Joyce Murray Interview, History 150 Spring 2019, Conducted by Alexa Grochowski, March 18, 2019.

• Interview Process: This interview was conducted with my grandmother, Joyce Murray. I interviewed her over the phone using the app “Google Voice”. This app was simple to use; I simply gave my grandmother a phone number provided by the app which she proceeded to call, and then I was able to record the interview directly from my phone. The recording further went to my Google Drive, then I was then able to download it to the app “Audacity”, where I edited it and then exported the file as MP3 audio. I didn’t have to edit my interview recording much; the only parts that I had to cut out was the beginning, when I greeted my grandmother, and the end when I said goodbye and wrapped up my phone call. My recording went very smoothly, as I made sure to be in a quiet room with no outside noises.

• Biography: Joyce Murray, my Grandmother, was born on July 10, 1944; she is currently 74 years old. Joyce grew up on her parents farm in southern New Jersey, which is where she currently resides to this day. In her younger years, Joyce helped her parents on their farm, worked in a sewing factory and also owned her own family deli. My grandmother, Joyce, has been married to my grandfather, Louis Murray, since 1964. Joyce and Louis are the parents to three children, Michael, Michele and David. They are also the grandparents to Tony, Lexi and Mason.

• Research:

• During the 1950’s it was still a norm that the typical woman would get married, have children, and stay home to raise those children. In the 1950’s only 1.2 percent of American women pursued higher education. For instance, my grandmother dropped out of high school during her junior year. In today’s society, not completing high school would be frowned upon whereas when my grandmother was a teenager, not finishing school was normal. As for the small percentage of women that went to college, they mostly went in hopes of finding a husband. During this time period, domesticity was ideal for women. My grandmother describes in her interview that out of the mere amount of women that did pursue higher education, many of them ended up dropping out of college because they simply didn’t like it. The goal of most women was to get married, have children, and take care of those children.
  • “Mrs. America: Women’s Roles in the 1950s.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pill-mrs-america-womens-roles-1950s/.
• My Grandmother was born in the 1940’s, which means that many historical changes were going on during her early life. For instance, the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963; this meant that up until this point, it wasn’t even recognized that women and men who worked the same jobs made different amounts of money. Even after that act passed, wages between genders were still very different. My grandmother, such as, worked in a sewing factory for many years. As she stated in her interview, all of her bosses were male. Therefore, even though she made decent money in her work, her male bosses made more due to the fact that they held higher positions. In fact, many companies had written rules that stated women were to be paid less than men regardless of their job or position. This pay difference impacted the lives of many women, including my Grandmother, and continues to impact them until this day.
  • Beach, Justin. “Women’s Rights in the 1950s.” Synonym, 25 June 2018, classroom.synonym.com/womens-rights-in-the-1950s-12082873.html.
• Gender roles as well as expectations, rules, and laws between men and women have changed drastically over time. My Grandmother was born in 1944, during this year women were still looked at as the “inferior” gender. In her interview, my grandmother stated that even within her own family, her brother was considered superior over her. For instance, in 1947 the Supreme Court finally ruled that women were as equally qualified as men to serve on juries; prior to this ruling, positions were held by men only. Another example of gender roles being so different throughout history is that up until 1963, it was not illegal in any way for women to be paid much less than men were regardless of what job they did. It was not until 1968 that sex discrimination when hiring for jobs amongst government contractors was illegal. Pregnant, working women were legally discriminated against until 1978; at this time, my Grandmother was a working woman who already had 3 children. Overtime, we start to see changes. Recently, in 2009, Hillary Clinton became the third woman in U.S. History to be Secretary of State. In 2013, the ban against women in military combat positions was removed. And lastly, in 2017 congress reported a record number of women with 104 female House members and 21 female Senators. All of these changes are significant to gender differences in history as they have impacted present day women including my Grandmother and I, who were born in different centuries.
  1. “Detailed Timeline.” National Women’s History Alliance, nationalwomenshistoryalliance.org/resources/womens-rights-movement/detailed-timeline/.

• Transcription:

Me: Did you ever feel you were treated differently than your brother just because you were female?  

Joyce: Yes, because boys in the Italian family were rated a little higher than the girls. They seem to favor them more. I don’t know if it’s because they felt they can carry out the name and do the superior things and the woman was taught just to work and take care of the children.

Me: Okay, so when you were a child did boys and girls partake in different activities such as sports?  

Joyce: Yes, they took more sports with the boys and it wasn’t until later when I was like in eighth grade where we started with the girls with baseball and they worked up into it as we got older more sports like basketball, field hockey, and I had … baseball.

Me: So did you play sports?  

Joyce: Yes, I did. I played basketball, field hockey and baseball.  

Me: And were you like on an all-girls team or where they’re also boys on the team?  

Joyce: All girls team.  

Me: Okay. Um now around that time, can you explain how people felt about education for females like did people feel that education for females wasn’t as important as it was for males?

Joyce: It seems to be like the males were the ones who at that time took care of the family, they were encouraged to go out and work. So they would try to get as much education as they can where the female was like, they were teachers and certain things like that. But not like the men that would be around doing like plumbing, and different buildings and stuff like that.

Me: So were men encouraged to go to school for longer than females were?  

Joyce: Yes, they were encouraged a lot to at that time if they had money, uh, they would go to college. Or, if they didn’t have money, they were encouraged to take a trade, and learn a trade to support their family or something they would like to do.

Me: Okay, did you graduate high school?  

Joyce: No, I left my junior year.  

Me: Okay, and was it normal… in society during this time for young girls to drop out of school like you did?

