Transcript

Nancy: Now those who are over fifty today, roughly, we have some memory of how this movement came about; how it changed things. But the women today who are under forty, for the most part, cannot remember a world that was any different than it is today. They don’t realize how very different things were for their mother’s generation.

I’ve learned a lot from you ladies, especially Mary and Carolyn. You’ve both written books on some of the historical perspectives of feminism. I think it’s important that we get educated on how we got where we are and how things have changed within just several decades.

It’s not just because we want to go back and re-hash old times—50s, 60s, and 70s. But we realize how much of what took place in those decades impacts and influences our world today. And not just outside the church, but even within the church. We have very much been made a product of that cultural revolution. So we’re going to get a little history lesson today.

I want to just start by saying to those who can remember to think back to the 60s and 70s when the feminist movement was really coming to maturity. What kind of memories do you have of that era? Do you remember any events or any songs or cultural moments?

Kim Wagner: I remember the first grade girls on the playground. We would all wear our white go-go boots to school. 

Mary Kassian: Go-go boots. There you go. They’re coming back in, you know.

Kim: They were white patent leather. We would get together in a group and sing at the top of our lungs to the boys the song "These Boots Are Made for Walking," "and that’s just what they’re going to do, these boots are going to walk right over you."

Mary: Yes, "right over you."

Nancy: Where did you learn this song?

Kim: It was on the radio, I’m sure. It was just in the air. It was a popular song. But we loved that feeling of power and aggression as we would sing that song and we would grind our little boot heels into the dirt. We were showing the guys, “We’re grinding you into powder.”

Mary: It was very similar for me. It wasn’t that particular song, but it was the song “I am woman hear me roar in numbers too big to ignore.” And then, of course, "I am strong. I am invincible."

Dannah Gresh: I am invincible.  I remember singing that.

Mary: The final line, "I am woman!"

Dannah: My dad loved Helen Reddy. I remember driving the summer that came out in 1972. We were driving around and listening to those words not realizing that they were having an impact in what I believed.

Mary: I remember middle school, linked arm in arm down the hallway. “I am strong. I am invincible, I . . .” When you examine the words of that song . . . I mean talking about my brothers, "I’m going to make them understand." I’m gonna roar, and I’m gonna become everything that I can be because my brother, the male, has kept me down for all these years, and it’s time for me to take charge.

Kim: And what’s sad is, I think God created us to be strong women, but that was a perversion of what God created us to be. We were relishing in our own strength rather than what He’s placed within us.

Carolyn McCulley: I was such a wee little girl that I have no memories directly of the 60s, but I do remember . . .

Mary: That wasn’t the 60s, that was the 70s—we’re talking the 70s.

Kim: And it’s been re-released, the twenty year-olds now have heard it.

Carolyn: Really? See, I couldn’t sing …