View on Gender

Lost Voices

As a black female, I never had a question about whether I was going to work or not. I was always going to work. I mean I've worked since I was twelve years old. That was not a decision for me.

The social milieu in which I existed was always very supportive of personal development on the part of women. I grew up with a bunch of brothers, so I was accustomed to riding bicycles, a boy's bike, and standing up on the seat and hiking and climbing trees. So, I just didn't feel that there were things that I shouldn't do. Now, I look back on it and I understand the gender shaping that was occurring. In spite of that, I didn't know it then, so there probably were constraints that I didn't understand. If I had been white and if I had been male, I might have done other things with my life that I didn't do, that I was shaped to do, but didn't know that I was.

Women may look at the world differently... Sometimes I feel that Black women have kind of been the lynch pin of our race and that when Black women no longer performed the traditional roles, things fell apart. Does that mean that I put the responsibility for what happens to us on Black women? I hate to do that. At the same time, I recognize that maybe the world isn't equal. Maybe there are certain kinds of things that we have to do.

There was a point when women, Black women, were not taking the primary leadership roles. You wouldn't find them president of the NAACP, but they were in the background. They were behind the scene thinkers and planners and movers and shakers.

------ Dr. Ancella Bickley