Document 2: National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, "Historical Notes on the Growth of the Women's Movement," in "…To Form a More Perfect Union…": Justice for American Women (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), pp. 3-9.
AT&T agreed to give more women and racial/ethnic minorities equal job opportunities, April 1973.
From National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year,
"…To Form a More Perfect Union…": Justice for American Women, p. 7.
Introduction
In 1976, in accordance with its legislative mandate in Executive Order 11832, the NCOIWY published some of its first major research findings. Borrowing from the text of the United States Constitution, the report was titled "…To Form a Perfect Union…": Justice for American Women. The report included documents describing women's current social and economic status, a history of American women, and a suggested plan of action for improving women's lives based on the research of thirteen unpaid committees. During 1976 the NCOIWY published a number of additional reports on such subjects as the media representation of women and women's status in Congress.[51]
The following document is an extract from an article published in the NCOIWY report of 1976, and describes two hundred years of women's rights achievements ending with the founding of the NCOIWY. The entire narrative begins with Abigail Adams's request to her husband in 1776 to "Remember the Ladies" in the founding documents of the new nation. It concludes with important women's rights gains in the 1970s including the 1973 agreement between the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) and a labor and equal rights coalition under which AT&T agreed to employ more women and minorities.
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Historical Notes on the Growth of the Women's Movement
Early in 1776, as patriots were demanding a Declaration of Independence, Abigail Adams wrote her husband John:
"… in the new Code of laws … I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by and Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.
That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs, which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings…"
John's bantering reply called his wife "saucy." "Depend upon it," he wrote her, "we know better than to repeal our Masculine systems."
Abigail Adams's letter spoke for those colonial women who wove cloth, preserved food, farmed, butchered, and often worked side by side with their husbands in trade. Even though these women were subordinate, they were highly valued for skills they performed in the labor-short economy. But contrast, a wellborn woman's worth was measured by the prestige she could bring her husband through her birth and family connections.
The Revolution and, a few decades later, Jacksonian democracy unleashed ideas that gave ordinary people a new view of their own potential. Small shops expanded into great stores; industry grew; the manufacture of cloth moved out of the home. Men moved from a home-oriented, stable culture into an expanding world of educational, business, and financial opportunity.
Women, on the other hand, found their spheres had narrowed; they were now less important to men. Their sense of self-worth suffered. Shut out of the larger world, many began to find that the qualities that counted most were piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity.
A few women found expression for their
[p. 4 -- photographs]
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The Seneca Falls convention of 1848, the first women's rights meeting in America, drew more than 250 women and about 40 men, who arrived in buggies and wagons drawn by farm horses. They met for 2 days and demanded opportunities for women in education; trade; commerce; the professions; and rights in property, free speech, and the guardianship of their children. After much controversy, they took the daring step and asked for suffrage.
But many setbacks marked the struggle that followed. In particular women's hopes were dashed when the 14th amendment extended the right to vote only to all male citizens.[4] Two years later, in 1870, black males achieved suffrage through the 15th amendment. But it took 50 more, long year before all women won the right to vote.
Some historians say that feminism died after the woman's suffrage amendment (the 19th) was passed in 1920. Actually there were new forces at work which were reordering and extending women's interests in relation to socioeconomic events.
Prime among them were the women's organizations, some of which had their beginning in the 19th century.
In 1882 a group of women who had obtained college degrees despite great obstacles came together to see how they could make education useful. Their first study was of women's health and physical education. They sought to counter the attitude that young women could not undergo the intellectual strain of schooling without damaging their health. This group later became the American Association of University Women.
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"I believe we will have better government in our countries when men and women discuss public issues together and make their decisions on the basis of their differing areas of experience and their common concern for the welfare of their families and their world… Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression …."
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt,
U.N. General Assembly,
December 12, 1952
Churchwomen founded the Young Woman's Christian Association out of concern for the plight of women flocking to eastern city factory jobs where they endured sweatshop conditions.
