Clinton Inducted Into Women's Hall of Fame

[RC]

Clinton Inducted Into Women's Hall of Fame
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Maya Lin, Eight Others Inducted Into National Women's Hall of Fame

By BEN DOBBIN Associated Press Writer
The Associated PressThe Associated Press

SENECA FALLS, N.Y. Oct 9, 2005 — Inspired by Alan Shepard, the first American to journey into space, a 14-year-old from suburban Chicago wrote a letter to NASA in 1961 asking what she needed to do to become an astronaut. She got a curt reply: Girls are not being recruited by the nation's space program.

"It had never crossed my mind up until that point that there might be doors closed to me simply because I was a girl," recalled the letter writer, better known today as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she was enshrined Saturday in the National Women's Hall of Fame, along with nine other inductees.

Honored with her were Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.; Dr. Rita Rossi Colwell, who became the first female director of the National Science Foundation in 1998; and Betty Bumpers, a crusader for childhood immunizations who was Clinton's predecessor as Arkansas' first lady.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1197273
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Oops, I was thinking of the other half of the Clinton pair.

[Pool Hall Ace]

1. I can understand girls not being recruited for the space program.

But how about women?

1961 doesn't seem all that long ago to me, and yet it was seen by some to be perfectly acceptable to say, "no girls allowed."

[MaineDem]

2. She was 14 at the time

I can understand the "girls" comment as written at the time.

What I don't like are the references now to "girls" when the term should be "women". I think that's what you're saying, right?

[Pool Hall Ace]

4. Granted, I don't know a great deal about the space program, but

I would think that since there are height requirements and education requirements (a master's degree is strongly preferred), any recruiting would be aimed at adults, not young teens. I realize the message aimed at Sen. Clinton at the time was "Since you are a female, you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of participating in the space program. Sorry!"

It just amazes me that someone could say that as recently as 1961. That was the year before I was born, so it wasn't all that long ago, right? :-)

And yes, that sets my teeth on edge when women are referred to as "girls."

[Captain Hilts]

8. They could just as easily have said something like...

since you are not eligible to sit on a jury in some states, you can't participate in the space program.

That's right in NYState women couldn't sit on juries until the 1960s. That's why the movie is "Twelve Angry MEN." Women weren't eligible.

[OKNancy]

3. Ninteen sixty-one was really " the fifties"

to me. The women's movement didn't really start in earnest until the mid-sixties.

Even in 1976, when I applied for a bank credit card in my own name, I was told I had to get my husband's signature. LOL - I made more money than he did at that time. I complained bitterly and "Dennis" the guy who told me that, was fired soon after. ( probably not because of me, but I like to think I had some part in it. )

[Pool Hall Ace]

5. You know what's really sad? I haven't even heard of any of

the women mentioned in the last paragraph.

I guess in order to learn about women in history, you really need to take a Women's History class!

[MarianJack]

6. Heres a 50Y.O.'s Perspective!

I was 6 in 1961, and sexism was, in many instances the LAW as well as the policy. Classified ads for employment were still headed by "Help Wanted: Male" & "Help Wanted: Female". Executives were men, secretarys were women and preferrably not married.

When my parents were divorced in 1962, my mother went through massive discrimination and, in fact, lied about her age to get employment. More than 1 person asked why she wasn't home doing a woman's real job of taking care of her husband and kids. In the few instances where she said that my father had run off with his girlfriend and that he was remarried before she even knew that she was divorced, some of the bastards indicated that my father being a son of a bitch was my mother's fault!

Times were very different then. If the fundies, neo-cons and other assorted righties get their way, it may be so again!

[Captain Hilts]

7. Yeah, but will she get on a bubblegum card?

Yes, the Sixties didn't start until Kennedy was assassinated and didn't end until Nixon resigned.

[journalist3072]

9. Here's my question about NASA

They are a federal agency. And the federal government has EEO laws on the books which is supposed to prevent discrimination in hiring practices on the basis of race, gender, etc.

The 1960's were before my time, but were the EEO laws on the books then? If so, then NASA violated some serious federal laws.

[MaineDem]

10. Without looking it up I'd say those laws were NOT in effect then

I remember the fights to give women equal rights. It's what so many people don't realize. Nothing women have as far as rights now was given to us freely.

On edit, looks like it was 1964 and the passage of the Equal Rights law.

[Captain Hilts]

11. Racial rules were in effect, but not those based on sex.

Racial equality in the workplace took place in WWII in government offices. The military in what, 1947?

Actually, Harold Ickes integrated the cafeterias and bathrooms in the Dept. of Interior building in the 1930s.

The Pentagon, conversely, to this day has more bathrooms than most buildings its size because it was constructed with the perception that blacks would use segregated bathrooms.

Women received no such legal protection in the workplace.

Now, evidently, a handful of women were trained in spaceflight. Someone wrote a book about them a few years ago.