- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Hannon talks about the struggle to balance home and work life (1:34)
- Creator:
- Hannon, Sharron
- Contributor to Resource:
- Graves, Mary Vick, 1925-
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 1998-10-23
- Subject:
- Feminism
Social movements
Women's studies - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Clarke County, 33.95117, -83.36733
United States, Georgia, Clarke County, Athens, 33.96095, -83.37794 - Medium:
- audiocassettes
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- Sharron Hannon was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She received her BA from Purdue University. After graduating from college, she went to work for a daily newspaper in northern Indiana, as a general assignment reporter -- the first in the newspaper’s history. Once married, Hannon lived in Chicago and New York before moving to Athens, Georgia in 1979. In 1981 Hannon became involved with efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, starting the ERA Athens group. She also joined the National Organization for Women. After efforts to pass the ERA failed, Hannon continued to work for NOW, starting a local chapter, and going on to run the Georgia NOW Project -- an initiative to organize local chapters around the state. In 1984 Hannon launched a women’s rights newspaper, the Southern Feminist, which ran until 1988. Hannon is currently the Director of Public Relations in Academic Affairs at the University of Georgia. [Shown in the photo, left to right: Sharron Hannon, Sherry [Shulman] Sutton]
Hannon states that from an early age, she knew that she wanted to be a writer, and was editor of her school newspapers from the fourth grade through University. A college student during the Vietnam War era, she recalls writing about contentious issues, and subsequently being threatened with closure by the campus administration. After stints in Chicago and New York, and after the birth of her second child, Hannon describes her and her husband’s decision to move to Athens, Georgia, where her father was a faculty member at University of Georgia. She describes how, in 1981, she went to Atlanta to hear Sonya Johnson speak, and how inspiring the experience was. After attending an ERA lobby day at the Capitol, she began discussing the possibility of starting an ERA group in Athens. She describes her first awareness-raising event, a Susan B. Anthony birthday party, which 200 people attended. Hannon talks about anti-ERA activities in Georgia, and in particular an event at which Beverley LeHay (president of Concerned Women of America) and her husband came to speak. Hannon discusses the work she did as a member of NOW and as director of the Georgia NOW Project. She goes on to talk about her decision in 1984, to establish the feminist newsletter, Southern Feminist. She says that financial pressures led to its closure in 1988. Today, she lists her main concerns for women as being workplace-centered; that employers need to define their best workers not by their willingness to give all of their time to their jobs, but by their ability to lead a balanced life, and be productive.
Transcript of this excerpt: VG: What are the women’s issues that seem important today? SH: Well, I think a lot are still workplace issues. I think that we, as a country, as a society, have not successfully dealt with how you combine work and family. The solutions that we’re presented with are still, “Figure it out on your own,” [and] “Well, maybe women shouldn’t work; they should be at home.” And I think that the debate -- that what frames that debate is still this assumption that employers have that -- where the best workers are defined as the people who will give their all to the company, and family life doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter whether the person’s male or female. It’s like, “Well, are you the person I can count on that will work around the clock,” and this and that. And you know, until we redefine that and say, “Well, maybe in fact the best, most valuable workers are people who have healthy, balanced lives and who work hard and are productive for the company, but they have something else in their lives beyond that,” and decide that that’s actually what’s valued, then it’s not going to change. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2040
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2040/manifest.json
- Language:
- eng
- Additional 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/
- Extent:
- 30 pages (two audio cassettes)
- Original Collection:
- Georgia Women's Movement Project Collection
Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
