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Interviewee |
Graves, Mary Vick, 1925- |
|
Interviewer |
Paulk, Janet, 1932- |
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Date of the interview |
1997-02-25 |
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Decade |
1990s |
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Extent of the full interview |
24 pages (one audio cassette). |
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Title and extent of this excerpt |
Graves talks about inequality and the law (3:19) |
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Digital Publisher |
Georgia State University Library |
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Collection |
Georgia Women's Movement Project Collection |
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Collecting area |
Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives |
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Biographical note |
Mary Vick Graves was born in Pensacola, Florida in 1925 and lived there for most of her childhood. Although she began her college career at Auburn University, Graves went on to receive her BA at the College of William and Mary in 1972. Her interest in the women's movement began when she was working for the state of Virginia and realized that the state's inheritance laws did not recognize the financial contribution of women. Graves attended her first NOW meeting while living in Virginia, but she did not become active in the women's movement until she moved to Georgia and joined the 1981 campaign to pass the ERA. She volunteered at the ERA Georgia, Inc. office, distributed leaflets and marched in honor of the suffragettes. After the defeat of the ERA, Graves went on to become involved in number of causes that focus on gender issues. |
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Abstract of the full interview |
Graves describes her childhood and college education, as well as her work as an activist for the ERA Georgia campaign. She articulates what it was like going back to school 1967, ""during the hippie era"" and how up until that point she had spent her life as a daughter, a wife and involved in church activities. Graves says that she feared that her affiliation with the ERA campaign could potentially threaten her career as a professional CPA. She not only discusses what the women's movement meant to her, but also what the movement has accomplished for women. She says, ""I think it has changed the way that a lot of women feel about themselves…and has created an environment where women are more often taken seriously."" Graves also describes what she recalls as some of the major obstacles to the women's movement. |
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Transcript of this excerpt |
MVG: I graduated in 1972 and went to work in an accounting firm after that. And one of the first jobs I had was to work on an estate tax return for the federal government and an inheritance tax return for the state of Virginia. And not until that time did I realize that the state of Virginia did not recognize anything that a woman had done if she worked in a business with her husband. It was assumed to be his, and he was the one that had the Social Security record. And the inheritance laws were terrible as far as the rights of women were concerned. And, also, at that time, there was no recognition that a woman had made any financial investment in a marriage in the case of divorce. And I hadn't been aware of that. They would say, "Well, he made the money." And they'd decide how much the woman could have, based on the fact that she'd never put anything into it. She could have reared ten kids and, you know, worked almost twenty-four hours a day; but the State did not recognize her as having made an economic contribution to the partnership. So I became aware of how differently the state viewed women than the way they viewed men. And it was a real shocker to me because I had no idea that that had existed. And my friends didn't either. None of us realized the position we were in. JP: So were there particular issues that concerned you -- other than these, and what were they? MVG: Women's salaries, too, because I began to see a lot of payroll data from various clients. And if an employee was named "Linda" she made $6,000 a year -- never more. And it became obvious that there were a lot of intelligent women working, but that their salary levels were just way below men of equivalent ability. And I was struck by it, and I also became very aware of how difficult it was for the young women who were trying to rear children and hold down a job, because most of our friends had been full-time housewives. And I had no concept, really, of how difficult it was for the woman who had to work and also try to rear her children, when she was being paid a lot less than she was worth for any job that she could get. |
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Subject |
Feminism
Social movements
Women's studies |
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Location depicted |
Pensacola (Fla.)
Georgia |
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Availability note |
The full transcript and audio recording of this oral history interview may be accessed in the Special Collections and Archives Reading Room, or researchers may request copies. For more information, click the Usage Policies and Ordering link above, or contact us at archives@gsu.edu or 404-413-2880. |
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Identifier |
W008_Graves-1 |
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Rights information |
Copyright to this item is owned by Georgia State University Library. Georgia State University Library has made this item available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
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Language |
English |
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Type |
Sound |
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Format |
audio/mpeg |
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Source format |
audiocassettes |