Joyce: Yes, it was fairly normal when the girls would drop out because by then a lot of girls figured oh, they wanted to be a hairdresser or work in the store or just, they get involved with men and then they would just plan on being married.

Me: Right, so it wasn’t like … frowned upon if they dropped out of school because it was just what they did at that time period?

Joyce: It was a little bit of both. Like a lot of girls would get involved with, uh, fellas and they would just plan on getting married because maybe in high school they were gone together already, two and three years some of them.

Me: Okay, so it didn’t really matter if they had an education as long as like their husband had an education?

Joyce: Right. It seems to be more like that, you know. It depended on the man at that time more than anything. The women were, once they got educated a lot of them would be maybe a teacher there wasn’t hardly any men teachers, but that’s where they came into with the teaching business.

Me: Okay, um, did you know a lot of like other girls when you were first out of high school that went to college or did not a lot of girls go to college?  

Joyce: A lot of girls didn’t go to college at that time. A few of them would go, and then I knew a couple of the girls they wanted to go and then they would drop out for whatever reason like, you know, they just didn’t like it. A lot of that time to was people weren’t used to being away from home. We were a lot quieter than they [girls] are now, we weren’t out in public that much.  

Me: Okay. What was your first real job after you stopped going to school?

Joyce: I went and worked in the factory. We made men’s suits.  

Me: So it was a sewing factory?

Joyce: Yes, and then I worked in the sweater factory, part time. When I got to work, sometimes they would need help and we would go and help out different ones if they needed it.

Me: And at what age did you start working there?  

Joyce: Uh, 18.  

Me: Was it normal? Like were a lot of the other workers in the factory also female?  

Joyce: Yes, most of them were female outside of, being I worked in a clothing factory, the men were mainly pressors, but the majority of them were females that worked. We would sew, and work on machines, different parts of the coat that we would put together.  

Me: And can you describe what it was like to work in the sewing factory?

Joyce: Well, first of all in the summer, it was very hot. We didn’t have no air condition like a lot of things are air-conditioned now, but we survived it and we had a union that would help us out once in a while. Nobody complained too much because it was like something new for us coming up because we were caught between say that the 20s [the 1920s] and then those people there they took whatever came like on jobs, and then we were moving a little more as far as we would be more a little more advanced than they were in the 20s.

Me: Um, were any of your bosses female?   

Joyce: No, all of them were male.  

Me: And how did the male bosses treat the lady workers?  

Joyce: They treated us all good, really…. They were, I think they were fair in what we did. I started at 18 and I was what you call a “piece worker”. I wasn’t a time worker, piece worker was we got paid by how much uh we made and I thought at that time I made decent money ’cause I would make, say piecework between six and six twenty five an hour.

Me: Okay, um at what age did you have your first child?  

Joyce: 17.

Me: And do you feel as if it was more acceptable around that time to have children at a younger age?

Joyce: No, but… After that everybody start having kids, yeah it was getting a little more acceptable. You know, the ones that were really, I think had it rough was like some of my aunt’s got married at 16 and then they started having children, because the woman hardly ever went out to work.

Me: Right. So at that time period most women like had their children earlier?

Joyce: (unintelligible) Yeah, they started really early because it seemed like they sewed and didn’t really work at all. Just took care of the kids.

Me: Right. How old were you when you got married?  

Joyce: How old? 20.

Me: And like what age did most people during that time period get married?

Joyce: I would say between 20 to 25.  

Me: So that’s a lot earlier than like it is nowadays, right?  

Joyce: Oh, yeah, a lot earlier… They want to get married but they wait longer, make sure they have their education. Everybody is brought up different. They’re taught now to be educated, you need a job that’s going to make money to survive nowadays, before it was more laid-back.  And uh it was easier in one way. It’s not that they had it easy, but they didn’t need the money we need now because there’s so much around us.

Me: Right. Um, what were some of the typical female roles in the household and how were they different from a man’s role?  

Joyce: Well, the female role would be to clean, take care of the children. At my time, when I was about 17, 18, I start working.  And the men would just go out to work we would take care of most of the stuff in the house, with the kids. And the men would take care of the outside and do what they had to do and they would go hunt and stuff. Where the women participated in very little activity compared to the men.

Me: Right, and is that a lot different than it is today?

Joyce: What is that, Lex?  

Me: Is that a lot different than it is today? Like the female…  

Joyce: (unintelligible) Yeah, but now everybody’s involved in everything. Now you could do what you want, there’s a lot of opportunities with schools, they’re given choice of if they want to go for a trade that school will teach them a trade if they’re not book smart. And if not they try to go now, if they’re book smart, they go to college and get a real profession, you know, everything started changing.   

Me: Right. So taking off that, do you feel that the young females in your family are treated differently in society than you were when you were younger?

Joyce: Uh yeah, I think they’re treated better because they have more and there’s more money available for them to do things, because most people start getting husband and wife working. So you just didn’t have one income to work on. So they have more opportunity to try out different things and go out. We didn’t have what they have. Our problem was more like a sock hop, where the problems now you could say, they’re very up-to-date. They wear beautiful dresses in our area. You know, more sophisticated.

Me: Right. Okay. Well, that’s all the questions I have. So thank you.  

Joyce: Okay.

Conclusion: In conclusion, I found that my interview went very smoothly. The app that I used, “Google Voice”, was very simple to use. I also liked the app because it allowed me to directly record the phone call, which made it possible to not use a second recording device while having my call on speaker phone. The sound quality was good and the recording didn’t have much background noise. I found it easy to follow the script, however I did add a few follow up questions that came to mind as my grandmother was speaking. If I were to do the interview over again, I would simply add questions to my script so the interview covered more information.