Column -- 'Just call me Kathy'

Iowa City mail carrier Kathy Cariens hung up her mailbag for the last time last week, after 37 years of appointed rounds - through snow, rain, heat and gloom of night.

Cariens was the city's first female mail carrier when she started the job in 1972. And while she recently told a Gazette reporter she never thought much about her groundbreaking role, I'm old enough to remember the jokes about women “mailmen” from those early years.

What will we call her, a Fe-mail Man? Yuk, yuk.

Cariens' answer: “Just call me Kathy.”

It's happily strange to think back on that time, not that long ago, when Barbie hated math and female politicians were judged by their cleavage and cankles - oops, guess I spoke too soon.

Gender equity is a work in progress - maybe always will be. Still, it's important to stop and celebrate the milestones as we reach them and to wave goodbye as they fade off into the past. Something someone once said about those who forget history.

The way women of my grandmother's age describe it, they had two career choices in their time: teacher or nurse. That is, until they married and their occupations automatically shifted to wife and mother.

A generation ago, it was legal and logical to pay women a fraction of the money their male peers brought home - after all, the men had to support those wives who had traded in their nurses uniforms for a house and kids.

According to the National Postal Museum, it wasn't until around Cariens' time that women began to make significant inroads into the Post Office. Women made up 8 percent of all postal employees in 1964 but grew to comprise 18 percent of the system a decade later - including a number of female letter carriers.

Just as in many workplaces, some jobs were more available to them than others. When women finally were allowed into the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in 1969, they were among the first female federal agents in any U.S. agency. Still, for decades, women would struggle to break into management positions - again, a familiar story.

Cariens said she just wanted to prove for herself that she could do the job - could tote the magazines and letters, could lift the heavy parcels, could handle the weather extremes. She did.

And she didn't only prove it to herself and her co-workers - Cariens and her peers proved it to everyone. Like women in different jobs but similar circumstances, they paved the way.

Thanks.

Jennifer Hemmingsen's column appears on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Contact the writer at (319) 339-3154 or jennifer.hemmingsen@gazcomm.com