Jennifer Jackson Interview, History 150 Spring 2016, Conducted by David Jackson, Gender Inequality, March 13th, 2016. This interview was conducted in the morning of the 13th in a hotel lobby. In the recording, you can slightly hear other people in the background, but it’s not distracting. The interview was shorter than expected because we were rushing a little bit and because she didn’t say as much as I had hoped. Although not mentioned in the interview, she gave verbal consent that allows me to publicly post this.
Biography: Jennifer Jackson was born in 1971 and is from Chesapeake, VA. She mainly uses her time as a worker in an online customer support company, but other times she’s taking great care of her kids, including myself. She’s been married for 23 years and has 3 sons.
Before conducting the interview, I took it upon myself to educate myself further by researching gender roles and inequality in the 1970’s and 1980’s, when my mom was growing up. In these decades, it was mainly about women trying to get their voice heard in society and also to achieve a status greater than a typical housewife. With this includes the acts of protest and picketing.
DJ (Me): The person I will be interviewing today is my mom, but before I do so, here is a brief background about who she is. Her name is Jennifer Jackson and she was born February 9th, 1971. She is from Chesapeake, Virginia. She works at Teletech, which is a customer service [company]. Alright, on with the questions. Alright, the first one: Were there any gender norms that you noticed?
JJ: Um.. [laughs] I would say absolutely. In school especially, it seemed more normal for girls to focus on their studies and boys were expected to be the athletes. More so when I was in school then what I see now.
DJ: Ok, nice. Okay another question: Have you ever experienced a bias because of your gender?
JJ: Oh, absolutely.
DJ: Can you elaborate?
JJ: [laughs] Um it’s still even when it’s more equality is better now than it was in previous years, but it’s still expected if someone is a female, that they’re gonna take the jobs that are more flexible or um its more expected that they’ll be able to put family first, whereas the man is more able to focus on career advancement. Um, having a better salary, having a better position with promotional opportunities because he’s not having to be as flexible necessarily to accommodate children and family obligations.
DJ: Alright, nicely said. OK, another one: Were there any stereotypes in the workforce?
JJ: Basically along the same thing, if someone is a female, it’s kind of expected that even now that they are the ones that are gonna be out if a child is sick. Um or if there was something going on it-it’s expected that they’re not gonna necessarily be quite as reliable as a man, who is not as normal for them to take off/call out if a child needs something or has a doctor’s appointment, things like that.
DJ: Okay. Have you seen more or less support for working women over the years?
JJ: I’ve seen more. It’s getting better. As more men are the single parents or the primary caregivers or as the shift has happened over the last 30, 20 years to where you have two dual income earners in the family, um it is shifting to where it is a little more balanced.
DJ: OK. Did both parents tend to share home duties equally when you were younger?
JJ: No, not at all. [laughs]
DJ; Can you describe that?
JJ: Um well, my dad worked and my mom stayed home and she cooked and she cleaned and she did the shopping and my dad was the one that worked and earned the income.
DJ: OK. What was expected of you as a young woman when you were growing up?
JJ: [a bit of silence] Well, in some ways I was expected to do a lot of the same things as my mother, um with the household-type chores, but I would say I was very lucky in um my parents seem to focus and try to balance on both, where I was allowed to do the things that I wanted to do, whether it was sports or other activities um while also kind of focusing on trying to balance um education and grades. It wasn’t necessarily instilled in me that I needed to stay home and take care of the household while my husband worked, so I think I was pretty fortunate that way.
DJ: Were you ever teased when you were playing a sport because that’s [was] known as a male thing and not a female thing?
JJ: No, I wasn’t because I was better than a lot of the guys, so that shutdown the teasing really quickly.
DJ: [laughs] Nice. When you were young, what were the expectations for young women after finishing high school and what did most of your friends do upon graduation?
JJ: I think my generation was one of the first ones that really shifted to where women were, it was acceptable to go to college, it was acceptable to have a career and not necessarily focus most of your efforts on having a family. The people that I graduated with was a mix, some of them did go on to universities, some went to community colleges, and some, of course, immediately got married and had families. It was a very good mix, but I think my generation was the first one that that was considered acceptable.
DJ: How was it at UVA? [Regarding of gender roles]
JJ: It was a typical college, it was a good mix of women and men. Everyone kinda focused on the clubs and different things that they wanted to do and y’know, where they could focus on education.
DJ: OK. Well that’s all I have for today. Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions for me and thank you again.
JJ: [laughs] Thank you.
Overall, I thought the interviewing process wasn’t as bad as I had previously thought. Although it would’ve helped for the interview to be longer, I thought that it went pretty smoothly.