politics and medicine. I’ve also
come to know that the vast majority of women don’t want to reach any heights in any field. We females aren’t
usually programmed that way, and all women aren’t created equal. It’s wonderful
that today most women can pretty much lead the life they’d like.
I don’t feel I’m wasting my life because I prefer to be CFO
at home – because of my banking experience I do keep the books. I worked to
live, not lived to work! When our financial outlook improved, our retirement
funds were growing nicely, and we could afford to live on my husband’s income, both
of us were delighted for me to retire from the bank. Heck, six years later both of us were retired and we’ve been quite
pleased to be unemployed for the last twenty-five years.
I’m
sure Ms. Sandberg will be enjoying her “fifteen minutes of fame”, but I don’t
thinkshe or her book will have the same effect as that of Betty Freidan, a woman in
the right place at the right time with a message we all needed to hear.
On March 3 last year I posted Women
Have a History . March is Women’s History Month, after all. You might want to read that essay – it was a
pretty good one if I do say so myself.
Today is also the birthday of George Washington, Edward Gorey,
and Edna St.Vincent Millay. That’s a
diverse group indeed. Happy Birthday
lady and gentlemen.
