Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End (45 page)

⁵
Jan Griesinger, “Out of Right Field,” manuscript in author’s possession, 2001, p. 14.

⁶
See, for example,
Engage/Social Action
(a United Church of Christ/United Methodist magazine), vol. 3, no. 4 (March 1975) and
The Christian Ministry
(May 1975). Both were cited in
Daughters of Sarah
, vol. 1, no. 7 (November 1975).

⁷
Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, “Discursive Politics and Feminist Activism in the Catholic Church,” in Ferree and Martin, eds.,
Feminist Organizations
, p. 37. Among the most important opening salvos of feminist religious activism was Mary Daly’s devastating
Critique of Sexism within the Catholic Church: The Church and the Second Sex
(New York: Harper & Row, 1968) and her critique of male imagery in Christian theology in
Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1973). By the mid-1970s, however, Daly had rejected Christianity as irredeemably patriarchal.

⁸
Daughters of Sarah
, volumes 1-5 (1974-1979), at the Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Quotes from vol. 1, no. 1 (November 1974): 1, and vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1976): 9.

⁹
Author’s interview with Lael Stegall, Washington, D.C., February 19, 1998.

¹⁰
The ACLU Women’s Rights Project was a major innovator in reproductive rights and employment law. Spurred into being in 1970 by long-time feminists Pauli Murray, Dorothy Kenyan, and Harriet Pilpel, the project galvanized the energies of a younger generation, most notably Ruth Bader Ginsburg (later Supreme Court Justice). There was considerable cross-fertilization between the Women’s Rights Project and NOW. Through a newsletter, a quarterly docket of pending sex discrimination cases, and a conference on feminist litigation in 1973, the Women’s Rights Project, according to historian Susan Hartmann, “brought considerable order and focus to feminist litigation.” Susan M. Hartmann,
The Other Feminists: Activists in the Liberal Establishment
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), chapter 3, quote on p. 85.

¹¹
Author’s interview with Kathleen Graham, St. Paul, Minnesota, September 18, 2001.

¹²
Author’s interview with Carolyn Chalmers, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 19, 2001.

¹³
Brownmiller,
In Our Time
, pp. 279-294; Enid Nemy, “Women Begin to Speak out Against Sexual Harassment at Work,”
New York Times
(August 19, 1975): 38. See also Laura W. Stein,
Sexual Harassment in America: A Documentary History
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999); Lin Farley,
Sexual Shakedown: The Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978); Catharine A. MacKinnon,
Sexual Harassment of Working Women
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979). In the 1980s, MacKinnon was probably the leading legal theorist on this issue, but she cannot be credited with initiating it.

¹⁴
Susan Cahn,
Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth Century Women s Sport
(New York: Free Press, 1994), p. 254.

¹⁵
“Comes the Revolution: Joining the Game at Last, Women Are Transforming American Athletics,”
Time
111 (June 26, 1978): 54-60, quoted in Susan Cahn,
Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth Century Women’s Sport
(New York: Free Press, 1994), p. 253.

¹⁶
Cahn, Coming on Strong, pp. 254-256.

¹⁷
Dorothy I. Height to Arvonne S. Fraser, Washington, D.C., August 13, 1974. Arvonne S. Fraser Papers 1948-1978. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN, Box 8.

¹⁸
Women’s Action Alliance, “Respondents to our Invitation to Join in the Creation of the National Women’s Agenda,” May 21, 1975, in Arvonne S. Fraser Papers, Box 23. The 61 organizations include: ACLU Women’s Rights Project; AFTRA National Women’s Committee. Alliance of Media Women, SSUW, American Business Women’s Association, AFSCME Commission on Sex Discrimination; Association of American Colleges Project on Status and Education of Women; Junior League, Camp Fire Girls, Catalyst, Center for American Women and Politics, Center for a Woman’s Own Name, Center for Law and Social Policy, Center for Women Policy Studies, Church Women United, Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund, Federation of Organizations of Professional Women, the Feminist Press, Future Homemakers of America Girls Clubs, Girl Scouts of America, Gray Panthers, Hadassah, Healthright, Inc., Institute of Women’s Wrongs, La Leche League, Leadership Conference of Women Religious, League of Women Voters, Lesbian Mothers National Defense Fund, MOMMA, Muher Integrate Ahora (MIA), National League of Pen Women, National Gay Task Force, National Association of Commissions on Women, National Association of Women Lawyers, National Association for Women in Criminal Justice, National Black Feminist Organization, National Committee on Household Employment, National Conference of Puerto Rican Women, Inc., National Conference of Jewish Women, National Education Association, Resource Center on Sex Roles and Education; National Federation of BPW Clubs, National Institute of Spanish Speaking Women, National Resource Center on Women Offenders, National Women’s Education Fund, NWPC, NOW LDEF, Phi Delta Gamma, Saint Joan’s International Alliance, UAW Women’s Committee, Women in Communication, Women on Words and Images, Women’s Caucus for Art, WEAL, Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press, WILPF, Women’s Law Project, Women’s Legal Defense Fund, Women’s Strike for Peace, and YWCA.

¹⁹
Paquita Vivo, “Puerto Rican Viewpoint,”
Women’s Agenda
, vol. 1, no. 1 (February 1976): 7

²⁰
Interview with Leslie Wolfe, Washington, D.C., November 12, 1997. Weddington describes her appointment and her responsibilities in
A Question of Choice
, p. 193.

²¹
Interview with Betty Dooley, Washington, D.C., November 12, 1997.

