Three Women of a Certain Age

Northland College Presents Lecture, August 2004

Madeline Island

by Dr. Karen I. Halbersleben

I had known, flying to New York City last winter that the evening in front of me was going to be special. How could you go wrong when you’d be meeting up with some of your best friends in the whole world in one of the world’s great cities, attending a one-of-a-kind world-class benefit concert? What I didn’t expect was that the events of that evening would provide me the content for this summer’s speech on Madeline Island. And, for those of you have patiently endured the long lessons in European History that have characterized my talks the last two years out here, be comforted. This one isn’t about history and it’s actually about America! So, you can leave your notebooks and pencils in your pockets: no quiz tonight! Just a chance for you to think along with me about those aspects of the American Dream which have made our society so unique, and a chance to think together about that Dream as we now move into the 21^st century.

I’ve entitled tonight’s talk “Three Women of a Certain Age.” The polite label for women who no longer flower with the first bloom of youth dates back to the gentile 19^th century: an era which sought to round the edges of unpleasant realities by helpful linguistic obfuscations. “Certain Age” indeed. I’ll begin tonight by telling the story that brought that rather fey title to mind. Then, I’ll spin a couple lessons drawing on the meanings that I have found in the title “Three Women of a Certain Age” as I have ruminated on the topic since February. And, I hope I do it in such a way that you can do a better job paying attention to me than I did to the concert I attended back in February.

All the best stories I know begin, “once upon a time.” So, that’s how I begin our tale this evening. Once upon a time, on a fine winter’s evening in February 2004, three women of a certain age:

…found themselves in stately, historic Riverside Church, in the upper East Side of Manhattan. The three women had all been born in the same year several generations before, and had all passed from first youth into the “certain” age nestled a bit closer to the grave than to the cradle. They had taken very different paths to arrive at the same place at the same time on that same winter’s eve. If we were to borrow from the typology of the famous fable of the “Three Bears,” you would immediately notice some of the differences among these three women: one was tall; one was short; one was “just right.” One was rail-thin, one was on the heavy side, one was “just right.” One was blonde, one was brunette, one had red hair. Though they were all 46 that evening, within the realms of their chosen professions, one was already old, one was young, one was “just right.”

Our three women of a certain age are gathered, this magical evening, in one of America’s great cathedrals, full of atmosphere and history. One was on stage, as it were, the center of attention; the other two others sat in the large and appreciative audience. To be more specific, one was singing and entertaining; the other two were listening, laughing, applauding, enjoying. Let’s take a quick look at each of our three friends in turn.

The one on stage is a professional in every sense of the word… When other young American girls dream of becoming Broadway stars, this one had beaten the odds and made it big. Standing ovations had been her reward for over a decade in the longest-running Broadway musicals of our day. Our “star” this particular evening had broken through into the upper echelons of the musical theatre: one of the most cut-throat and competitive of American industries. And, she had made the most of the experience. Although she was, by that evening, in her middle 40s, she had managed to play leading roles requiring her to appear 18 up until that very year. How could well-traveled 40-something play virginal, wide-eyed 18 for over 20 years? Talent, experience, and a stage presence that burst from the nave of Riverside church on the evening we are observing her: there was plenty of evidence why this woman had been a star for as long as she had.

It was an appreciative audience that night, drinking in the talent on stage. In the pews, side-by-side, sat our other two women of a certain age. The blonde on the left had, from the age of 18 until that night at age 46, seized life by the collar and shaken success out of it by hard work and good sense against all odds. She had lost her father at far too early an age, and had been raised in a single-mother household at a time before that reality was understood or accepted as a reality by mainstream America. Her mother had been a professional singer and vocal teacher, with a zest for life and the arts that had suffused the home in unique ways in America in the 60s and 70s. Bohemian rather than bourgeois, which was decidedly a challenge in mid-20^th century, white bread suburbia. Our friend’s own early dream had been to become an engineer: not a goal easily attained by girls, however intelligent as she came of age in the mid-1970s. How distant that gender-handcuffed America can seem at times. And so, after several false starts at a number of universities, she dropped out never to return. The regimentation and deadlines of higher education were not a good match for a free spirit who loved to tackle problems independently and on her own terms. After spending a couple years working as a waitress and at low-paying clerical positions, she got a job at a major investment firm in Boston, Mass., beginning on the lowest rung possible, as a receptionist. But through her sheer intelligence, curiosity, and willingness to work hard, she advanced. And advanced; and advanced. She taught herself Fortran (remember when people had to know how to program?) and learned how to take computers apart to appreciate how they worked and to fix them as needed. People in organizations recognize others who can get things done, particularly if you need help with a misbehaving computer. Promotion followed promotion over the years because talent rather than formal education was the currency of the land in the late 1970s and 80s as computer use expanded first across American business, and then into our homes. With no more than a high school degree, our friend outperformed and was therefore out-rewarded relative to MBAs from Wharton and Harvard. A few years before the concert, as a Senior Vice President of the firm she had joined as receptionist, she elected to take an early retirement. This disengagement in her early 40s from the 60-hour a week rat-race and Wall Street pressures, allowed her to retire to her dream home on the New English coast and undertake the life of social and civic service that had been her lifelong goal. She had retired in comfort made possible by a unique trajectory through the American investment industry: a fate that not even those who loved her best could have foreseen when she was waiting on tables as a 20-year old college drop-out.

