Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 87

A little over a century ago, the National American Woman Suffrage Association held its national convention at Louisville’s Seelbach Hotel. It would be another decade, though, before the Nineteenth Amendment granted all women the right to vote.

Did anyone then foresee that in less than a century more than half the students in many seminaries, medical schools, and law schools would be women? Who foresaw that three United States Supreme Court justices would be women? The “Rules for Teachers” one hundred years ago illustrate how far women have come:

1. You may not marry during the term of your contract.

2. You may not keep company with men.

3. You must be home between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. unless at a school function.

4. You may not loiter downtown in any of the ice cream stores.

5. You may not travel beyond the city limits unless you have permission of the chairman of the school board.

6. You may not ride in carriages or automobiles with any man except your father or brother.

7. You may not smoke cigarettes.

8. You may not dress in bright colors.

9. You may under no circumstances dye your hair.

10. You must wear at least two petticoats.

11. Your dresses may not be any shorter than two inches above the ankles.

12. You must sweep the floor once a day, scrub the floor with hot soapy water once a week, clean the blackboards once a day, and start the fire at 7:00 a.m. to have the school warm by 8:00 a.m.65

How much freedom for women is going to be enough? As the grandfather of two little girls, I only want for them what I want for our four grandsons—the freedom to become all they desire and all they have the ability to become.