Women’s Rights: What my Granddaughters Need to Know

When my granddaughter was twelve years old and had declared her intention to be the first woman president, she was shocked to learn that in 1940, a widow supporting two children earned half the salary of her male co-workers at a public relations firm. “That’s not fair,” she declared. Indeed, it is not, but it still happens today. This is what my granddaughters need to know.

My granddaughter and I were talking to a woman in her ninth decade of life who still teaches folk-dancing. The woman shared what happened to her family after her father died in 1946, leaving her 40-year-old mother with two children and her own mother to support. Luckily, her mother had a degree in journalism, which was unusual in those days. My granddaughter was surprised women who came of age in in the 1920s didn’t routinely go to college. The widowed mother got a job at a public relations agency. The men were paid $25,000/year, which was a good salary back then. Her mother was paid $12,500/year for the same work.

This young widow lived a long life, dying in 1996. But even in her old age she said she never understood the women’s liberation movement, despite being the only woman executive in the agency and earning half as much as her male colleagues. The men were friends of hers but no one thought there was anything wrong this scenario. Similarly, my mother was…