Unknown Speaker 00:01 Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, was appointed by President Carter as the first woman to chair the Equal Opportunity Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. As EEOC chair, Professor Norton administered Title Seven of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Age Discrimination and Employment Act, and section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act covering people with disabilities. He's almost seem like ancient Golden Age legislation. She's an authority on labor force participation, anti discrimination policy, family education and poverty law. She was educated at Antioch college and Yale University where she won both law degree and a degree in American Studies. She co authored sex discrimination in the law causes and remedies. And she's now at work on a book on develop on the development and impact of anti discrimination law and affirmative action remedies. Many of you know her from NPR. And many of you know her from the other talk shows in which she seems like a voice of reason over in a time of crisis. It's a great pleasure to introduce Eleanor Holmes Norton. Unknown Speaker 01:33 Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Ellen. Carol. Sisters all it's a great pleasure to be once again at Barnard. It may well be I think it is that the last time I was here, was in was in the early 70s When I was very pregnant and the women's movement was very young. And thus my commencement speech virtually wrote itself. It is not without reason that Simone de Beauvoir entitled one of her last essays, feminism, alive well and in constant danger. Different and difficult issues confront women today. American feminists, if their search for full equality is to be successful, need to look at their own movement not only lovingly, as we must, but self critically, let me attempt such a self critical feminist analysis this afternoon. Great movements differ from society's other activities because their res on d'etre is is strange, which must include change within movements themselves. If a movement is to where the phases of stalemate setback or resistance, it must think about itself, where it is going and where it has been. bewilderment may result not only when there is reaction, or opposition to progress, that is the kind we saw during this decade, it may come and we do not periodically reassess, rethink, and recreate change in times that are changing rapidly. It is not enough to accept all that we are that we have done as doctrine, static and forever true. Simply pasting on what is new. I agree with a feminist philosopher, Elizabeth monarch, that you can't simply add the idea that the world is round, to the idea that the world is flat. Isn't that wonderful? As a woman thought about that? You go back and rethink the whole enterprise. The point is not of course, to rethink our goals or ideals. Rather, we need to strive for the clarity of analysis that will help us to continue to advance and to live with a new complexity we ourselves have created. How should we think about women during a period when our achievements make us impatient with the great tasks that remain? The overriding challenge facing women's change today may well be whether we can sustain the momentum for change long enough to truly alter the status of a group so monumentally large and pervasive. Can we sustain and indeed increase the momentum so that we can accomplish the most ambitious task in human history? The advancement of half the world's population from subjugated status based on sex? Can we spread the movement for women's Freedom to engage the majority of women in a world where most still live their lives as chattel. Unknown Speaker 05:09 In the United States, the movement for women's freedom has traveled so fast, it will be challenged to continue and accelerate its own quick pace. Most movements languished for years before they capture the national imagination. This was true of the Civil Rights Movement, which fought for 50 years after the founding of the Niagra movement that produced the NAACP until the Brown decision opened the way for the final defeat of segregation. This was true of the labor movement, which struggled for 100 years before it was limited legitimated by the National Labor Relations Act. The path of the women's movement since the late 1960s, has been different. The second feminist movement almost immediately caught. The movement quickly went from consciousness raising to hell raising and the country went right along with it. This rapid acceptance occurred in no small part because of the Civil Rights Movement paved the way in two fundamental respects. It made movement struggle once again and acceptable course for Americans, and it made equality and imperative for the nation. Thus, the fast ascent of the second feminist movement contrasted with the slow crescendo of the first suffrage came only after almost 75 years of tedious struggle. And the first women's movement is integrated after suffrage was won in 1920. With it went the momentum that had cracked professional and other barriers. Without it, a resurgence of attitudes favoring women's traditional role to a cold, the feminist period of the picket sign and the petitions to come to the day of the flapper. The career woman proves threatening the flapper even with her greater social and sexual freedom became the symbol of the age, because she posed no threat to the view of woman as essentially sexual. The woman's seeking work and greater equality was not to reemerge until