Past the door, the room is warmly lit by a single lamp sitting on a desk crowded with pictures of family and friends. Van Delinder herself is softly lit with a blue tint from the computer she is watching intently.
Pictures of cats, family and husband seem to watch over Van Delinder from the walls of her office as she prepares her next lecture.
Van Delinder is an assistant professor at OSU and has a doctorate in sociology with an emphasis on theory and women’s issues. Her position as an expert on women’s issues makes her story ironic and unique.
In a time when, according to statistics provided by the International Labor Organization, little more than 46 percent of women in the United States are employed, Van Delinder is not only working but was, at one point, also the sole financial supporter of her marriage, making her the householder of the family.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a survey conducted by the United States Census Bureau, classified householders as the family reference person.
“This is the person (or one of the persons) in whose name the housing unit is owned or rented,” the definition reads. “The relationship of other individuals in the household is defined in terms of relationship to the householder.”
The Bureau further defined a family as the householder and all other persons related to and residing with the householder.
“Being a woman makes it even harder because most people assume that the husband is going to move somewhere and the wife goes with him, but with my situation, I got the job,” Van Delinder said.
Van Delinder married her husband, Brad Rickelman, a manager of marketing communications for Doug Carson and Associates, in August 1996, a week before the pair came to OSU.
She came to OSU because that was where she could find a job in her field of study. Her husband chose to come to OSU because of his wife.
Rickelman said he had been working in Japan, teaching, prior to moving to Stillwater.
“She had a job, but I didn’t, because I had to quit my job to come live in Stillwater,” he said. “I was worried because it’s not a large market.”
Charles Edgley, head of the department of sociology at OSU said people still think men should make more money than women.
“In spite of all of the changes that have occurred in society about women’s issues, there remains the sense that men are the primary wage earners,” Edgley said.
Society, Edgley said, still accepts the role of the man as the main bread winner in a marriage.
“I think one of the last vestiges of the male privilege of assumption is that men ought to make more than women do,” he said.
The Census Bureau recently reported that both spouses now work in 51 percent of married couples. Still, Van Delinder said, most people are used to the man being the professor and the wife being the one that has to make due.
“No one would think twice if it were just a woman here with her husband not working, but since it was my husband, and he is a man, it was like ‘Well, what’s your story?’” she said. “Not that anyone actually said it, but the implication is that ‘What’s wrong with you?’”
Most people just nodded their heads when the new couple explained their job situation, Rickelman said.
“Everyone assumed that I was the one that had the faculty job and that my wife had come here with me,” he said. “Even today, people say, ‘Oh, and what do you do, Jean?’”
Edgley said the new gender roles are large issues in divorces.
“There is still the notion that men should be the main bread winners and that if a woman works it should be at something that is less significant than what the man does,” Edgley said. “It can be a source of contention in marriages and it underscores the deep-seeded prejudices that we have in our society.”
Many people, Edgley said, believe the roots of the contemporary women’s movement are based in earlier World War II experiences.
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