Allow me to brag: my grandmother was one of the first female executive directors of a Jewish Community Center (also called a YM-YWHA) in the United States. She not only led “the Y” in Suffolk County, Long Island; she founded it.

“I started the Y from scratch in 1975 in a little office about the size of a closet,” she told me. “Before I left, we had taken over three floors.”

My grandma, Helaine Strauss, 79 going on 29, has a busier social calendar than anyone in the family. She’s on the curriculum committee for NYU’s Osher program for older adults, takes world politics and art appreciation classes at NYU and until recently taught classes on prejudice to elementary school students in Harlem. But she has also felt her share of sexism. And for that reason, among many others, she’s voting for Sen. Hillary Clinton on Super Tuesday. “I feel that as a woman, there’s a tremendous need to see a woman president. We’re behind the rest of the world.”

When I asked her if she ever thought a woman would be president in her lifetime, she laughed and said, “Never!”

“Let me tell you something, when I got married, Grandpa Al did not want me to go to work. I really put my foot down and insisted I’d go to social work school.”

According to Grandma, Grandpa Al, who has since passed away and thus can’t defend himself, thought a woman should be home with the children. Though he never said it, she thinks Grandpa Al worried that his wife working would reflect badly on him, like he was inadequate, like he couldn’t support his own family.

My grandma’s mom, great-grandmother, I just learned, helped my great-grandfather with his paint store but she never got paid. “She worked with my father during the war years when he needed her,” Grandma said. (Grandma did not think it was funny when I asked if it was World War I. No, World War II.)

Great-grandma was a musician in Atlanta and people would offer to pay her for music lessons. She taught but she never accepted any money. When Grandma asked her why she didn’t take the cash, she said: “What would people think? They’d think my husband couldn’t provide for us.”

Grandma left Atlanta, moved to the North and married Grandpa Al. (That was almost 56 years ago, but Grandma won’t give up her need to chat with strangers or her faint Southern drawl.) She insisted she work and ended up being very successful, but she often had to push to get her share. At one point when she was executive director of the Y, the board of directors wanted to give her a 25 percent to 30 percent raise to put her on par with her male counter-parts. But the Y president, after praising her work repeatedly, said she should not get the raise because she was a married woman. Her husband wasn’t going to leave Long Island, so Grandma had no choice but to stay at the Y.

“At one point, I went along with it because I didn’t want Al to feel badly that I was making more money than he was, “ she told me. “But I wised up to that one fast, particularly with three kids in college.”

By the time she retired, she made about 40 percent more than my grandfather, who was an electrical engineer.
Grandma thinks both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are “marvelous candidates,” but she’s doubtful that Obama has the experience necessary to be president. “He keeps calling attention to the fact that he was a community organizer. Now I know what that is,” she laughs, “and I don’t think it makes you qualified to be president of the United States.”

Grandma says she’s going for Clinton because a) it’s time for a woman; b) this woman seems to be the most knowledgeable on the issues; and c) Clinton has more international credibility.

But then Grandma sighed and added: “I think there are a lot of countries that won’t talk to her because she’s a woman.”

Grandma knows a lot of older adults who still say they would never vote for a woman. “Believe me, that’s why her support is plummeting. They blame it on something else,” she said.

Grandma added that she has many friends who used to be solid supporters of Clinton but are now on the fence. She thinks they have been influenced by their children and grandchildren and have been impressed with his campaign.

When asked if it is emotional for her to see a woman with a strong chance of becoming president, Grandma said: “Absolutely. It’s important. She’s going to be a pacemaker. It’s still hard for women to get into executive positions.”