Jim Webb & women in the workplace

My mother was a career woman in the 1960s and 70s when most women were stay-at-home moms. She forged her way in a man's world and was on the front-line of changes that occurred during that time including membership as the first woman admitted to the Richmond Sales and Marketing Club.

The youngest of 10 children, Mom learned to make her way through hard work, perseverance, and a strong work ethic ... something she passed on to my sisters and me. Now in her 70s and retired, she is still dynamic and actively involved in local Republican politics.

Mom copied me on a letter to the editor she sent to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. I post it here because I feel it is relevant to Jim Webb's comments about women.

October 3, 2006
Letter to the Editor
Richmond Times Dispatch

As I heard the things Jim Webb said, years ago, about women in the military, it took me back to the days when I was a woman pioneer in the sales field of the moving and storage industry. It was men like Jim Webb who made my job so difficult because they were the last bastions of male chauvinism. They absolutely would not accept the fact that there were arenas in the business world in which women were well qualified. Their saying at that was that women who succeeded had "slept their way to the top."

In my business I was helping people who were being uprooted from their homes and moving elsewhere. To most women, their homes were the dearest things to their hearts - next to their families. I could emphasize with those women and I understood the emotions they were experiencing as they followed their husbands who were being transferred to other locations in the country. Sometimes it was an exciting time for them and sometimes it was a sad time - but it was always an emotional time. It was my job to make their household moves go as smoothly as possible for them. I loved my job and my customers and felt I succeeded in helping them get through a stressful time in their lives, which only a sales woman could have done.

I was well aware of all of the remarks and innuendoes by people like Jim Webb, who stated that "horny women" would enjoy being at the naval academy where he was. This was at a turning point in the industry in which I worked and, thank God, there were enough stalwart businessmen who recognized the help I could give to their employees and their families when they were in the throes of moving around the country. If it had not been for those forward-thinking men, I could never have succeeded in my job and I am forever grateful to them. I encountered more than enough "Jim Webbs" during those days and I thought that kind of mind-set was in the past; however, when I listened to Webb being questioned by Tim Russert concerning Webb's remarks about women I heard Webb say that if he had it to do over again (knowing what he knows now) he would not say them. When pressed by Russert to apologize, he DID NOT, which makes me realize that he, apparently, still feels the same toward women and male chauvinism is still alive and well with some people!

[signed by my mom]