Gender Discrimination in Iran

Her mother chose to stay home rather than bear the repeated humiliation only to encounter another form of humiliation as a "western woman" living in Iran during the 1960s when her husband became a civil engineer with an American firm. Ellen shares the impact from a society where women were marginalized by being denied the benefit of education, the inability to have their own independence through something as seemingly "small" as the right to drive a car, and living by cultural mores that said "a woman's place is in the house". It was another period of time where her mother became a recluse rather than live by the norms.

Fueling the Motivation to Succeed

But it also fueled both her father and mother to ensure all four daughters would return stateside and go to college as a means of validating their value as women and ensuring their economic independence. She now believes that her motivation to earn her B.S., M.S. and complete her doctoral studies was highly influenced by these multi-cultural experiences. Ellen Walsh believes that if all Americans traveled outside the U.S. they would find that people are more alike than they are different and that they want the same things for themselves and their children.

Career

Ellen Walsh, a Retired Professor of languages, pursued her undergrad and graduate degrees in the romance languages after her childhood experiences living in Honolulu, Japan, and Iran. She completed her doctoral studies in Spanish at George Washington University and went on to become a professor of the romance languages at GWU. The Influence of a woman mentor worked to redirect her work from academia to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) where she spent 33 years teaching foreign langauges to DoD personnel often as a matter of "life and death" given their work abroad.