Joining the Good Old Boys Club

The door to the historic house on Broadway opened on a beautiful fall-like evening in Little Rock. The host greeted us and commented on my husband's and my matching tie-died shirts. We were there for a celebration of our friend Matilda's 60th birthday. There was also recognition by the theme of the party of Woodstock. The beaded hairbands around my graying, but blond-highlighted hair, were tightening around my temples. I immediately pulled out of my purse a copy of the 1969-1970 yearbook from the University of Mississippi and showed a gathering group around me my husband's and my yearbook pictures. One of the group commented on my big hair back then, but the host immediately pointed out the paucity of women on the page. I looked again and then counted; I was one of eight women students on the page surrounded by thirty-seven men.

This year 2009 represents, as we all know, the 40th anniversary of both Woodstock and the landing on the moon. Therefore, all of us have been reflecting upon the momentous events going on in the late '60's like the assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. combined with the Viet Nam War. I guess it is for this reason that many of us women are also reflecting, many years later, upon our status both culturally and professionally.

Statistics tell us that in 1969 women in graduate school represented just 41 percent of the student population. By 1999 the percentage had grown to 57 percent (a 178 percentage increase). In 1969, I had hardly awakened yet to the women's movement, but I now know that the late 1960's ushered in the feminist movement that would reach a crescendo by the middle of the next decade. At that time I, of course, had no idea of the great challenges that lay ahead of me as I sought to enroll in a doctoral program at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville only to be told I would likely do better to work for an Educational Specialist degree instead. I held my ground before "the deciders" (all male) and was admitted and was graduated five years later, doctoral degree in hand. I spent twenty-two years of my working career in a university in Northwest Arkansas (it was mostly very conservative regarding the role of women since most of the faculty were men and had wives who were homemakers). I became, however, the first woman Registrar and later the first woman chair of the English department.

Now that I have been retired for three years, I look back at those years and, even though quite difficult at times to navigate in a man's world, I am proud that I was one of the many women who were also joining the good old boys clubs throughout America.