A Matter of Simple Justice. Lee Stout
in charge of this, he’d probably have to do it along with other things,” to which Glaser responded, “then it probably wouldn’t get done, needs someone full time, and should be a woman.”17
Burns was apparently more receptive than Glaser realized. The following day, he met with Peter Flanigan, assistant to the president, and Civil Service Commission chair Robert Hampton to discuss both placing more women in high-level government jobs and improving the effectiveness of the Civil Service’s Federal Women’s Program. Cole, in briefing Burns for this second meeting, also suggested that appointing a staff assistant or creating a small office for women’s rights and responsibilities could bring positive publicity to the administration as well as helping in efforts to recruit women.18
FIGURE 15
Peter M. Flanigan began working in the White House on staffing and gradually assumed a larger role as assistant to the president on economic, commercial, and financial areas. White House Photograph files, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
Although visible progress was hard to discern, the drumbeat continued. Throughout the summer, Catherine East continued to send analytical studies and pertinent news articles to Burns, and like others, she was suggesting names for consideration as the possible staff assistant. In June, Letitia Baldrige, a public relations executive and former chief of staff to Jacqueline Kennedy, wrote Peter Flanigan, saying, “I know you are always looking for good women for top government jobs (or at least, you should be looking),” and suggested tapping top advertising women. Flanigan responded, “You are quite right, we are on the lookout for qualified women for government posts.”19 The tone seemed to be changing, but results were still modest.
On July 8, Representative Dwyer and three other congresswomen succeeded in getting a meeting with President Nixon for almost an hour and a half. They presented him with an eight-page memo that outlined the problems in depth and delivered a number of recommendations, including, once again, appointment of both a Special Assistant to the President for Women’s Rights and Responsibilities and an independent, bipartisan commission to make recommendations for executive and legislative action. The memo began: “Our sole purpose is to suggest ways and means by which women’s rights as citizens and human beings may be better protected, discrimination against women be eliminated, and women’s ability to contribute to the economic, social and political life of the Nation be recognized. None of us are feminists. We do not ask for special privileges. We seek only equal opportunity.”20
FIGURE 16
The Citizens’ Advisory Council on the Status of Women, at its second meeting, November 11, 1969. White House Photograph files, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
At the next day’s cabinet meeting, President Nixon requested those present to place qualified women in high-level positions in the administration as a first step toward correcting the imbalance. Six weeks later, Glaser followed up on the president’s instructions with letters to all the cabinet secretaries, most of whom replied but reported little progress.21 Glaser would finally file the story in October. It began, “On July 10, Nixon gave the word to his cabinet—see that more women in your departments get a better break on jobs and promotions. That was three months ago and … the Cabinet’s done nothing.”22
In August, the president announced appointments of a chair and nineteen new members of the Citizens’ Advisory Council on the Status of Women, a body for which Catherine East served as executive secretary. A few days later, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, counselor to the president for urban affairs, created something of a stir with a memo that began with the prediction that “female equality will be a major cultural/political force of the 1970s.” He continued, “The essential fact is that we have educated women for equality in America, but have not really given it to them. Not at all. Inequality is so great that the dominant group either doesn’t notice it, or assumes the dominated group likes it that way.… I would suggest you take advantage of this. In your appointments (as you have begun to do), but perhaps especially in your pronouncements. This is a subject ripe for creative political leadership and initiative.”23
FIGURE 17
Dr. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was counselor to the president and assistant to the president for urban affairs from 1969 through December 1970. White House Photograph files, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
FIGURE 18
Melvin R. Laird was in his ninth term as a congressman from Wisconsin when President Nixon selected him to be secretary of defense, serving from 1969 to 1973. A Few Good Women Oral History Collection, Penn State University Archives.
Moynihan’s memo sparked controversy among the staff, but by late September, it had emerged from the domestic affairs arena and went to the president with a cover note from John Ehrlichman, then White House counsel and an adviser on domestic affairs. Ehrlichman’s note said that Bryce Harlow and Peter Flanigan, among others, agreed that “politically this is a golden opportunity and that we should, whenever possible, champion female equality.”24 An “OK,” presumably the president’s, was written next to this final paragraph.
Melvin Laird, then secretary of defense, recalled that Harlow, in particular, strongly backed appointing women. “He built a fire under everybody from Ehrlichman and [H. R.] Haldeman. He built a fire under Arthur Burns. He built a fire under those people so every time they saw Bryce coming, they tried to duck because he wanted more women in top positions. He attributed his call to action as coming directly from the President.”25
Meanwhile, Glaser had heard nothing from Arthur Burns in the several months since their June meeting when she was contacted by White House Special Assistant Charles Clapp, who worked for Burns. Clapp told her, “President Nixon is preparing his State of the Union message. He and Dr. Burns are setting up a lot of task forces on different subjects to get new ideas for the speech. They’re setting up a task force on women and would like to know if you are willing to serve on it.”26 With the permission of her editors, Glaser agreed to serve, and her appointment, along with the rest of the task force members, was announced on October 1, 1969.
Charles Clapp, a political science PhD from Berkeley, had been a longtime House and Senate staffer and a Brookings Institute Fellow. He had come to the White House at the invitation of Arthur Burns specifically to work on what eventually became seventeen presidential commissions in the domestic arena. According to Clapp, Burns “liked my background because of the Brookings association and also my association with business groups, really through Brookings.… He told me that he wanted task forces to be set up, each of which would have one government representative, a government liaison person. And then they would be composed only of outside people, not government people at all. And he thought that I could do that.”27
Clapp continued:
We had a list of task forces … [but] the task forces changed somewhat. I mean we were asked to develop some other things and I can’t even remember whether the list Burns gave me had women’s rights on it or whether it was one of the groups that were added. We were trying to run the gamut of all sorts of different things. I don’t think there was recognition at the time, certainly not in the White House, that this was so important an issue. I don’t know whether [Burns’s meeting with Glaser and East played a role in the decision to set up the task force]. I can’t honestly say. Burns never mentioned that to me.28
While Arthur Burns wanted a task force that was made up largely of private citizens, the appointment of a chair would be a critical step. Politics certainly played a role,