The life of the woman seated to her right stands as almost perfect counterpoint to that of her lifelong friend alongside. The product of a very nuclear family and a very traditional middle-class upbringing, our third friend had plodded purposefully through life on a path that was accepted and acceptable. No free-spirit she: the voice of her parents always rang loudly in the back of her head, keeping her on the relatively straight and narrow. Very good teachers and a love of reading at an early age had birthed in her a passion for history. With the prospect of a very early marriage (and therefore lacking the imperative to major in something she could get a job in), our friend could follow her heart and major in history in College. Married at 20, her decision to continue her studies in graduate school was both the cause and the effect of a relationship turning sour. She passed the comprehensive exams for her Ph.D. the same month she separated from her husband.

For friend number three, as for the other two, she made the most of opportunity as it became available, beginning with an interim faculty appointment out of grad school leading to a tenure-track position and finally to the promised land of tenure itself. And, because she could actually push paper, sort mail, run a meeting, and get things done (and you’d be surprised at the number of very good college professors who can do none of those things), she was asked to perform administrative tasks of steadily increasing levels of responsibility until that February evening she sat there having climbed to the top of academe’s greasy pole and was serving, very happily, as a college President.

So, on this February evening, we’ve gathered a star of the musical theatre, a retired investment executive, and a college President all of the same age. Each woman, though born within six months and raised within a few hundred miles of each other in Upstate New York, had taken a very different path to get to that cathedral on that evening. Each woman, though well past the first bloom of youth and considered “of a certain age” in a society that worships the unwrinkled and unsagged, had achieved every marker of acclaim in today’s America. All three would be considered a “success” regardless of their gender: with ample financial resources allowing for independence, and success in careers that in today’s America confirm status and influence.

You have met our key performers tonight. And, yes, astute listeners that you are, I wager you’ve deduced that one of the three was indeed me. No, not the musical star. Yes: for your consideration tonight, I have presented you: me, my best friend since the age of 12, and a third friend who entered our lives in our 20s. And, now with the introductions in hand, let me do a couple riffs on our theme tonight “Three women of a certain age” and let you inside some of the reasons I have been so intrigued since the night of the benefit concert.

First, the “certain age” the three of us share is a very significant one for American society and history. All three of us were born in 1957, the year that the demographic tidal wave known as the Baby Boom reached its peak. More children were born in America in 1957 than in any year before or since. We are the demographic juggernaut that has driven so many social trends and continues to preoccupy the marketers of Madison Avenue. When I was growing up, the tsunami of our sheer numbers carried all in its path: schools were built for us; teachers were hired for us; extracurricular activities of every sort were added for us. Every possible need of our growing up in white, middle-class America was anticipated and met. And, even now as adults, 1957 babies have clout far beyond anything we have earned, and our whims rule the land as professionals, as parents, and, above all, as consumers. I laugh every time I see a re-tread of a game or a TV show that was popular when I was a kid: Spiderman, Star Trek, Twister. In so many ways, we refuse to grow up past what we knew as kids. Baby boomers think of themselves as the center of the known universe, because in so many ways that has been our experience. When we sneeze, American society catches cold… or to put it more topically, when our faces start to wrinkle, Botox becomes the craze; when our men get bald, Rogain helps new growth sprout; and when other appendages aren’t performing quite as they once did, Viagra appears in our medicine cabinets. When your “certain age” happens to be located in the crest of the baby boom, the rest of American society is well aware of every aspect of your health, well-being, and material desires.

So that was the first element of our “certain age” that struck me that night. But, beyond the accidents of being born in a certain year, I was also struck during the concert that evening that, though we shared the same “certain age,” vastly different fates awaited us within our chosen careers. At age 46, Christine, the singer, had passed the time when prime singing roles in Broadway plays would be available to her. All the talent in the world cannot strip away the years, and female leads in musicals are almost always young and innocent looking. And, although the money she had made during her Broadway years was very, very good, a reliable stream of income from performing would now be very unlikely for the rest of her life. A new career, perhaps in teaching, an entirely different focus of life, now awaited, so that Christine could make sure there was enough money to draw on the rest of her life. And, female baby boomers born in 1957 can expect, on average, to live to the year 2039. We have a long way to go.

