Interview and Transcription conducted by Mia Owens. Interview took place on March 8^th, 2019.

A. Interview Process: This interview was conducted in person. I did not have to extensively edit it, I only edited out few long pauses. This interview took place within a car because due to the circumstances it was the quietest place to record. It was recorded on a mac book pro through the garage band application. The main obstacle was not having a fully quiet and relaxed place to go to record the interview.

B. Biography:Ann Marie Mackay was born in 1939 in New York. Her dad was in the marines, so she was equated to frequently moving. She attended George Washington University and graduated with a degree in English. Right out of college she was engaged and married to a man in the military. Moving around to different military bases became even more common to her. After having and raising three children (two girls and a boy), she eventually got her masters at Old Dominion University. During the 1970’s was when there was a large women’s movement, this was the time when her family was living in Hawaii on a military base.  She went back to work as a college English professor at Saint Leos, a community college on a naval base. She is now retired living in Charleston, she has three granddaughters and two grandsons.

C. Starting in the 1960’s all the way to present day there has been an increase in women activist movements. During the 1960’s and 1970’s more and more women began to question the standards that they were living with. In Maria Hadjipavlou’s “Cypriot Feminism” she explains this change to be “Feminists started questioning established norms and ‘essentialisation of womenand men; they demanded changes in gender roles, the elimination of the separation of private and public spaces; questioned patriarchy and sexism, classism and racism as conditions leading to discrimination.” This very accurately lines up with the atmosphere described by Ann Marie in the interview. These feelings of empowerment by women were felt and acted on worldwide. Feminism had contributed to a split among the catholic church. Beliefs of the church contradict certain aspects of the feminist movement, specifically abortion and birth control. This has put a strain on the church mainly between males and females. In Christel Manning’s journal “Women in a divided Church” she analyzes the moral contradiction that catholic women face.  The journal emphasizes the issues faced by catholic women while trying to stand behind their religious view while also trying to politically support the feminist movement. This was a challenge directly faced by Ann Marie in the 1970’s all the way to current day. Ann Marie began at George Washington University in 1957, according to a website on George Washington university’s history the college started as an all-white, male school and slowly began admitting women but solei to become nurses. In 1952 the first African American women was admitted to the school. According to the article “Women in higher in education” the 1950’s was roughly when more colleges began to accept women. This was a large advancement in women participating in higher education and was newly a social norm when Ann Marie began her college career.

Citations:

 

247. HADJIPAVLOU, MARIA, and BIRAN MERTAN. “Cypriot Feminism: An Opportunity to Challenge Gender Inequalities and Promote Women’s Rights and a Different Voice.” Cyprus Review, vol. 22, no. 2, Fall 2010, p. 247. EBSCOhost,search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,cpid,athens,shib&custid=s8863137&db=edo&AN=57393727&site=eds-live&scope=site.
248. Christel J. Manning, author. “Women in a Divided Church: Liberal and Conservative Catholic Women Negotiate Changing Gender Roles.” Sociology of Religion, no. 4, 1997, p. 375. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,cpid,athens,shib&custid=s8863137&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.3711922&site=eds-live&scope=site.
249. https://library.gwu.edu/scrc/university-archives/gw-history/first-women-at-gw
250. https://www.cuny.edu/site/cc/higher-education/women-higher-ed.html

 

 Transcription:

MO- Please state your full name.

AM- Ann Marie Sneeringer Mckay

MO- Okay, So I am just going to start off with questions. First off, in your early childhood how do you feel your schooling differed from your male peers?

AM- Well, we didn’t place the emphasis on sports, at all.  So..um my strengths were in reading and art and music.

MO- Also in your family life how do you think being a girl changed your role?

AM- Well I didn’t actually have a brother because the younger two in my family came when I was practically out of the home. But I definitely felt as a mother I felt that my daughters didn’t get as much attention as my son did. Particularly in the sports area, so I always tried to encourage the girls.

MO- Okay, you attended college, right? Where did you go?

AM- Right, I went to George Washington University on a scholarship. I was valedictorian, one of the five valedictorians of my high school class. So, I was always quite an achiever in school. But I do remember, and I hate to say this, but I remember not doing well in Chemistry I didn’t understand it really well. And I know that my professor kind of felt sorry for me and gave me an A. And that helped me to be a valedictorian.  I always thought I probably didn’t deserve it because I wasn’t really good in the sciences.

