“Musings on the 95th Anniversary of AAUW-Harrisonburg” – by Our Branch President, Laura Zarrugh
The Harrisonburg chapter of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) is
celebrating its 95th anniversary this year 2024. From its inception, AAUW has championed women’s rights. As we celebrate our longevity and achievements, I would like to share a few thoughts about how far we, as women, have come since 1929 and why this history is worth remembering at the present moment.
AAUW-Harrisonburg was born in 1929 on the campus of what is today, James Madison
University. In 1929, JMU was known as the State Teachers’ College at Harrisonburg and
AAUW-Harrisonburg’s 15 founding members, our “foremothers,” were members of the faculty
and staff. Their purpose, according to a contemporary newspaper article, was to encourage
women to pursue higher education and career advancement. The chapter’s first president was
Ann Virginia Harnsberger. From 1924 until her death in 1931, Virginia Harnsberger was a
librarian at the Teacher’s College. Tragically, her life was cut short at age 39. Four of the other
charter members have buildings on JMU’s campus named in their honor: Katherine M. Anthony
and Mary Louise Seeger (Anthony-Seeger Hall), Bernice Varner (Varner House), and Margaret
Vance Hoffman (Hoffman Hall).
But all 15 of AAUW-Harrisonburg’s charter members were exceptional women, if for no other
reason, then because they were college educated in an era when all but a minority of individuals of either sex graduated from high school, an even smaller minority graduated from four years of college and only a small proportion of that minority were women. In 1929, it had been only nine years since passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution established women’s right to vote after decades of struggle. In the 1920s, women made up only 20% of the nation’s paid labor force. The number was small, owing largely to the fact that only the minority of women who were paid for their labor were actually counted. In the 1920s it was customary for many women who worked outside the home to voluntarily or involuntarily leave the labor force upon marriage.
At that time, over 90% of women in the U.S. married and the average married woman bore three children, less than half the average number of children born to women in the preceding century.  This drop in women’s fertility rate occurred despite legal obstacles to family planning, such as the “Comstock Act” of 1873, also known as the “anti-obscenity act,” which made it illegal to spread or send information about family planning through the mail. Today, this “zombie law” is being resurrected as a weapon against women’s right to control their own bodies.
It is also significant that all but one of AAUW-Harrisonburg’s 15 foremothers appear to have
been unmarried in 1929. The lone married women is identified in the chapter’s history as “Mrs.”
and her husband’s surname, probably because it was customary for women to gain status but lost their personhood and own name upon marrying. In addition, the so-called “marriage bar,” which existed into the 1970s, often forced married women out of even such traditional “women’s jobs” as teaching. Today, women, and especially those with children, still face challenges in the workplace.
Most, if not all, of the 15 charter members of AAUW-Harrisonburg might have been described as “career women,” a term that gained currency in the 1930s and was understood to mean women who devoted their lives to a career or profession. Because the demands of career and family have always involved a very difficult balance, “career women” were once less likely to be married and are still likely to struggle with the decision to have children, if they hope to advance in a career.
As career women, our foremothers might even have been mocked as “old maids,” which was a
way to belittle unmarried women in the 1920s. Today, it is shocking that unmarried as well as
childless women are still being ridiculed and demeaned, accused of having no stake in the future and told that they do not deserve the same right to vote as people who have their own biological children. This way of thinking seems to suggest that people should only care about or have a stake in the future of their own DNA. Anyone else apparently has nothing of value to offer society and should have no say in the future.
As women, we’ve come a long way since 1929. At the same time, we still are not guaranteed
equal rights under the law and our fundamental rights remain at risk.

 

Member Juanita Mendenhall received the IFHE Distinguished Service Award for her outstanding contribution to the International Federation for Home Economics.  Juanita was nominated for her active involvement in projects and activities that have furthered the profession and provided global outreach to numerous countries outside of the borders of the Caribbean Home Economics Association, especially Ghana and Sierra Leone.  Juanita has been a member of IFHE for 46 years and has held various offices over the years.  She received the award during the Closing Celebration at the XXV World Congress 2024 in Galway, Ireland in June.

 

Member Monica Robinson was elected to Harrisonburg City Council in 2023.

 

Honorary Member Deanna Reed is Mayor of Harrisonburg.

 

Member Chris Edwards and her husband Robin McNallie gave a July 4 presentation at the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on “1619, 1776, and America Now”…. recounting our black history, a short video on Democracy by Leonard Cohen, and more.