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Uh, really? A year after that, I had a full tuition scholarship to a major landgrant university, based on my SAT scores and 3.9 GPA (calculated sans weights). This was at a time when my father was out of work for months at a time and digging out from under the disaster of a business bankruptcy foisted on him by an unscrupulous employer. Oh, and did I mention I have no Y chromosomes?
I think that's the first time I've ever typed that, and I'm ashamed to sound like the kind of prick who touts stats that have long since ceased to matter, but actually things were looking up for women in the eighties. They were heading into the sciences and engineering fields in increasing numbers, actually, even though those were (and continue to be)fields that are hostile to women.
But neither I nor Sarah Palin majored in a hard science or technical field. However, only one of us got her degree in four years, at the same university where she initially enrolled, and is not embarrassed to release her transcripts to anyone with a legitimate reason to see them.
I suspect the beauty pageant stuff had less to do with money than with a desire for visibility--she wanted to be a teevee reporter, after all.
