Photo courtesy of Hector Martinez/Unsplash
The pop single was ahead of its time. The year was 1963 and You Don’t Own Me by Leslie Gore was the first record I ever bought.
Copyright law prevents me from listing the lyrics in this post, but here’s a link to the song on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QEqLTbEXy0
Think about it: It’s 1963 and a teenage girl is telling her boyfriend to back off and stop being a possessive jerk. Basically she warns him that she’s her own person and won’t say, act, or do what or how he thinks she should. That was a radical stand for a female to take in 1963.
I should have listened to the song a little more closely. The boyfriends I had in high school were demanding and possessive. And I let them walk all over me.
I have never considered myself a feminist, but in retrospect, I see now that I was a quiet one simply by joining the business workforce in the late 60s.
We baby boomer women were part of the frontier of women who, although we may have started out in stereotypical roles, soon began working our way up through the ranks to management and leadership positions.
I like men and have never considered them “the enemy” in my career. Most who committed a faux pas (such as demeaning a presentation of mine by saying, “I really liked your little speech.”), I excused as their just not knowing any better.
But of course, my comeback let them know where I stood. “Little speech?” I asked in mock horror. “Why that was my jumbo deluxe presentation!”
And naturally, as a credit manager in the foodservice industry, over the years I encountered my share of male restaurateurs who were opposed to a woman dictating the terms of payment.
I recall one gentleman insisting that he wanted his own way and demanded to speak to the “boss of credit.” Finally, after years of waiting, I got to use the line I’d been saving. “Actually, I am the boss of credit.” He laughed and so did I.
The term glass ceiling was identified in the mid-1970s. In case you’ve been living under a rock since then, Merriam Webster defines it as “an intangible barrier within a hierarchy that prevents women or minorities from obtaining upper-level positions.”
I’ll bet (like me!) you didn’t know there was actually an official Federal Glass Ceiling Commission that issued their fact-finding report in March 1995.
But the glass ceiling problem doesn’t exist just in the business world.
The Rt. Rev. Susan Goff is a Bishop in the Virginia Diocese of the Episcopal Church. In remarking on the low number of women bishops in the American Episcopal Church, she said the disparity is referred to as the stained glass ceiling.
I love the play on words, but I’m sad to know the inequality exists in our church.
To my readers: What comments do you have on the aspect of a glass ceiling?