our time the decline of feminism and of women's rights after suffrage could happen again. Today, there are signs here and they're all fatigue of disquiet, of uncertainty of direction of the language of post feminism. Yet, despite the emergence of a fierce opposition to women's change, the insistent momentum continues. Nevertheless, a new generation of issues and conditions inevitably raises new questions. The most important of these may be whether the women's struggle has crested, or whether we can continue to move out of the millennia, which have defined gender as the most powerful determinant in life. To live beyond their moment of ascendancy to live to get the whole job done, great movements must reinvent themselves. To sustain themselves, movements must not only grow, they must change. This is not only because of the times inevitably change, it is because we ourselves have changed the times. Thus we must react in part, to our own history. That history is characterized by increasing pluralism, of thought and ideas. For the first time we are seeing the development of quite diverse and sometimes contrary tendencies and feminist thought. Some of it I think, wrongheaded. But I learned from all of it and wouldn't would want none of it suppressed. I differ with feminists who have joined the far right and favoring censorship as the cure for sexually explicit material. For example, blacks have defeated the outrageous stereotypes and were commonplace. Without the sacrifice of the right to speak and write, and deed the First Amendment was the most has been the most important weapon blacks have had in this country. It enabled them to speak and to organize against racism, if it had been weakened. Blacks themselves would have been the first to suffer from the harmful precedent, and racism would still be the official American doctrine. As women have learned from so much from the Civil Rights Movement, let them also learn that to dilute the right to speak, and write and organize is to sever the vital life On to struggle for unempowered groups. Unknown Speaker 10:05 I disagree also with a feminist historian who testified for Sears in a notorious EEOC case, while I was at the commission, but tried a few years ago, after I had left, she testified that women's acculturation, rather than Sears employment patterns were responsible for male and female job patterns at Sears EEO C's experts, another feminist historian testified that visible job patterns determine women's job aspirations. EEOC lost the case on a number of technical legal grounds. But the conflicting testimony of feminist historians caused great controversy in the feminist academic community. As such differences emerge publicly for the first time, they should be seen not as intolerable splits, but as the emergence of conflicting lines of thought, that is inevitable in a giant and diverse movement. When a movement relates to half the population, in a country as diverse as this, it is impossible to require a conformity to a single worldview in order for participants to count themselves in. If feminism is to succeed and spread, it will have to behave like a giant multicolored umbrella that keeps expanding, inviting those who pass to come in out of the rain. Not like a bus shelter with room only for those going my way. Unknown Speaker 11:46 The group is too large, the past unnecessarily diverse, even discordant. Those who favor women's change may not always be prepared for this pluralism because of the remarkable homogeneity that characterized the movement until the most recent years. That unity was the characteristic of a young movement, just discovering itself and its ideas. The common grievances were so conspicuous, that there was no thought of the ultimate inevitability of differences. The women's movement galvanized a consensus on the most basic issues, and as a result shortly grew from a small, initially middle class white movement into one including minority and poor women, the majority of men according to the polls, and of course, the politicians, which means everybody. There is of course, both risk and opportunity and pluralism, and movement activity. There is always the danger of destructive factionalism, tolerance, discipline and leadership are necessary to involve to avoid self involved sectarianism, and balkanization. For a pluralism of ideas also affords the life saving opportunity for regeneration without with which a movement cannot make the changes necessary for it to continue to grow. Thus the risk of pluralism, and even contradictory ideas must be taken, or a movement will lose its vitality and become frozen in time, and bombed in the slogans of yesterday. We accept and learn even from those among us with whom we must necessarily disagree. I have learned from those who want pregnant women to be given a preference in returning to their jobs, while men returning from illness may be fired. Unknown Speaker 13:52 We feel uneasy about treating pregnancy in this special way. While allowing employers to ignore the necessity of male family members to continue to work after an illness. We instinctively understand that Felice Schwartz, recent Harvard Business Review auto article means not only a return to official, second class status in the workplace, but that we will never achieve the wholesale change we deserve. If we settle for a special and diminished role for women. Yeah, disagreement over special leaves for women only. And similar issues is not necessarily divisive. It can show up in the search for acceptable realm remedies. For