THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Elga Ruth Wasserman

“As long as women absorb the extreme overload that’s resulted for dual career families, there will never be a truly level playing field.”

Conversation with Sheila Tobias, VFA event, “Feminism and Its Values, an Intergenerational Dialogue,” April 16, 2005, Cromwell CT

Sheila Tobias:  We not only worked with each other on behalf of women’s students in Connecticut, but together we organized a collective action group of women in positions like ours all over New England. We called ourselves The Committee for the Concerns of Women in Higher Education. Elga morphs every couple of decades. She started out a chemist, then she became Assistant to the President of Yale, an administrator in higher education and a great spokesperson for women in higher education. And then she went to law school and became an employment lawyer. And we’ll find out shortly what’s next. In your honor Elga.

Elga Wasserman:  I want to thank Sheila, not only for those nice comments, but for organizing and getting me involved in this conference. When you get to be my age, things you did – and I started in the 60s – seem very far back, and it’s wonderful to have all those memories refreshed. I’m really grateful to you for that. I want to echo the sentiments of everybody we’ve heard today about how far we’ve come.

And I’ll just tell you one story that happened about 1970, when I was Special Assistant to Kingman Brewster in charge of making Yale a good place for women. And I was sitting in my office one day when one of the undergraduates burst into my office, tears streaming down her face. And I made her sit down and calmed her down. I said, what is the matter? And she said, I went in to see Professor So and So in the History Department because I wanted to discuss the possibility of offering a course in the history of women. And he turned to me and said, we can’t do that. That would be like teaching the history of dogs. That happened in 1970.

And the gasp that came from the audience shows that it’s an inconceivable event today. But in spite of all that progress, I’m really very concerned. And I want to say a few remarks to the younger generations that I see a lot of the progress we’ve made being threatened today partly out of ignorance, because the young women for whom all the doors are open at the early phases of their career take all this for granted. And when they then face problems, they’re overwhelmed and they make the private decision, well, they’ll just opt out or step aside and give up whatever opportunities they’ve had.

And as someone interested in the education of women, I think if this happens on an increasing scale and under the pressure of the media, the doors will start to close again. So I hope the message I want to leave with you is that we need all of you. And I think the next wave of the women’s movement ought to broaden itself and reach out. I think as long as women absorb the extreme overload that’s resulted for dual career families, there will never be a truly level playing field. So I think what we need to do is to reach out to men in the society as well as to women and to work for change in our institutions, to make life better for families and not just for women. And we will then help children, the sick and the elderly.