|
|
|
REMARKS BY LT. GOVERNOR THELMA STOVALL
Thank you Tracy....Officers of Future Homemakers, Acting
Superintendent Smith, Mr. Saltsman, Mr. Harris, Mrs. Meador...What a
wonderful job you and Mrs. Whitehead, have done with these girls.
Looking out on this group of young women, I feel good about the
future and what you will do with it.
Most of you are in the planning and preparatory stage of your
life. Your main concern for
the present should be, how you can better mold yourself to be your own
person and contribute something to society.
I am sure your affiliation with the Future Homemakers of America
will help in this task.
Society has changed in the past two decades, and one of the major
changes has been in the role of women.
Traditionally, women were expected to marry young, raise families
and depend on their husbands for support.
The role of a wife and mother is an honored one, and should not
be undermined. However, many things, wars, changing social values, and
primarily the economy, have combined to contribute to an evolution of
womankind in the past twenty years.
This evolution has broadened the spectrum of the average American
woman's horizons to include not only the prospect of having a family and
home but also of showing her that the home is not the only place for
her.
Since this is our bicentennial year, we will spend much time
looking back, reflecting and evaluating our history and also reassessing
and re-dedicating.
In keeping with time of reflection, let us tonight, for a moment
also look back.....Let's look at American women and the distance they
have come.
Among the legacy of letters exchanged between Abigail Adams and
her continental congressman-husband, John, is found the question. "Why are women not included in the Declaration's famous
doctrine that 'All men are created equal'?" Apparently, to her and others of her contemporaries, it
was particularly apt in America that women be specifically included in
the granting of liberty, freedom and equality for all.
For after all, America was conceived precisely to do just that.
Indeed, throughout recorded history, many women have questioned
the cultural definitions imposed upon them.
From these earliest times to this very day, we have witnessed the
persistent struggle by women for their birthright of equality.
In the history of this republic, the uphill struggle for women
suffrage began in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, with Elizabeth Stanton
proclaiming that women should have the right to vote.
Twenty-one years later, Susan B. Anthony and Julia Ward Howe
joined the infant struggle, urging an Equal Rights-minded congress to
grant women the right to vote--without success.
For more than 50 yeas thereafter, the struggle went forth. Then, in a hallmark victory for equality in America, the
Tennessee legislature ratified the Federal Suffrage Amendment to the
Constitution.
An important lesson is learned from the seventy-one-year struggle
to victory---And this lesson is "hope".
The prizes in life are not attained in the beginning of the
journey. Yesterday's
victories must never be allowed to lull us into complacency.
For complacency is the historic foundation of failure.
In the time since 1920, especially in our lifetime, women have
persisted in attaining additional achievements in equality and
employment. In the fields of politics, business, law, medicine, religion
and sports, women are sharpening the perception and the future of the
American woman.
Today's young women are much more educated than their
grandmothers and mothers before them.
They are not as sheltered to the harder realities of life.
Today's young women are more than ever urged on by a sense of
wanting to carve their own niche in the world.
This is good.
It is good for a woman who finds she has a particular talent, to
develop it, train it, and then use it.
It is completely your own choice, your decision that will now
determine your future.
Gradually, but certainly, the business and professional worlds
are becoming more accepting of women.
There is also a certain amount of discrimination which we are
working to overcome.
However, I believe that your generation and the generation of
your daughters will live to see the day sex discrimination in the market
place will be virtually overcome. The
reason I believe this is because young women like yourselves have
convinced me of it.
You know the only way to show that you deserve equal rights is to
prove you are equal. The
encouragement I have is because you are doing just that.
You are becoming highly educated.
You are taking your place in every business and professional
field and you are proving you can do it.
In proving your own value, you are enhancing the value of all
women in the eyes of the professional world.
The struggle of women today is an intellectual and economic one.
It is a struggle to insure each women is given the same
opportunity to succeed in her chosen field as her male counterpart.
And it is also to allow her to reap the same financial and social
reward for the same success. I
don't think that is too much to ask.
It is obvious that each of you now have a choice.
You are not locked into one way of life, you have the freedom to
mold yourself into a career, to have a family, or both.
No matter how difficult the struggle has been, I still say I have
faith that you young women and your children will see the day when the
Victorian attitudes which have shackled women for years, are finally
overcome.
We have truly come a long way, and accomplished much.
However, there is still a long road before us. Surely it would do us good to remember that time never
affords us the luxury of standing still, that certainly, unless we go
forward, we will come to realize we are sliding backwards....Thank you. (Courtesy of the Kentucky Department for Libraries and
Archives)
|
