COMMENTARY ON WOMEN’S ISSUES : For One Woman, Reality Is a Dream, but for Others, It’s a Nightmare : Professor with a string of achievements pays tribute to those who have not had the opportunities she has had.

Here I am considered an expert on women’s issues. As for my career after childbearing, I have to say that unlike most people who dream dreams they hope will become reality, reality for me has become a dream!

I never dreamt I would go back to school at age 35 and get a master’s degree.

I never dreamt I would pursue a Ph.D . . . much less receive one at the age of 50.

I never dreamt I would have a permanent faculty position at UCI.

Nor did I ever dream I would co-author a book at age 60, and asked by Oxford University Press to write another at the age of 62.

What does all this mean?

It means that my life has been full of opportunities.

But I cannot say this today without noting that for too many men and women--particularly in urban areas--this is not the case.

Our experience last week seeing frustration, anger and an absence of hope spill over into the streets of Los Angeles, the city where I was born and raised, made me realize that as Franklin Roosevelt once said: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”

I feel grateful receiving appreciation for efforts which seem unimportant in the context of last week’s events. Yet I see seeds being planted that may bear fruit.

You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist. And you can’t hold a broom with a clenched fist.

Thus, the image of all kinds of people sweeping together as they cleaned up Los Angeles during the last few days is encouraging.

For there are no more prizes for predicting rain. We now know, if we didn’t know previously, the kind of disorder that cultural misunderstanding can create.

Today (there) are only prizes for building arks; that is, finding ways to deal with the reign of despair that falls heavily in so many of our urban areas.

If I may be allowed to mix metaphors, I like the comment I found in a little book which said that every day each one of us are given stones, and what we build with our stones can make a difference.

We can build walls--or we can build bridges.

With this in mind, I would like to dedicate my award to all those in our cities across the country who have not had the opportunities that I have had.

And, I would like to dedicate this award particularly to women whose daily survival and concern about the daily survival of their children is so often a nightmare.

The kind of nightmare which leaves them little time for dreaming.