Word: womens
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...audience seemed to know exactly how to react (some women murmured confidentially to each other as if they were in a museum), but almost everyone looked pleased. There seemed to be something special about this almost completely female gathering. I got the feeling that all the women present were proud of Miss Bas-Cohain, perhaps because they identified with her as a woman. Among men, there's usually a competitive atmosphere, but that was absent here. Perhaps because they are still a minority group when it comes to having brilliant careers or even jobs, women feel something like the collective...
Today, as the demand for highly-educated employees increases, ambitious women seem to have an ideal situation: they are congratulated if they become wives and mothers and no more. If they have careers they get gold stars. It seems as if they can hardly lose...
...they can lose if they are ambitious, because many practical obstacles may prevent their careers. The society that considers marriage and motherhood sufficient goals for women can, and does, discriminate against them as students and careerists without feeling guilty. Although this country has one of the highest proportions of working women in the world, it falls far behind European countries in its postgraduate training of women, and in its acceptance of women in the professions. In graduate schools, men are notably preferred. Jobs that lead to promotion almost invariably fall...
...Supposedly, because women quit when they have babies. They are not considered good investments. Many are not good investments, but partly because society doesn't except them to be. It's as if the majority of woman made a deal with society: I won't feel guilty if you won't feel guilty. In other words, women will put up with discrimination (and not make society feel guilty) as long as society doesn't put pressure on them to try to achieve more (and doesn't make them feel guilty for not trying...
Unambitious women, therefore, don't suffer; the burden falls on women like the Institute Scholars who want careers, as well as families. And here the Institute comes in. Since most of the Scholars have to adjust their schedules to husbands and babies, the instigation where they study or work must be flexible. And the Institute is flexible: it allows the Scholars to study and produce, as they would in graduate school, but on a part-time basis, as they could not in graduate school. Provided with the amount of money she needs, each Scholar works out her own budget...