example, the notion of maternity leave for women, but no leave at all for men directly led to or stimulated the now pending for Emily medical and leave bill that would allow both men and women to get their jobs back after an illness. Similar divergence of thought beginning to emerge on a range of issues is neither unfeminist or unwise. Ultimately, these diverse, diverse ideas will help clarify issues and produce the necessary remedies. All the thinking we can muster. On the perplexing new and difficult issues facing women needs to come out our full time 40 year careers the best way to organize work for women or for men in the 21st century. What is the appropriate response to Sylvia Hewitt's critique that the women's movement has focused insufficiently on the problems of working mothers and children? How should family life be rethought to take account of the new problems that confront families and they are awful, the division of responsibility and the organization of a fruitful family existence in this new age of working parents. Divorce is often serious effects on children and its effect on poverty among women and more, much more. If the women's movement is to continue to grow and spread, it must hear its own issues out and change as change becomes indicated. Otherwise, women will neither march with history nor make it and we must make more history. Most of the world's women have not been touched by women's change. Women are two out of every three illiterates in the world. And the number is rising, not falling. Only 1/3 of the world's women have access to any form of contraceptive information or device. Women are the world's principal water haulers, fuel gatherers and food producers we are left to wonder what it is that men do in the world. The International Women's decade pried open the eyes of the world to practices that range from pristine to sophisticated as each country subordinates its women in its own special way. In this country, we have advanced beyond most others Despite the failure of the era a failure we shall see reversed. Unknown Speaker 17:39 In more than in little more than 20 years, we have one important new legislation. We have won significant education and job advancement we have won the right to choose or reject abortion we have won the elimination of almost all gender based law. And we have won increased representation at every level of government by building an open an expansionist movement. We have attracted women who were found only sparsely among the early feminists of the 1960s. Today, small towns and hidden suburbs do not always articulate feminist ideas. But the wives work. The girls have an expanded view of their possibilities, and the men and boys have accepted the trade winds of change such as such as been the wholesale embrace of women's change by millions of Americans. It is particularly noteworthy that the necessity for women's change has been so roundly accepted by black women, even though they must continue to confront racial problems facing blacks as a whole. The troublesome question of race is inevitably present in the women's movement as elsewhere. The movement has not always been free of fault or criticism on race. Still, no American Movement has done more to try to understand its relationship to minorities and to directly relate to their concerns in the history of American movements, it will be difficult to find another for which the elimination of racism has been a determined goal from its inception. The National Women's Political Caucus and its founding statement of purpose in July 1971 declared, We believe that women must take action to unite against sexism, racism, institutional violence and poverty. Yet the issue of race still steps forward on occasion, sometimes because of insensitivity in the movement, sometimes because of hypersensitive sensitivity among minorities. These small tensions will be with us until our national racial wounds the deepest our society has known or fully healed. In the meantime, we must not allow the inevitable breaches to undermine the overriding community have interest that minorities and women share. Mutual suspicion about who is getting the most attention or the most affirmative action shatter our unity of purpose. A divided constituency aid those who would dismantle the remedies and programs that both minorities and women have struggled to achieve. Affirmative action is a classic case. neither women nor minorities hold the jobs both seek in America, the excluded groups are struggling not for the opportunities that become available to one another, but for the jobs and paid places monopolized by others. Each time minorities and women act as if the competition were among them. They remove just that much pressure, for fairness from government and employers. The concern sometimes expressed that the expansion of women in the job market will hurt minorities is a case in point. The explosion of woman power in the labor market has been overwhelmingly in low paid sex stereotyped jobs where women compete with one another more often than they compete much more often than they compete with minority men. Black women, for example, at least those who work on wage parity with white women today, because both are locked in clerical and other women's jobs. The fact is that black women the fact that black women could achieve wage parity with white women, despite their social and educational disadvantages is the best evidence of the tenacity of sex stereotyping and education and jobs and of sex discrimination itself. Comparable