The General Federation of Women's Clubs, formed in 1890, was the outgrowth of the Sorosis Club organized 21 years earlier by a newspaperwoman, Mrs. Jane C. Crolly, because the all-male New York Press Club would not admit her to a dinner honoring Charles Dickens.
Early 20th century organizations also laid much of the groundwork for the women's movement of the 1960's. The National Women's Party, founded in 1913 to advance the suffrage movement, also spearheaded the introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment in Congress in 1923.
In 1920, the League of Women Voters was formed by former suffrage workers to educate the new women electorate.
The National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, one of the strongest forces behind the drive for ERA ratification today, was formed in 1919. Its roots go back to World War I when the U.S. War Department organized a Woman's War Council to mobilize business and professional women to support the war effort.
All of these groups gained strength and status throughout the twenties and thirties when millions of American women came together in weekly or monthly meetings to discuss civic, business, cultural, and personal problems and their solutions. While those meetings were nothing like the consciousness-raising sessions of the sixties, these organizations built a broadbased constituency and leadership for later action.
At the same time, many American women were applying the feminist momentum to their private lives.
The family sociologist Alice S. Rossi describes the thirties as a time when "women earned the highest proportion of advanced degrees in the history of American higher education. So too, the proportion of women in the labor force continued to climb dramatically throughout the 1940's and 1950's … Strong- minded descendants of the suffragists between 1920 and 1960 were pouring much of their energy into education and employment, and if they were married they did double duty at work and at home; such a profile leaves little time and energy for political involvement."[5]
Women went into the labor market as never before during World War II. When the war was
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Eleanor Roosevelt, who had been speaking to readers in a daily newspaper column ever since 1935, became an inspiration and role model to thousands of women.
Other elements entered the American scene. Black American were protesting their second-class citizenship. Women, who had long recognized the parallel between injustice to blacks and injustice to women, were encouraged by the success of the civil rights movement.
Advances in contraceptive technology gave women a chance to space their children. Better family planning resulted in better health and allowed women to participate more fully in public life.
Women were beginning to recognize that fulltime homemaking was not the best of all possible worlds for everyone, especially after children went off to school. And women alone—divorced, widowed, or separated--found it hard to support themselves in a society where businesses, industries, and universities often did not regard women as full partners.
Authors such as Margaret Mead, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvior, Jessie Bernard, and others began to examine the conflicts and injustices. Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique captured a popular audience. And the drive for self-fulfillment and equal justice was launched with new vigor.
In 1963 the President's Commission on the Status of Women, which had been chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt until her death in 1962,
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The demand for justice grew. New and powerful women's rights groups were formed, and the older, established women's organizations renewed their interest in the movement for equality. Among the powerful new women's group were the National Organization for Women, the Women's Equity Action League, the National Women's Political Caucus, and the National Association of Commissions for Women.
Under pressure from women's groups, Congress enacted a series of laws beneficial to women. Among them were the Equal Pay Act, title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and subsequent submittal to the States for ratification, and title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 banning sex discrimination in education.
Status of Women Commissions were established by pratically all governors, and the Federal Interdepartmental Committee and Citizens Advisory Council on the Status of Women provided leadership and held conferences of the State Commissions.
The Federal Government began expanding its antidiscrimination orders involving Federal contracts, so that women were included. In one landmark case, American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) agreed in 1973 to provide goals and timetables for increased utilization of women and racial/ethnic minorities. The agreement reached by AT&T, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Labor Department, and the Justice Department awarded $15 million in back pay to some 15,000 employees.
Meanwhile, the momentum continued on a worldwide basis and culminated with a U.N. conference in Mexico.
The World Conference held in Mexico City in the summer of 1975 drew 1,300 delegates from 130 countries and 7,000 persons, mostly women who came at their own expense, to the unofficial Tribune. Both of these bodies got mixed reviews. There was inadequate funding and a lack of serious commitment from the governments of the member countries, lack of adequate space and technical assistance, and lack of power on the part of women attending.
It is important to realize, however, that these large bodies of diverse women did unite on goals. The unofficial Tribune debated various
"What awakened women want is respect and honesty so we do not need to roleplay or manipulate men… And, men must be persuaded that, as women are encouraged to develop as fully as possible as individuals, life for men will become freer, happier, richer and more rewarding."