Whereas Christine, having achieved great success in her first career, was now needing to “re-career” so that she could build a cushion for retirement, Laura, the investment executive, had already made enough money to retire, as one might say, in “style.” During her years of shaping the investments of other people’s money, she would bemoan her sense that her life’s work was “amoral” and that she was not contributing to making American society more humane or just. Yet, here she was, after years in the Executive bonus pool, having salted away the financial wherewithal that allowed her to devote the rest of her life to the social causes nearest her heart. As with those of you in the audience tonight who are “retired,” which I say in quotes, she is busier now than she ever was. It seems that very evening when I ring her up, she’s at a school board or land conservancy meeting. I rejoice at the incredible grace that has given her total control of her life at what, for most retirees, is a very young age. So, Christine on stage that evening, was at the end of her career as she had known it. Laura, to my left at 46, was a very young, very successful retiree: having attained a level of financial comfort that neither Christine nor I could dream of for at least 10 more years. And, there I sat. Considered young for a College President—the average age for folks in my job today is 55. But, because I was a student until the age of 30—yes, it’s true—and was 31 before I earned a salary above $10,000, I have had not had many years to set anything aside for retirement. Yes, even we folks of a certain age are indeed starting to think ahead.

So, although we three women share a certain age, our choice of careers brought us to very different places that evening. I will say, parenthetically, that I am glad to be in a profession in which, unlike athletes or performers, I am considered young in my 40s and not washed up or over the hill. In fact, quite the opposite: the mistakes I make these days I can blame on youth and inexperience. Every gray hair I have sprouted, every wrinkle I sport tells the tale of a lesson learned; and I’m proud of every one. The older and more experienced I get in this job, the better President I hope I will be. Age is not always a curse, even in America.

So, I reflected that evening on the opportunities that had been made available to us because of the year we were born. I was also struck at how we had arrived at such very different places in life, and how our futures would diverge so markedly from that evening forward. Two different lessons for three women of a certain age. And, since that night, a third riff on this theme was been banging around in my brain. And, that involves a slightly more abstract consideration but one that, as a both an educator and as an American citizen, I find myself increasingly preoccupied with. As children of the Baby Boom, and as girls first and then women, the three of us had opportunity open in front of us that was unprecedented in the history of the world as well as the United States. Barriers of many kinds had been broken for us just in time. In my case, the key barriers had been related to gender. The year I took my Ph.D. in History, only 20% of doctoral holders in the field were women; but that was a level a good 300% higher than a mere 20 years before. In my current role, in the fifteen years between 1986 to 2001, the percentage of women college Presidents has increased from 9 to 21%. And, though today, most women Presidents lead 2-year institutions or small 4-year liberal arts schools like I do, women have begun to pierce the upper echelons of presidencies at major research universities like the University of Michigan, MIT!, and the Ivies like Princeton and Brown. And although many people seem to be pleased to have a young woman as President of Northland College, nobody seems stunned by my selection as they might have been even a generation earlier. Previous barriers of gender and relative youth had been breached by the giants on whose shoulders I stand.

In Laura’s case, barriers of educational pedigree had been relaxed just long enough to let her climb up the corporate ladder with her high-school degree. Her opportunity was made possible by a short-lived willingness in corporate America to recognize talent instead of formal educational preparation. You must remember how in those early days of the computer boom, we were all looking for someone, anyone, who could tell us what to do when one of those “error” messages appeared, or when our machine would lock up at the most inconvenient moment. College degrees, let alone advanced degrees, mattered far less than the simple ability to answer questions no one else could answer and to calmly think through the latest computer-related crisis. Interestingly enough, before she retired from her investment firm, Laura often had to interview people for jobs below her in the organizational hierarchy: but by the mid-90s, the firm would only look at applications from MBA-holders from the most prestigious Business Schools. A talented, self-starting woman with a high school degree would never have risen past the receptionist’s desk, and the firm definitely would have been the poorer for it. That door of opportunity has swung shut and, even though my business is selling people on the value of a college degree, I think America suffers when people are denied the chance to excel for reasons that often have nothing to do with their ability or drive.