worth caught fire precisely because it addresses wage discrimination, and sex stereotype jobs held overwhelmingly by the majority of women of every race and background, where minority men seldom seek or desire work. Here's where leadership from women and leadership from minorities is essential, open communication about differences. Unknown Speaker 22:12 Efforts to heal them and joint strategies will keep the cobwebs of suspicion from accumulating to divide us. Joint Action for mutual advantage is what strengthens and typifies our coalition. That coalition claims noble antecedents to great Americans, to great black Americans, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, who join their resolute abolitionism with a fervent feminism. On the question of the necessity for both brace and sexy quality Sojourner Truth would Brooke no compromise, when the tricky question of whether the 15th Amendment should be supported. If it enfranchised only men, she took the position that limiting the boat to men would mean and I quote her men would be the masses over the women and would be just as bad as it was before in quote. Throughout his life, Douglas spoke and acted as a dedicated feminist. He called himself a woman's rights man. He was the only man to play a prominent role at Seneca Falls. And he was a frequent and major speaker at the other important women's rights conventions and meetings of his day. When the time came to change the name of his paper. He refused to call it the Brotherhood. Because he said, and I quote him, it implies the exclusion of the sisterhood and quote, the headlines carrying news of Douglass's death and Europe and America, called him both the greatest Negro leader and a friend and champion of women. Today with women of so many backgrounds walking under the feminist banner banner, we have outlived Simone de Beauvoir's observation in the second sex that the free woman is just being born. Today she has become a force in the process, the wonderful coherence of our initial drive against sexism has scattered as we have cracked open the most stony impediments to equality. What remains is an untidy assortment of what used to be, what is becoming, and what has just been formed in our boldness, we have swept away the most audacious brown brands of sexism. What remains is less monumental, but it is equally great. We will not sustain the energy and the imagination to confront the next barriers without the treasure about diversity, for what remains to be accomplished is necessarily the most difficult. The barriers that have fallen were the least sturdy and the most vulnerable and we now approach and the most weighty and complicated, encouraging freer and more equal private roles for women and men and family responsibilities to match greater equality emerging in work roles, establishing a national support system for working parents, with educational childcare, at its center, reversing job and wage disparities that have stubbornly resisted change preparing for a family and work life of the future that will be markedly different from anything we have experienced, reforming the view of women as of lesser value, when they are done with child raising, and no longer young to match the continuing values society places on men into old age, the list is longer still, it is lined with at once the toughest and the most delicate tasks we have ever faced. All of this amounts to a task for both innovative public policy and for rethinking ancient private habits. The women's movement must lead this effort, just as it raised the consciousness of the nation two decades ago, and led a series of profound changes in the legal status of all women, and in the actual status of millions. A movement which thinks critically not only about the continuing inequality in our society, but also about its own role in bringing about change will surely succeed in its quest for full equality. Thank you very much. Unknown Speaker 27:28 Cao Bellamy, one of the founders of the first feminist law firm in the United States, has occupied many of the places some of us only think about. And I want to say parenthetically that more and more are thinking about some of the places that she's occupied, namely electoral office. As a member of the New York City Council, she continued to mobilize her community and to have her community support her in her electoral efforts. Many of us contributed our energies in the hopes of getting her elected mayor. But alas, they weren't enough at that time. As a person who has wide ranging experience in grassroots movements, in elective office, and in private industry, she has an most unique perspective, which he has agreed to share with us today. It's a great pleasure that I introduce Carol Bellamy. Unknown Speaker 28:29 Thank you very much. You know, you're getting old when people introduce you, as one who has held many different positions. I was thinking actually, that to Elena and Ellie and I are all by at least training lawyers. So Eleanor still even has a vague relationship to it being a professor, although she she was clearly my candidate for Cabinet Secretary this year. And that's how we should have been introducing her today. And for and for any of you who are as old as I am, who remember a time in the city, when we cared that that racial tension be reduced and human rights still were important in this city. You will remember that le lead us as head of the CIO of the Commission on Human Rights as well. leadership that we desperately need at this point. And Ellen Futter Well, Alan di