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- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Cahill talks about gender issues in education (2:51)
- Creator:
- Cahill, Jeanne Taylor, 1932-
- Contributor to Resource:
- Van Tilborg, Dana
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 1995-12-01
- Subject:
- Feminism
Social movements
Women's studies - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Bacon County, 31.55367, -82.45269
United States, Georgia, Bacon County, Alma, 31.53937, -82.46236 - Medium:
- audiocassettes
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- Norma Jeanne Taylor, civic activist and businesswoman, was born in Alma, Georgia in 1932. She graduated from Bacon County (GA) High School in 1949, and attended Berry College (Rome, GA), 1949-1951. She went on to attend Jacksonville Jr. and Massey Business Colleges in Jacksonville, Florida (graduating in 1953), and studied business law and elementary psychology at the University of Georgia, Waycross Center, 1957-1958. Jeanne married Al (William Alpheus) Cahill in 1959. She worked as Industrial News editor with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1962-1965, and then with various family businesses until 1972, when she became president of Cahill Properties, Inc., a company specializing in land development and real estate. Appointed in 1972 to the Georgia Commission on the Status of Women, Cahill became chair in 1973, and in 1974 she became the Commission's first and only paid executive director. The position was funded for one year only. She was appointed to the White House Conference on Families in 1979, was a member of the Georgia Coordinating Committee for the Observance of International Women's Year, and was also a member of the board of directors of ERA Georgia, Inc. Active in Democratic politics, Cahill supported Jimmy Carter in both gubernatorial and presidential races and served as a delegate to the 1974 and 1978 Democratic National Conventions. In 1975-1976, she campaigned for a seat in the state House of Representatives, but was unsuccessful in her bid against incumbent Ken Nix. Founder and CEO of Advanced Fitness Systems, 1981-1994, Cahill was also president of the Buckhead Business Association, 1994, vice president of the Epilepsy Foundation of America, 1982-1994, and in 1995 was vice president of the Georgia Student Finance Commission. Cahill has been involved in many civic organizations, including the Georgia Federation of Women's Clubs, the Cobb County (GA) Symphony, N.W. Georgia Girl Scout Council and Leadership Atlanta.
Butler stayed at home with her two children until her son was in 11th grade. At this time, she states, she was invited to work for the Georgia AFL-CIO as a secretary. She remained with the organization for 18 years. She describes her experiences in the labor movement, and her efforts to convey information about the Equal Rights Amendment to the labor community, and in particular to her own union, the OPEIU (Office and Professional Employees International Union). She also talks about her work (with the AFL-CIO) on Jimmy Carter's failed reelection campaign, and subsequent efforts organizing his papers.
Transcript of this excerpt: JC: But I was active in my children's school and PTA. I have two sons and one daughter and they [the teachers] referred to her [my daughter] as, "the little women's libber," from the time that she was in about the third or fourth grade, I guess. She would repeat things she had heard at home. So, I tried to bring about a little more equity in their school through P.T.A. work also and to not have all pink drawings for girls and all blue drawings for boys. Oh! Speaking of pink and blue, I almost forgot! Another area that we really worked on as a Commission was the vocational/technical schools because there again, practically all the girls going into vocational/technical [schools] were taking beauty culture -- they were all going to be hairdressers. We would have had enough hair dressers for every woman in Georgia to have her own private hairdresser at the rate we were training hairdressers in little towns where there were not even any job openings for them -- and then, a few limited areas. The boys were taking mechanics and all the things where they could really get a job that paid them something and that had jobs in existence. In touring those schools -- which we did around the state-- and we visited several of them -- they literally had brochures in pink that listed things for girls, and blue brochures for boys that listed all the things that they thought were appropriate for boys. And again, it was these low-paying, little assistant kinds of jobs. You know, outside of beauty culture, it was assisting this or that, instead of something were you could really make some money. There were girls, obviously, back then, who would have made very good automobile mechanics and could have gotten a job, but nobody was talking to them [about these jobs]; and we went through the classes, you'd go into one room, and it was all females; you'd go into another room, and it was all males. So that was another area -- we said, "No more pink and blue brochures. Don't even have separate brochures -- have a brochure that lists all the opportunities -- and make certain that girls would feel just as welcome [as the boys] in whatever class they might want to go in [to]." And I said, "There are boys who would like to be nurses or nurses' aids or assistants. Don't make them feel peculiar because they choose that." I think the vocational/technical schools have improved a great deal since then, not just because of our efforts, I mean times and pressures from lots of sources. But we were the first to go around because -- some of these -- in these various towns [that] we visited, it [the visit] was set up ahead of time, and they had business leaders there for lunch; we would tour the school and have lunch and get to talk with business leaders and to the people who ran the school, and so on. And it was clear -- oh, in one place, they had a Baptist minister who thought we were really meddling to start suggesting [to them] that the girls ought to be able to go into the classes where the boys were, and so on -- So things have improved a great deal in the twenty years or so since that was going on. But that was another area that the Commission was proud of its work. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2054
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2054/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:
- 32 pages (one audio cassette)
- Original Collection:
- Georgia Women's Movement Project Collection
Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-