Literary Ladies to discuss ‘When Everything Changed’

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By Marilyn Stroud

Special to The PREVIEW

Come and join us for this interesting discussion of how the female role has changed in the past 60 years on April 27 at 10:30 a.m. at the Sisson Library.

Check with Brad, the librarian, as to the availability of the book “When Everything Changed.”

In the latter part of the 1960s, I personally got married and went into the credit department at Marshall Field’s in Chicago to inform them that I wanted to change the name on my credit card to my new married name. I was told to fill out a new application with my husband’s employment history, etc. I took the application and left the credit card in my name until Marshall Field’s was bought out by Macy’s.

Gail Collins is a columnist for the New York Times Op-Ed page and her book “When Everything Changed,” gives us a fantastic summary of politics, fashion, popular culture, work, sex, families and economics from 1960 to 2008, when Hillary Clinton ran for president.

Did you have friends who were airline stewardesses who could not be married, had to be 25 or older, single, size 4 and be checked frequently for weight gain? When the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established, its first complaints were from the stewardesses.

Some names of leaders in the movement that many of us lived through and experienced are Rosa Parks; Gloria Steinem; Wilma Mankiller, a Cherokee; Margaret Chase Smith, a Maine senator; and female Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Yes, we now have female doctors, lawyers, engineers, pilots, foot soldiers fighting beside men, CEOs, politicians, news broadcasters, CPAs, etc. However, are women today receiving the same pay as men?