has done a whole bunch of things to Ellen, you don't look 100 As I said before, and I think he's done a wonderful job. In any case, yes, I've held all these different positions. I've never been able to hold a job for very long. Five. I've been in elective office and government. I've practiced law. I'm now doing investment banking, I ever said to somebody at lunch, I only have to be in real estate and then I will have been in every sleazy profession that one can be in and then maybe my mother will finally convince me to get a real job because I figured out are several more professions in me? Well, I'm delighted to be here. I was a little worried I got up this morning I thought to myself, I haven't talked to anybody at Barnard in a while. I don't even know whether this is still happening today. But I thought I'd come by and see and and also I thought it's only a kid from Brooklyn but thing I said, What a schmuck Bellamy you're on a panel with Eleanor Norton. Now that is, I mean, that's really a crazy thing to do. For those of us who are longtime wonderful fans of Elio, though I complained that these days I have to listen to her reasonable thinking at 615 in the morning, if any of you are NPR groupies like I am, I travel a lot. And I find myself in weird places in this country, not international travel all domestic and pretty, not very jet city either. So my anchor is NPR, it says those same voices every morning telling us, Sylvia Poggioli from Italy and telling us to where they are. But hearing Eleanor is always a wonderful thing in any case. So I went back and I looked at the I looked at this, I said, ah scholar and feminist conference, this is supposed to be substantive. There gonna be a bunch of those academics here, I wasn't sure who was going to be here. And I thought, well, that bad isn't to me. I mean, I was in government. And as my wonderful friend Karen Burt, I was in elective office not even appointed, I'm going to be talking a little both point of view, you're supposed to have some substance and elective. There are a whole bunch of things you're supposed to do, which I appreciate. But as my, as I said, my wonderful friend Karen Burstein used to say, still says, actually, when you're in elective office, you've got to be good for three minutes on every subject, but don't stretch us for the fourth. So I thought I would just be a little and then I looked at my topic, which I suspect I discussed with Elon, like months ago, I thought to myself, it was one of those days where somebody called and said, Would you speak? He said, Yes. How's this topic sounded great. I thought it makes no sense to me this topic. When I finally focused on it, so. So what I thought I'd like to do, actually is a talk a little bit, for those of you who think, well, politics, or those politicians, or whatever you think, I want to talk a little bit about, or some statistics from some studies about who really, you know, what, what is, what's the picture of who actually is in elective office today, or a point of office, I'm gonna throw out some statistics. And I say that because you may think I always run into people to say, Oh, I wouldn't touch politics with a 10 foot pole, then they go back to their academic institutions, where there's more politics in the New York City Council. Unknown Speaker 32:41 Or, or wherever it is, I mean, you know, I sit there and say, they could teach us something I don't, or in their foundation, or in their grassroots community organization. And so I wanted for, since since my liberal friends always thought I was too conservative, and to my conservative friends, so I always thought I was too liberal, I want to at least describe a little bit who I think is holding office or being appointed to the office, because, because however you want to bring about change, some of the change makers are these people. And I don't think they can be more ignored. Moreover, more of you ought to become these people. And so that's what I'm going to talk a little bit about. So it's for those really, thinkers in this audience, if you want to go get some coffee or something. Feel free, because this isn't gonna this isn't going to be one of these like intellectual texts that you might be used to. Since Ellie mentioned, since Eleanor mentioned, Seneca Falls, I thought I'd start there. I thought I'd put it in some perspective. Since we're in New York today. You don't have to be from New York. But I always think if you know me, you've probably heard this story. And it is it is a true story. I'm told I paraphrase it. But back in late 1860s, I guess it is when the group of women and as you you heard a couple of some men, mostly women gathered together to usher in what I consider to be the beginning of the modern feminist movement. As they met in Seneca Falls, we hold these truths to be self evident, reads the Seneca Falls declaration of women's independence that all men and women are created equal. And then this declaration went on to list a whole a whole series of areas in which it was thought that women were not treated equally starting first, with as you might have expected, the fact that women were not granted the right to vote at that point. And in fact, as you may recall, it took 70 years, seven years from the time women first petitioned for the right to vote to until they got the right to vote. And the arguments for those any of you have even spent like five minutes thinking about era and listen to those arguments where if you give women the right to vote, they will break up the family, that old