Tiana Mikes Project - Alaska Pacific University

Insights into Feminism 48
When I got pregnant, he did not want me to work. So, I thought why work when
he will take care of me, and I can stay home with the kids. I stayed home with my
kids the whole time that I raised them. I went back to work for about a year and
he could not take it. We were not ones to share any duties when it came to
housework or children. That was not his idea, he did not want to do it, and he had
a stressful job. -Betty
In home present.
I feel that I am the keeper of the house. I am responsible for the meals and for
taking the children where they need to go, falls more on me than on him. The bulk
of all domestic responsibilities still fall on my shoulders. -Ann
My husband expects to be waited on hand and foot no doubt about it. They might
pretend, and say they do not. Even his friends are pretty much the same. -Betty
In work past.
When I started working, you were pretty much a secretary. Most everyone was
going to college, but the jobs that women went after were not professional. For
me career wise, I did ok without a college degree. -Ann
I felt in the workplace I got many mixed messages. I think that men were not at a
place yet to know what to do with women in the workplace. Women were ready
to go. Men had a hard time viewing us, not as equals, but as worthy of taking over
some of their roles, and challenging their opinions. –Ann
I can remember two men specifically that I worked with that were the upstanding
Christian men that you would never think, because they were the good husbands,
they did not participate in all of the partying with the hookers. Yet in the hallway,
they would stop me and they would say the most outrageous sexual things to me.
If I had told anyone, no one would have believed me. This got creepy. I felt that I
did not have any recourse. I did not have anything that I could do about it, so, I
felt trapped. -Ann
I got a job as a tax secretary, because I had always been a secretary. It was a very
sexist era; there is no doubt about it. If you could work in you cute little pumps
and your dress, you were hired immediately. You were just another slave, but
instead of at home you were in the office. -Betty