So there we all were on that February evening. Products of a set of opportunities that are uniquely American and uniquely late 20^th century: able to form our own destinies through commitment, hard work, and just enough luck. But I worry about those Americans who will be reaching their maturity after my generation. I wonder if the same level of opportunity will be open to them. The American Dream, as the three of us have lived it, was built on opportunity and access. In my own case, it was education that opened the door to give back at the highest level I am capable of. In the cases of Christine and Laura, formal education was less important to their ultimate success than talent, drive, and yes, most importantly, opportunity. Does the future hold the same possibilities for today’s young, particularly if they are not white and middle-class? Because, that’s one unspoken subtext for my remarks tonight. If we three had grown up anything but white and middle-class, would we have been able to achieve what we did? Would our talents have been recognized and supported if we spoke with a Hispanic accent, had a black face, or more recently, wore a headscarf and prayed five times a day to Allah in religious observance? I worry that access to education and opportunity is becoming constricted at the very time when the talents of all our people is needed to confront the increasingly complex challenges of this global society.

The gap between haves and have-nots is growing perceptibly, with the ability to get an education often the single greatest determinant of what side of that divide you stand on. Recent national trends indicate that college financial aid dollars are being increasingly devoted to merit-based aid that had created an arms-race competition for a relatively few, highly gifted students who, overwhelmingly, are wealthy and white. Fewer dollars are flowing to those who need them most economically. Tuition rates are steadily increasing at the two-year schools and community colleges that are often the point of entry for less advantaged Americans and immigrants. Research now shows that the very people who most need the opportunities made available by higher education are now the least likely to seek it. More than 80 percent of students from families earning more than $90,000 annually go to college, compared with fewer than 60 percent of those whose families earn less than $35,000. And, ironically, in Wisconsin as in other states, it is the private schools like Northland that educate a much higher proportion of lower income Americans than do the state’s tax-supported higher education system. Our tax dollars are going, disproportionally, to those who are already well-off. Go figure.

In the 25 years since I graduated from college, higher education has increasingly become defined as a personal good, and not part of the social compact. Doors that had been proudly opened to generations of immigrants and first-generation college students are closing, and with it the chance to gain the opportunities and chance for self-sufficiency upon which the American Dream was predicated throughout the 20^th century. Opportunity breeds hope; opportunity breeds connection to the values of the larger society; opportunity breeds self-sufficiency. We break the connection to opportunity—that vital foundation of the American Dream-- at our peril as we reengineer the social compact away from those who are not products of the accident of birth as white, middle-class, and a product of the Baby Boom generation. These days, as I look about me, it seems those who have: get. Those who have not fall further behind. And I search in vain both the Christian Bible and the documents of the founding of this great republic for support of this escalating repudiation of the greater good. And, I am deeply troubled by the extent to which any enduring security for this society or this world is possible when our policies, intentionally or not, are tending to increase an under-class denied both hope and opportunity.

Perhaps this last, plaintive wail on my part is my final reflection tonight on being a woman of a certain age. I, and others of my generation, am now in charge. We are making the choices and driving the decisions that will directly affect the world we bequeath to the generations who follow us. I stand in the prime of my life; I’ve been blessed with a position in this world of status and influence, and I’m deeply concerned about what I and leaders of this generation are doing to this planet as well as to this republic. Because time, surely, is running out; and the stakes have never been higher. We need every person in this country today and tomorrow to be able to contribute to his or her fullest potential, able to feel that the American Dream remains a reality for them and their children. More than just an individual person denied opportunity, we all lose if the Dream is denied.

For, the enduring lesson I learned amid the joyous music that night in Riverside Church is that miracles happen when you give individuals a chance to “find their voices:” when we are allowed to rise as high as we are capable of and can give expression to all the promise that lies within. The three of us, gathered that evening, have had that chance and I thank God for it. And I hope, as both an educator and as a citizen, that we are providing that same chance to the 18-year olds who were at Riverside that evening or who are attending my College today. What will their lives and their world look like when they, in turn, reach their “Certain Age” a little more than a generation from now? Will we have passed both the Dream and the ability to achieve that Dream, full and vibrant and real? Enabling the dream to endure has become my life’s work.

The 20^th century in the United States produced the greatest expansion of political rights and economic opportunity and prosperity in the history of the human race, and we can be proud of that. We sit in this room tonight as beneficiaries of the widespread wealth and the leisure time that was spawned during that remarkable century. Tonight, I charge those of us who have received the blessings of access to the American Dream to make the commitment to provide those who follow us the same chances we had. The chance to rise or fall based on talent and hard work; the ability to craft lives of meaning as well as meaningful lives; the assurance that, when we reach a “certain age,” we can look back with pride and purpose and principle. My own commitment, and that of my college, is to do whatever we can to ensure that three women who are 18 years old today can come together on an evening 30 years from now, and be able to celebrate their destinies as fully as Laura, Christine, and I were able to do sitting at the dawn of the new millennium. Being of a certain age today confers upon me and all of us, that obligation to those who follow us.