famous, wonderful argument. Well, there are some who would argue that At that women having won the right to vote has neither realized the fears of the opponents, nor in some cases, the potential of the proponents. But I think that is, I hope that's beginning to change. So it started off with women not having the right to vote, it talked about the fact that women were not treated equally in marriage, you know, in marriage, the two become one and the one is the man. It talks about the equity in terms of the value of women's work. And you know, how far we've come on that. I mean, you know, every year or so, RAND Corporation comes out with another report that says, Have you noticed it's not 68 cents, to the dollar that men earn were all the way up to 70 cents, which means that we only need about another, you know, 100 years. So the next next time Barnards celebrates its 100 year will be at 95 cents. Women are what they're earning on what men earn, we actually do better. In the northeast, on an average, actually women's salaries, visa vie, man, I mean, nowhere near the dollar to dollar, we do a little better than the rest of the country. I believe. That's because Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer's salaries are both in our whatever, so we do a little better here. But we're still so you know how far we've come on that we're still pay equity. First of all, we can't even figure out what to call pay equity comparable worth all these, one of the we need a movement that can figure out better ways of describing these things. So I'm looking at the great leader in the area of fighting pay equity. Same thing with Lao used to hate the term displaced homemaker, which was a wonderful concept. But I'm always felt like you open the door of your closet and outsell this displaced homemaker and gaze. So it went on to list all these areas. And so that was the declaration. So when I first read about this actually, I will tell you having put down all these academics the first time I heard this story was brought to be my by my chief of staff when I was president city council, Ellen Chester, who was an academic. And so I, and about to finish what I think will be an extraordinary book on Margaret Sanger. In any case, she brought this story. So and she and she said, having read about this, she wondered what happened with his declaration for those of you who've realized I'm still on the 1860s and wonder whether you'll get to the next. I'll try and move on. It turned out that the the Unknown Speaker 37:29 organizers of this organization, maybe it was a little earlier than 1860s. Anyway, they submitted it to the New York State Legislature. Well, I served for five years as a state senator. And so I was not shocked to find out that it took them 11 years to review and report on this petition. And the Judiciary Committee the book, the history book tells us it doesn't say whether it was the Senate or the assembly, reported a Mr. Foote was chosen to chair this committee fo te Mr. Again, this is the true part of it. I mean, this is all true. I'm paraphrasing, but and Mr. Foote was chosen to be the the main reviewer of this report because he was the member of the committee with who'd been married the longest. So it was assumed that he would understand just what it was the ladies wanted. And Mr. Foote said, Women always have the warmest places in the winter, the coolest places in the summer, they always have the best seats in the carriages and sleighs. Remember, when this was being done, a woman's dress cost three times that of a gentleman. And given the prevailing fashion of the day, a woman takes up three times as much space in the world as a man, if there is any inequality or oppression, concluded Mr. Foote, surely the gentleman or the suffers. They however, have not petitioned for redress having doubtless made up their minds to yield to their inevitable destiny. So that is about 100 years ago, since we're celebrating the centennial. And that's just in our own state of New York, this great, wonderful progressive liberal state, and the rest of the world thinks we are they should know about this state. So we've come a long way from then. But how far have we come? Well, I was doing a little reading a book about women in politics in 1968. goobric observed and I'm going to quote women have little part in the government of most states other than through their right to vote. Men are the movers women are the ornaments. They have been accorded token recognition. Their appointments have usually clustered around certain activities that are regarded as women's areas, those dealing with juveniles, school affairs, health, welfare and libraries. Men have to be reminded to appoint women. Ordinarily males do not think of females for government positions. And as for those of you again, who may be students of all this may recall, it was around that time that Jean Kirkpatrick wrote her really seminal book on women and politics which was, which was the beginning which was A describe really kind of a traditional past where the women in politics tended to be women who had been married, raise their children been active in local clubs or organizations children left and maybe they wanted to do something. They thought about running for office, their highest office they thought they could run for was was state legislature and they tended to run and didn't seek the leadership positions. Now, you will know you will learn from me that I don't happen to think that the highest offices in this country are Washington, I think, from both