Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
when I started working in the early nineteen eighties
I remember
being admonished at work for wearing slacks
sort of, not designated seats, but
when they'd walk in for a staff meeting
they'd sit in the same seats
and there was not a seat for me
and so I would have to sit on this little sofa
on the side while they're all around the table
of course at that time we still had some, well let me just call them neanderthals on the government side too
who also were like, what are these girls doing here
I remember some attorney asking me a question and he comes by and says, oh I checked with so and so you were right, he agrees
so I said, the next time you need to have a
white male's perspective, just go to him
I got enough to do
male supervisor who was very
well, he intimidated women, let me put it that way
I found myself in meetings where I was the only woman in the room, I was often also the
youngest in the room, I was very junior
whe I started, pretty much right out of law school
and I'm short to boot
there was sort of this sense of, huh, what's she doing here?
I decided I wanted to sit at the table so I got to the meeting early and I just
when in and sat down and
so the shock on their faces when they walked in and saw me sitting at the table, well I wasn't gonna move
I was one of the first women
to join the SES in other
than a management
human resources
management type role
my mentor was
kind of a hellraiser
the kind of woman that said things
way back when that people
said, oh that will never happen here, and
many years later like ten years later fifteen years later, some of those very things
that she pushed for
have had to happen
I think that's how, you know, things change for women, when we decide that
enough is enough and we're not going - that we're gonna stand up
I found, particularly in the context when you're talking about women of color
you saw a very few of us
in professional positions at the FCC
There weren't that many women in the law firm where I was practicing - there were some women
associates, but they tended to be the junior associates, we only had one female partner
in the law firm
there weren't a lot of examples of how to be a lawyer
how to be a woman lawyer
and balance the family obligations that women have
this is a great place for women to balance life Commissioner Abernathy was a proponent of women
and balancing life
in the federal government it gave me an incredible sense of freedom because
I could do things
and there wasn't as much of an old boy network
I'm very happy to have been able to participate in the Broadband Plan
particularly in the
spectrum section
the opportunity to participate in the digital transition on a special
team that was assigned to Chicago
to create our first computer helpdesk the one that we have today
and I have been the voice of the customer
I am very proud of
work I did on, with the hill
on legislation
to fix what was a
problem in the telecommunications area 900 numbers
At the FCC, on the whole, the people on the whole, both men and women actually value the
atmosphere, actually value the family, actually value wanting it to be a nice place
the commission I think does a better job than most places, but I still think it's very hard
Now surely at some point this commission is going to get a female chairman, we've had
several female commissioners
one day when we have a majority of women commissioners and then a male and nobody'll think anything of it
This is wonderful, to be able to think and deliberate
over what Women's History Month means