²²
See Irwin N. Gertzog,
Congressional Women: Their Recruitment, Integration, and Behavior
, 2nd ed., revised and updated (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995). chapter 10.

²³
See Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor,
Time of Change: 1983 Handbook on Women Workers
, Bulletin 298 (Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), pp. 81-84, especially tables III-1 and III-2. The ratio did not reach 60 percent until 1981.

²⁴
See Jane J. Mansbridge,
Why We Lost the ERA
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), chapter 5.

²⁵
Evans and Nelson,
Wage Justice
, p. 37. See also
Lemons v. City and County of Denver
620F. 2d 228 (10th Cir. 1980).

²⁶
See Janet A. Flammang, “The Implementation of Comparable Worth in San Jose,” in Rita Mae Kelly and Jane Bayes, eds.,
Comparable Worth, Pay Equity, and Public Policy
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988), pp. 159-190.

²⁷
See Evans and Nelson,
Wage Justice
; Dennis A. Deslippe,
Rights, not Roses: Unions and the Rise of Working-Class Feminism, 1945-80
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000); and Susan Hartmann,
The Other Feminists: Activists in the Liberal Establishment
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), chapter 2. The NAS study was published in 1981. See Donald Treiman and Heidi Hartmann, eds.,
Women, Work, and Wages: Equal Pay for Jobs of Equal Value
(Washington, D.C: National Academy Press, 1981). The establishment of “comparability” based on measurements of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions requires the use of highly technical job evaluation systems (Evans and Nelson 1989, chapters 2-3).

²⁸
Interview with Leslie Wolfe, Washington, D.C., November 12, 1997.

²⁹
Title IX reads as follows: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance….”
United States Statutes at Large: Containing the Laws and Concurrent Resolutions Enacted During the Second Session of the Ninety-Second Congress of the United States of America, 1972, and Proposed Amendment to the Constitution and Proclamations
, Vol. 86 (Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973), p. 373.

³⁰
“Women’s Educational Equity Act Program, Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare,”
Federal Register: Rules and Regulations
, vol. 45, no. 66 (Thursday, April 3, 1980): C1-C11, quotes on C2. Mary Ann Millsap and Leslie R. Wolfe, “A Feminist Perspective in Law and Practice: The Women’s Educational Equity Act,”
Readings in Equal Education
(March 8, 1985): 221-230. See also NCPRW Conference report in
off our backs
, vol. 10, no. 6 (June 1980): 6.

³¹
Ruth Abram, Executive Director, Women’s Action Alliance, to “Friends,” New York, July 25, 1975. In Arvonne S. Fraser Papers, Box 13.

³²
Tanya Melich,
The Republican War Against Women: An Insider’s Report from Behind the Lines
(New York: Bantam Books, 1996).

³³
Alice S. Rossi,
Feminists in Politics: A Panel Analysis of the First National Women’s Conference
(New York: Academic Press, 1982).

³⁴
Bella Abzug with Mim Kelber,
Gender Gap: Bella Abzug’s Guide to Political Power for American Women
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), p. 58.

³⁵
Author’s interview with Charlotte Bunch, New York City, December 14, 1997. On Steinem’s role see Carolyn G. Heilbrun,
The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1995), pp. 310-324. In 1974 Bunch had been appointed to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, signaling her strong belief in the importance of moving away from separatism and building coalitions.

³⁶
Rossi,
Feminists in Politics
, p. 178.

³⁷
Tanya Melich,
The Republican War Against Women: An Insider’s Report from Behind the Lines
(New York: Bantam Books, 1996), quote on p. 87.

³⁸
Melich,
The Republican War Against Women
, quotes on pp. 84, 87-88.

³⁹
Beverly Jones, Saturday morning presentation, Transcript of the Sandy Springs Conference, August 12, 1968, copy in author’s possession, p. 5. See also Alice Echols,
Daring to Be Bad
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1989), Appendix A.

⁴⁰
Judy Brown, Saturday morning presentation, Transcript of the Sandy Springs Conference, August 1968, p. 8.

⁴¹
Transcript of the Sandy Springs Conference, August 1968.

⁴²
The New York women, who had coined the term, insisted that consciousness-raising had nothing to do with therapy. Rather it was a method of developing theory and defining a political position. Others found the expression of feelings so powerful that they resisted any rigid imposition of either method or goals.

⁴³
Helen Kritzler, Marilyn Salzman Webb, Charlotte Bunch Weeks, and Laya Firestone, “Conference Summary and Impressions of Workshops,” mimeograph, Washington, D.C., December 20, 1968. Copy in author’s possession. The workshop on sex presaged the lesbian themes that would soon be so divisive and that, in turn, lay at the center of cultural feminism. Shulamith Firestone argued that pregnancy was inherently oppressive to women and that artificial reproduction was essential to liberation (a view she expounded in greater detail in her book,
The Dialectics of Sex
). This was one of the most far-reaching efforts to explore the implications of a radical feminist commitment to the elimination of sex roles. Firestone’s workshop coleader, Anne Koedt, presented her pathbreaking article, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm,” which proved, eventually, to be a foundational piece for the emergence of lesbian feminism. At that workshop, however, as participants moved into a consciousness-raising mode, exploring personal experiences and fantasies, they recognized that lesbianism was a prominent source of anxiety. Probing the sources of this fear, they reported a tentative conclusion that their erotic fantasies were a product of the sexualization of the female body in American culture while their anxieties expressed a reluctance to be identified with an oppressed group (lesbians).

⁴⁴
“Impressions of Workshops: Alternative Lifestyles,”
ibid
.