From The Lutheran,
magazine of the
Lutheran Church in America,
December 3, 1975.
women's issues, and the Conference produced the World Plan of Action, many points of which were endorsed in December 1975 by the U.N. General Assembly.
Senator Charles H. Percy of Illinois, a Congressional adviser to the U.S. delegation, has pointed out that
"The Conference was an opportunity for women to meet, find reassurance in each other's experiences and gain new challenges in each other's ideas. The Conference toughened and matured the international women's movement. Women … began … building the informal associations and networks so important in the exercise of influence and power."
U.S. participation in International Women's Year got underway in 1972 when the U.S. Department of State set up an informal interagency group to plan for U.S. Government observance of IWY. This group made a number of proposals including suggested IWY activity for U.N. member states, creation of the U.S. Center for IWY, and establishment of the National Commission.
Things now began to move quickly.
A Presidential proclamation called upon the country to take stock of women's roles and "to provide for the observance of International Women's Year with practical and constructive
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The Department of State established the IWY Secretariat, responsible to Deputy Secretary Robert S. Ingersoll, to assist in preparing materials for the U.S. delegation to Mexico City and to act as staff for the National Commission. The U.S. Center for IWY at Meridian House was established to share information and to beword a bridge between government and many nongovernmental organizations. Before 1975 was over, thousands of IWY programs had taken place throughout America.[8]
Early in the year President Ford created the National Commission, saying, "… Americans must now deal with those inequities that still linger as barriers to the full participation of women in our Nation's life…"
Thirty-five members were appointed from the private sector and four from Congress. Jill Ruckelshaus was named presiding officer. Funding came in the form of staff services or money contributed by Executive Branch agencies as their share in the government's observance of IWY.
Two hundred nongovernmental organizations concerned with women were asked to suggest areas the Commission should deal with, and as a result the Commission set up 13 work committees. An interdepartmental Task Force to implement IWY projects within government departments was created.
The committees then went to work, broadening their expertise by adding public members and by holding many long, concentrated sessions. They called in expert witnesses, authorized certain original research and participated in a number of public hearings, under various auspices.
Among the larger hearings were:
The Southwest Indian Women's Conference in Window Rock, Arizona. Annie Dodge Wauneka, Commission member and member of the Navajo Tribal Council, was the keynote speaker.
Massachusetts public hearings for IWY held in Boston through the efforts of Representative Margaret Heckler, Congressional Commission member, and in Norton, Massachusetts, with the added sponsorship of Wheaton College.
The Conference on Women in Public Life, sponsored by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library at the University of Texas in Austin. The Commission's Women in Power Committee participated extensively.
By early 1976 the Commission had adopted recommendations as those most imperative to eliminating the "barriers" to full justice.
But as one public Commission member said: "Sexism is still so rampant throughout our country, we could not possibly address ourselves to all the areas that need action in the few short months the Commission has had."
Two hundred years ago the Declaration of Independence said: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…" Commission members believe that women and men together will strive earnestly to make that principle a reality. They also believe it is urgent to extend full justice to American women in order "to form a more perfect union," as the Constitution promises.
[editor's note: footnotes in this document were in the original]
4. The second section of the 14th amendment placed in the Constitution for the first time the word "male." Three times the word "male" was used in conjunction with the term "citizens," In 1874 the U.S. Sup. Ct., in the case of Minor v. Happersett, held that the Constitution did not confer the right of suffrage on those who were citizens at the time it was adopted, and that the States, having withheld voting rights from certain classes of males, were equally within their rights in withholding suffrage from all women.
5. Alice S. Rossi, The Feminist Papers, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1973, p. 617.
6. President Nixon's 1969 Task Force on Women's Rights and Responsibilities also summarized progress and outlined the job ahead.
7. President Nixon issued his proclamation on Jan. 30, 1974.
8. Some of these programs were given in connection with U.N. Day, since the United Nations Association of the United States stressed IWY as a theme of the 1975 observance.
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