Where to begin? As a child when I was molested? Or when my mother tried making me have a pink Sweet Sixteen birthday party? Or when my father expected me to help chop wood and wash windows but wouldn’t take me to play golf? Or my first job where one of the managers “tried it on” with me. No, maybe when the job expected me to wear a short skirt. And the next job. And the next. Nearly every job has paid me less than the guys I worked with. I nearly always worked at places geared for guys – in printing and in house painting. My ex-husband expected me help him on the job (carpentry) but also have dinner ready, the house cleaned and the child attended to. One of the worst places for sexism has been our public school system, where they just assumed that I wasn’t working and could show up at any point in a day for school events, as the mother of one. I attended all school functions. Her father none. And I was furious once when my daughter was told, in Sunday School, that she and all the girls would play the sheep in a play, while the boys played lions. I never dressed her in skirts and she could pick any color she wanted. But I guess the worst case of sexism for me personally came from my uncle, a physicist who worked for NASA once, when I asked him about being an astronaut and he ignored me. So I thought about becoming a stewardess (attendant) on a plane instead. But I was too short. Later on I thought about joining the Navy (in the 1970’s) but their dress code for women then included girdles, bras, nylons, heels and skirts. I didn’t wear any of that. No, I’m not gay or trans. I just find that dressing like that is silly. The kind of things I like to do doesn’t work with clothes like that. I think the sexism inherent in our clothing is something that keeps putting us women “in our place”. Thank goodness we can own property and vote now!
