Dean Taylor backs liberation
The current feminist movement has organized professional women, women students and middle class housewives in an effort to demand an end to discrimination because of sex.
Emily Taylor, dean of women and a member of the Kansas Commission on the Status of Women, has actively supported legislation that would end sex discrimination in employment practices. She maintains that the problem is not with dominating male egos or passive female attitudes, but rather, with the culture.
Miss Taylor said Wednesday in a Kansan interview that it hadn't been long since many Victorian attitudes were changed and that the carryover of this trend of thought was the root of the problem.
"Women were protected, coddled and almost treated like children. Higher education gave women an opportunity to have a little freedom before marriage. Today as colleges accept less paternal responsibility, modern women have an even greater sense of freedom," she said.
Miss Taylor added that the marital role had changed too, along with attitudes concerning the child-rearing process.
"For 16 years women compete in school and are given the encouragement to achieve," she
Research center solves problems explains census
One of the oldest and perhaps least known institutions on campus is the Governmental Research Center.
Robert A. Aangeenbrug, associate professor of geography and acting director of the center, described the center as an agency funded by the state of Kansas to support research in public administration, political science and related areas for the faculty, students and citizens of Kansas.
The center has ties with the political science department and the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA).
"The historic function (of the center) has been to hold schools for public administrators," he said. "This function has now been transferred to the IPA."
Another role of the center is to give advice backed by their research facilities to cities on problems such as the fiscal system and how to get federal grants.
Aangeenbrug also serves as the census technical coordinator. It is his job, he said, to explain what the census means to cities in the state of Kansas.
said, "After a woman is trained she should have the right to exercise her option in seeking employment opportunities. If a competent young woman has been educated, she should compete equally in the labor market.
"This is not the case. The culture grants equal education, but does not offer women equal opportunity to fulfill equal expectations."
2 KANSAN Mar. 13 1970
Miss Taylor objects to the familiar argument that women are unsound and undependable employment investments.
"Except from the ages of 25 to 35, which are primarily the childbearing years, the employment patterns of men and women are coming closer, despite the fact that employment practices favor men," she said.
Miss Taylor said many companies would not hire women with young children, and few places offered child care centers.
She said, "It is the right of each of us, not as women, but as people, to decide whether we need or want to work. Industry does not have the right to do so."
"A lot of women have accepted the role of second class citizens, but more and more women are becoming angry at this exploitation. They are no longer content to be a convenience of business."
Miss Taylor cited current House Bill 1916 as a step in the right direction toward the elimination of discriminatory practices against women.
A college women can contribute to the feminist movement by reporting any on-campus sex discrimination to the Associated Women Students' Commission on the Status of Women, Miss Taylor said the group would investigate the circumstances and if necessary take action against the discriminating party.
At the hearings on Bill 1916, a senator asked Miss Taylor about work legislation that favored women.
Topeka, she stated that 37 per cent of the Kansas labor force were women and 20 per cent of college trained women were working in positions that were of a non-professional nature.
"I favor protective legislation for all workers, not just women," she said.
Testifying in support of the bill before the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee in
"It's important that we know what is going on," she said. "There are differences between the Women's Liberation Front and the National Organization for Women (NOW), but they both seek to right a particular inequity."
Miss Taylor described NOW, headed by Betty Freidan, author of "The Feminine Mystique," as a large national organization which advocates basic freedoms now denied to women.
She said the group was roughly divided between "aaction groups," which challenge certain basic American institutions, such as capitalism and the family structure, and "encounter groups," which help women discover in each other their common plight and their potential.
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