A Matter of Simple Justice. Lee Stout
3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
After the Civil War, attempts to attach sex to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which had given freed slaves the right of citizenship and the right to vote, failed to gain a hearing. In 1872, Victoria Woodhull of the Equal Rights Party was the first woman nominated as a candidate for president of the United States, and although there may have been votes for her, there is apparently no record of them being counted.1 An 1875 Supreme Court decision confirmed women as citizens but said that this did not give them the right to vote unless states permitted it. The Wyoming Territory granted women the right to vote in 1869, and by 1900, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho had also granted women suffrage; more western states would follow.
Through the course of the twentieth century, the majority of women labor leaders, settlement house movement reformers, and women political leaders opposed the ERA, fearing that it would lead to the repeal of protective legislation for women workers that had been won through long, hard battles. These included laws restricting the number of hours women were required to work and the physical demands placed on women in a job. Nevertheless, both the Republican and Democratic Parties included some mention of the ERA in their party platforms starting in the early 1940s.
FIGURE 5
“Mrs. Woodhull Asserting Her Right to Vote.” Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection, Penn State Harrisburg Library.
FIGURE 6
“Packing bacon”: early women factory workers in the food industry. Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection, Penn State Harrisburg Library.
Actual participation in the government by women, however, was relatively uncommon. The numbers of female members of Congress who were not widows of deceased members (who often held the seat for the party until the next election) was small. The number of women officeholders in the government was equally minute. In many cases, Civil Service regulations specified that jobs were for men only, regardless of the physical demands of the position.
President Harry Truman was quoted in 1945 as saying that women’s rights were “a lot of hooey.” Whereas President Franklin D. Roosevelt had selected the first woman cabinet member, Frances Perkins as secretary of labor in 1933, Truman appointed none, and Eisenhower appointed only Oveta Culp Hobby as secretary of health, education, and welfare in 1953. Truman had appointed twenty women to positions requiring Senate confirmation; Eisenhower did slightly better with twenty-eight; Kennedy, slightly worse with twenty-seven.
John F. Kennedy’s President’s Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) was created at the end of 1961 and delivered its report in October 1963 (about seven months after the publication of The Feminine Mystique). Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the commission until her death in 1962. The PCSW was a pathbreaking exercise, but it also had to balance feminists’ demands with a political desire to placate the labor movement, which wanted to preserve women’s protective legislation. Proclaiming motherhood to be the major role of America’s women, the commission report was less than feminist, but at the same time, it resulted in the creation of state commissions on the status of women across the country, which contributed to grassroots consciousness-raising. It had been preceded, in 1961, by Executive Order 10925 forbidding discrimination in the Civil Service and applying the term “affirmative action” to measures to achieve nondiscrimination, which proved to be less than useful for women since discrimination against them was not covered by the order.
FIGURE 7
Catherine May Bedell (R-WA), one of the sponsors of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, here stands directly behind President Kennedy at the signing, on June 10, 1963. A Few Good Women Oral History Collection, Penn State University Archives.
If nothing else, the PCSW was another step in arousing the expectations of a growing women’s movement. In 1962, a Gallup poll indicated that one-third of women felt themselves to be victims of discrimination. By 1970, the figure was one-half of women, and by 1974, two-thirds of women felt they were discriminated against.
It was clear that the times were changing. With the 1968 election of Richard M. Nixon as president, America entered what one historian termed “the peak years of feminist activism”—1969 to 1973. Hundreds of new women’s organizations formed at the local, state, and national levels, all dedicated to advancing women’s rights and opportunities. Dozens of new periodicals came to press supporting this interest, including Ms. magazine, published for the first time in July 1972 and selling 250,000 copies in eight days.
FIGURE 8
Campaign button for the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, which was approved by Congress in 1972. Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection, Penn State Harrisburg Library.
In retrospect, discussion of the Nixon presidency is dominated by Watergate, the Vietnam War, the economy, and foreign policy masterstrokes like the opening to China and détente with the Soviet Union. Little remembered is a domestic record of legislation and other achievements that make him, in the words of historian James T. Patterson, “the most liberal Republican American President, excepting Theodore Roosevelt, in the twentieth century.”2 An even less well-known part of that record is the Nixon administration’s program for advancing women’s role in government.
CHAPTER TWO
Women’s Appointments and the President’s Task Force on Women’s Rights and Responsibilities
Vera Glaser’s February 6, 1969, press conference question focused attention on the uncomfortable truth that only three of the first two hundred policy position appointments in the new Nixon administration had gone to women: Pat Hitt, assistant secretary for health, education, and welfare; Elizabeth Koontz, director of the Women’s Bureau in the Labor Department; and Rita Hauser, U.S. representative to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and delegate to the General Assembly. Not that there hadn’t been pressure for more. The White House began receiving letters almost immediately after the inauguration urging more women appointees and action on women’s issues.1
Within the White House, there were staff members who saw potential advantages to supporting women’s rights. Tom Cole, an assistant to Dr. Arthur Burns, counselor to the president, suggested that “one of those matters we can pursue expeditiously and with minimum of cost is the proposal calling for equal rights for women.”2 This question of administration support for the ERA was to be a topic of continuous staff debate over the next four years. It would often be linked to calls for appointing more women to high-level positions and for a special assistant or office for women’s affairs in the White House.
Florence Dwyer, Republican U.S. representative for New Jersey, first broached these issues in a February 26, 1969, letter to the president. She urged concrete steps toward “the expansion of women’s opportunities and responsibilities, the protection of women’s equal rights, and the elimination of all forms of discrimination based on sex.” She suggested as alternative strategies either a presidential commission or the creation of an Office of Women’s Rights and Responsibilities and the appointment of a special assistant to the president to head it. The White House’s answers were polite but perfunctory.3
FIGURE 9
President Nixon greets Pat Hitt in January 1969 after her appointment as assistant secretary for community and field services in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. A Few Good Women Oral History Collection, Penn State University Archives.