First Person
Once upon a time—the late 1980s to be exact—I accepted the challenge of starting a new sales operation for GTE, now Verizon. At 30 years old I was earning a very respectable income, the same as my male regional manager cohorts.
Leading the customer service side of this new sales team was Sandy, an “ancient-to-me” woman of at least 65 whose entire working life had been at GTE.
One day my path met with Sandy’s in a quiet hallway. I greeted her and was setting to simply walk by when she grasped me firmly by the arm. “I have something to tell you that you need to know,” she said with a startling intensity.
Her story, it turns out, was a bittersweet one: nearly 20 years earlier, Sandy had joined in a lawsuit against GTE to sue for equal pay for women. That day she reached for me in the hallway was the day a positive verdict had finally been reached after years of corporate legal dodging. After imparting this information, Sandy had a crystal-clear message for me: “You would not have the job you have today if it weren’t for the women who came before you.”
You would not have the job you have today if it weren’t for the women who came before you.
With youthful brashness, I initially tossed it off. I was, after all, a self-made woman! I wised up with age, of course. As I near my own 65th birthday, while I’m painfully aware there are still many gains to be made in the fight for women’s equality, I continue to be appreciative of the workplace brush cleared by the persistence of women who fought inch by inch over many years to secure the opportunities and pay afforded our male counterparts. For National Women’s History month in March, a toast to Sandy and to the many others who helped pave a more just path for women—and to the women’s history yet to be made.
Susan Trabucco is the volunteer editor of this newsletter. She was the founder, editor, and publisher of a regional business journal and former editor/managing editor of Concordia News. Susan and her husband have called B-W home for 10 years, where she practices zonal denial in her tropical-ish garden. Reach her by emailing Editor@BWNApdx.org.