"There's a woman right there," said the reporter, who was trying to deflect a story assignment about Women's History Month on the ground that no one knows about it, or cares.
"Let's ask her. Donita, what did you do last year for Women's History Month?"
I had been pretending not to listen as the reporter and editor talked. But at my name and his triumphant tone, I turned around. He was sure I'd prove his point.
"You want to know what I did last year for Women's History Month?" I said. "I visited my stepson's fifth-grade class at Chariho Middle School and gave a talk. They wanted to know about women in history. I told them how, during my lifetime, women had to sue the New York Times to be allowed to hold editing positions."
And I told the reporter and editor the story of my visit to Joshua's class. The teachers, Jeannette Gamache and Susan Collins, had arranged special activities for Women's History Month by asking parents and grandparents to contribute their stories.
For my visit, during the last period on a Friday, both classes gathered in Mrs. Gamache's room. I gave the fifth-graders a quick history of printing and explained how we put out the paper.
Then I involved them in a little game, in which I pretended to be hiring a newspaper staff.
To find go-getters for ad sales, I asked for a show of hands of people who earned money by mowing lawns or shoveling snow. Then I explained how some people had hair between their first and second knuckles and that this was a genetic trait. Everyone checked for mid-digital hair. I picked three mid-digital money-earning boys and had them stand at the front of the class.
For the writers, I asked who had written five or more pages on their last creative writing project. Then the people who had brown eyes. Of the creative writers with brown eyes, I picked three boys and hired them. They came to stand at the front.
How many people could curl their tongue? This is another genetic trait. Of those people, how many had earned a 100 on their last spelling test? Kids were sticking out tongues and waving hands everywhere. Too many people. Okay, tongue-rollers with 100s on their last five tests. No boys this time. I had to get it down to three tests before I could pick three good-spelling tongue-roller boys. They were the editors.
One boy could curl his tongue and had gotten 100 on his last three spelling tests but hadn't been picked. He was out of his chair in righteous anger.
I asked if he had gone to Harvard. Huh? In a stage whisper, I told him to answer yes. He said yes, he had gone to Harvard. I hired him, saying we always like to have a Harvard man around.
Then I hired my stepson, simply on the grounds that he was related. The Harvard guy and the stepson went to the editorial department.
By this time, some of the girls had raised their hands to object, but I ignored them. They gave up and put their hands down, but I could see a knot of girls with sour looks. (No one who'd been picked noticed any problems with fairness.)
Everyone brightened when I announced that I still had some hiring to do. I was going to need secretaries.
"Oh, wait! I forgot to tell you how much you're getting paid." I picked numbers out of the air, $400 a week plus commissions for the ad salesmen, $500 for reporters, $600 for editors.
I still needed a secretary. Hands flew up (male and female) and tongues stuck out (curled and unable to curl).
"Oh, I forgot to tell you that a secretary gets $135 a week, and she (I was careful to use the pronoun she) has to make coffee for everyone and take their laundry to the dry cleaners," I exaggerated.
Still, the hands pumped furiously and tongues stuck out pleadingly. I told them it was rude to stick out your tongue, that they should know better.
Some of the girls looked so distressed that I finally asked what the matter was. They said, "It's all boys up there. You're only hiring boys!"
I carefully explained that I was simply hiring the most qualified.
The girls weren't buying it. One of the boys who had been excluded pointed out that the girl behind him was the smartest person in the class (the whole class agreed) and that she was more qualified than any of the boys I had picked.
The game had been won.
I let everybody sit down and asked how it felt to be excluded. Nobody liked it. I asked whether mid-digital hair had anything to do with how well you could sell ads. Whether brown eyes made you a better writer. Whether tongue-curling could help you find mistakes in stories. Was it fair for me to make these the criteria for hiring? No, no, of course not. Everyone was already hip to the concept of equal rights for girls.
Including me. But somewhere in my presentation, when I wasn't acting, I did something I'm ashamed of, something I'd heard about and was alarmed to have done myself.
One girl raised her hand while I was making a point. I asked her to wait and she politely did. By the time I got back to her, she had forgotten her comment. But during the same interval, a boy interrupted less politely, and instead of asking him to wait, I responded.
Yes, we're all hip. But girls are still sandbagged. Cultural bias is still happening.
Back in the newsroom, when I finished my story, I challenged the reporter to curl his tongue. Like thith. He said imperiously that he had never tried curling his tongue and didn't see any need to do so now. I asked how he'd feel if that kept him out of his position at the Journal-Bulletin. Tongue-curling was a random genetic event, I said, just like whether you happen to be born male or female.
"How would you like it if a toss of the chromosomal coin kept you from realizing your potential, kept you from being appointed to the Rhode Island Supreme Court if you were qualified, kept you from being an editor, from getting a supervisory job, from being a CEO?"
He wasn't answering. I didn't let him.
"Women have won the right to compete for those jobs, and some dedicated their lives to fighting those battles. Some had to sacrifice their careers to ensure that fairness would prevail. And recognizing their sacrifices is what Women's History Month is all about."
That was the end of my speech. Nobody clapped, but one woman on the desk told me later that she had privately raised an imaginary fist and thought: "Right on."
That was my triumph.
Later, I heard the writer bragging about how he'd gotten out of the Women's History thing.
He got out of having to write it. But he's in it. We all are. We're all part of a culture that acknowledges men have something women don't have. I'm not talking about any part of the anatomy. I'm talking about the cultural endowment that gives men a sense of entitlement and women a set of restrictions.
We're all subject to cultural forces that operate silently until someone notices, points them out, gets others to help and finally wins fair treatment for all.
Women's History Month keeps us thinking about that.
Donita Naylor is a Journal-Bulletin copy editor.
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