My Aunt Fiona is a strong, capable, independent woman. At fifty-one, she is married, has held more than two long-term corporate positions, has earned several degrees at varying levels of education and has traveled around the world. She is also liberal and modest of her achievements at the same time she is proud to have accomplished all that she has. I chose to interview her because in every year of my nineteen, she has taught me something and has served as a role model to me as a woman. My Aunt Fiona sets a wonderful example and a high precedent of what all women can strive to become.
What surprised me most when I asked whether or not my aunt would consider herself a feminist, was that she replied only a “mild one” because she was never “one of those protesting, bra-burning, women” but was always an advocate of quiet feminism. She said she felt strongly that women should be responsible for themselves, be able to support themselves, and take advantage of the opportunities available to them as well as be confident and bold enough to create new ones. It was clear to me at this point that when I used the word “feminism,” she associated it with the second wave. Fiona came of age in the sixties and seventies, a time that was heavily second wave. She was only eleven years old when The Feminine Mystique was published yet still has not read it. When asked about this, she said she did not feel she had to read it because she was living it. Fiona went to school, specifically college, with aspiring doctors, medical technicians, laboratory technicians, nurses, and medicine developers. These were very extraordinary goals for women at this time. Fiona describes her definition of feminism as the ability of a woman to support herself independent of the help and support of anyone else, whether another female or a male. In addition, the ability to make ones own choices and not be chastised for them and not have them questioned is crucial.
Fiona made the conscious decision to forgo having children in order to flourish in her career. This is because she wanted to be able to support and do things for herself, and she was not sure she would be capable of being that financially and socially independent with children. She does not regret not being a mother. During this day and age, many women take the “typical” path of dating, marriage, work, and having children. Society assumes that married women should bare children, that it is a fundamental right. When Fiona and her husband were first married, they experienced a lot of verbal pressure from their families to have children. However, in her early thirties, Fiona got into a severe car crash and almost died multiple times. The pressure stopped after that. Aside from familial pressure, Fiona has never felt societal pressure to have babies: her husband is her family. She is still close with the friends that she has had since childhood, and has not separated out nor been separated from those who have kids and those who do not.
I will admit that as close as Aunt Fiona and I are, I knew very little about her corporate career before interviewing her. Fiona began with a degree from The University of Maryland Baltimore County in Biology and went on to get an advanced degree in Medical Technology. (She later went on to get an MBA in Business and a full scholarship to New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology to earn a degree in Interior Design.) With this she worked as a laboratory technician at Johnson and Johnson, one of Corporate America’s consistently top ranked companies for women to work. However, after several years at the company, Fiona felt there was a glass ceiling that she would not be able to get through because she was female. There were males in positions above her that would not take other positions and were therefore blocking Fiona’s ability for professional growth. Over the course of eight days, she and three other female colleagues sent in their resignation. She later found out “it shook management to the core.” Although Fiona experienced an equally male and female professional atmosphere, she did not hesitate to agree that big businesses are still very patriarchal. She tried ignoring it for a long time but came to realize that she would have to find an alternate way around it and to work with what she had and manipulate the system to her advantage, rather that try to fight her way through.
After working for Johnson and Johnson and subsequently for Kodak, Fiona decided she wanted to go back to school to become an interior designer. This was the only time Fiona was ever surrounded by more women than men. However, once she got into the field, the sex of her colleagues evened out, as many interior designers work with architects, contractors and other heavily male positions. She is currently one of few women in her office, but one of the most respected. When I asked why she thought this was so, she said it was because she is older and has had a lot more life experience, compared to her twenty-something and thirty-something year old coworkers.
Overall, my Aunt Fiona has made a great life for herself as a woman and as a feminist. She had made difficult decisions and chosen the path less traveled by, only made possible by the feminist movements. She says she recognizes and appreciates the work and obstacles that the women some years her senior went through in order for her to be able to take advantage of all that she has in her life. She is able to get married and have a career at the same time. She is able to go to school and earn several different degrees in different fields. She is able to use birth control to avoid getting pregnant. She is able to choose not to have children and not be frowned upon for it. She realizes that these things would not be possible without the hard work that feminists before her had done. To quote Fiona, “I’ve been able to make more choices for myself. To make the choices and not feel that one is right and one is wrong is so wonderful. I don’t think there’s a stigmatism between a right and wrong decision anymore. I don’t have to worry about being stigmatized by my peers, men, or women in other generations both before and after my own.” Not bad for a “mild” feminist.
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