MO- Was it common for girls to go to college? To seek higher education

AM- You know when I was in high school yes, I think we were all encouraged to go to college. But there was this saying about you go to college to get your MRS. And I said that would never happen to me and it did. I did very well in college. I’m Phi Beta Kappa. I was going to go to graduates’ school, and I was going to teach college English. And I met my husband the April before I graduated, and we were engaged in June and married in August. So, I think what that shows you is that even though you think you’re going to be different. …. Where you grew up and when you grew up has a lot to do with what you did. And I’m very happy that I did it and I went back later and got a master’s degree, but it wasn’t what I had planned when I went to college.

MO- So what did you do after college? So, you got married and you were a military wife right?

AM- Right

MO- How was that?

AM- Well um it was.. I had felt very comfortable because my dad had been in the military and we traveled around, and I liked going to different places and I ended up doing things that I enjoyed. I was able to sing with different groups and I always sang in high school and college. I took up painting because I liked to draw, and I used to take art classes but as the years went by… Do you want me to tell about…? (referring to work with the ERA movement)

MO- Mmmmh

AM-  I remember very distinctly when we lived in Hawaii. It was right when the women were trying to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed and I felt very strongly about it and I helped organize a group of women on the base that we lived on. And I wish I could remember the name that we called ourselves because it was like a women’s power group that kind of thing. The only thing I disagreed with, with the women that were trying to pass the ERA was that I never believed in abortion, so I did not go along with that. But I also joined a group that I thought was really educational. It was a group of people from all different religions and they called it “Unity and Diversity” and every time  we met someone would explain a religion, like their religion. It was things like Bahá’í that I had never even heard of before or Muslim and I’m catholic. But we were all trying to open up and understand other people.

MO- That’s awesome!

AM- Yeah

MO- After you were a military wife you went back to work, right?

AM- Well when our children were… Well im trying to think if they were pretty much two of them were in college and one was in high school when I started. I had gone back when they were younger, and I had gone to Old Dominion University and I got a master’s degree in English. I always wanted to teach English and that was when I had my full-time job and I worked for Saint Leo College and I taught English for them and they had a branch at the Air force base that was near us.  And so, my full-time job was academic counselor and I taught English part time for them. And I have taught at different community colleges and I felt good about that.

MO- Have you ever felt any differences being in the work force? Any discriminations for being a woman compared to your male counterparts?

AM- Well, yeah, I think probably in salary is where you feel it. I think they were very glad to have military wives in these jobs, like the one that I had because they didn’t have to pay too much because they knew that we were married to someone that could support us. I did feel strongly that I would never have gotten paid what I was worth really.  But the other thing I wanted to mention was starting in Hawaii, I got very angry at my husband because he supported our son in the sports that they were in, but he didn’t even come to the girl’s games. You know? It was like it was important for the boys to do certain things and I don’t even think he consciously did that, but I just think that was part of our environment at the time.

MO- Have you noticed any changes with that?

AM- Well …yes and no. I mean that time it was when they were at a certain age, but I think that probably my husband has grown, allowing the kids to pursue what they want to do. But… I think there is more opportunities then there ever was before.

MO- I was going to ask, what are the changes you’ve seen with your daughters and now granddaughters? The changes from when you grew up until now. In the opportunities and treatment of women in general?

AM- I don’t think there’s that idea. I mean we used to laugh about it, but it really was true that if you were a woman and you did go to college you definitely… you were probably… this was in my time. They said oh “you’re just looking for your MRS” and they didn’t expect us to go on to higher education but they also… it was like sort of you can work but you’re either going to be a teacher or a nurse. Those were the two fields and so we were sort of programed for that and we never even thought about going into any other kind of career. And now I think girls are doing more and their showing that their just as smart as the boys are. But I still don’t think from what I’ve read that women get paid the same as the men do for the same job. I think it’s going to be a while before that happens.  And they sort of have put the ERA on the back burner but now I believe they are trying to pass it again.

MO- Is there anything else you would like to add?

AM- Well, I think what happened because I felt so strongly about equal rights. I remember when we moved back to Virginia and there were certain things that I was not going to do just because I was a woman and it kind of silly but things like oh my friend would go and make the beds up at the retreat center and I thought “why is she doing that we should stand up and say why aren’t the men doing that?” I just had this feeling that it should be more equal, and I don’t know that I did anything to change but I think it was kind of stupid on my part but that was one thing that I was saying that there were certain things because they think that only women should do that and leave other things for the men. So that’s pretty much it I don’t really know if my children think that I’ve passed anything on to them.  But that’s it I can’t think of anything else.

MO- That’s perfect, Thank you so much

AM- Okay you’re welcome

Reflection: I think the interview went fairly well. It was shorter then I had expected but I believe this to be because of the circumstances of the interview. I think we both got slightly rushed because of other family being close by. I think she had many great points and very interesting things to talk about.