parties, they wouldn't know a balanced budget if it walked up and beat them. But we do have this pecking order idea that the people are smartest in Washington. Next smart state and bimbos at the local level. I don't happen to think that so but that but there was a kind of this limited perception. For any of you who may notice Jean Kirkpatrick spoke you will see that it was one of the people who wrote a little blurb on the cover of the book, by the way, urging people to buy the book was Bill abs, okay. It's always one of my favorite. Well, that brought us up to the 70s. I actually ran first ran for office in 1972. I was thinking 17 years ago, my God and Liz Holtzman and I and a couple other people. So time has passed 1984 Jerry Ferraro was the vice presidential candidate and I and whatever one thinks of that election, the fact is, that was just a major breakthrough because you had a woman or as a member of the ticket for a major party. And that was extraordinary. So here, where are we today? Well, now I'm gonna do a little test. ask you some questions. So you can write even try and think of these, and I'm sorry to do this, deviate a little bit from a written text. But just to go over, throw out some numbers, I want to talk very briefly or a little test in terms of women in elective office, and then talk a little bit about women in public office. We now have in in Congress, actually the US Congress in 89, more women than ever before. There are 535 members of Congress, 100 senators, foreign and 35 members as representatives, any idea how many are women now? Unknown Speaker 42:08 Here 35, he heard 26. Well, actually, for a long time was just 23. Remember, we could never get past that. In the old days, he only got elected if your husband had been there. And then he got elected, was only a few years ago, we started getting elected on our own right didn't mean that the women who were elected because their husbands had been there were bad. It's just that with all their husbands and brothers. Well, actually, for those of you who even read the paper last week, you're 26 was almost close. It was 27. Until a week ago, we just selected another other woman, Joe long from Indiana. You know what the fact is? It's those Midwest states that keep sneaking in and electing women these days. You know, they think the craziest, you know, California and New York, they think they're the places that send all these people we went for years for while having had a number of women in Congress with no one now we have to, but we're actually now up to what 27 So that's so we're moving. But let me explain how many that is. That's 5%. Of the of Congress. Total, actually 126 Women have served in Congress now. No woman of color has ever served in the United States Senate. How many women of color do you think may have served in the House of Representatives? One to five i here. Seven, five black women to Asian American Asian Pacific, a women, first black woman to serve in Congress. Again, lest we think we went back too far was Shirley Chisholm, one of our representatives. And remember those days we had Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug and Liz Holtzman all I mean, it was enough to knock your socks off. Shirley was elected in 68 served until 83. Four other black women have served in the House you've on gray suede Burke from California. Barbara Jordan, from Texas. Katie Hall from Indiana. She was here from 80 to 85 and Cortez Collins, who's from Illinois who is there now. In fact, Collins is the only black woman serving Congress in 89. Patsy Mink 65 to 77 first Asian Pacific American woman to serve in the house. Patricia psyche from Hawaii is the second here's what my favorite there are three women governors serving in 89 I remember when we actually had one and then I was a great year when we had 100% increase we moved up to two and now we're at three actually the three women Madeline Kuhn from Vermont. Maybe you know her she's wonderful. She's problem is she has to run every two years but she's just superb really. She needs to she's just great. Kr from Nebraska remember that race now? That was one of these be prepared to women running against each other in Nebraska for governor. I mean, now that you know what just give me it's a wonder Nebraska didn't entirely clean out of people that year. It was just I mean, Helen Bluestar was on the Democratic side and then KR and they were great and you know you there would be the New York Times God forbid women should even have a position of vague power at the New York Times having to write these articles with these people from Nebraska saying things like hey they're not bad you know they could be governor so KR from Nebraska and rows Mulford rows of the hair style I really love that hair Have you seen the hair rose mafia from from Arizona, who actually was elected as Secretary of State and then when Meachem was impeached, but my friends say she's going to run so two are actually elected on their own now how many? What's the total number of women who served as governors I'll stop with a number shortly but it's interesting to note them nine actually now let's talk about a couple of these eight Democrats one Republican the first woman governor was nearly Tylo Ross from Wyoming she replaced her deceased husband there then ma Ferguson from Texas and literally in Wallace from Alabama. I quick word about my first and and Richard slice to tell his story about Mafia because who served twice actually, because her husband went to jail. She didn't he didn't get to cease, he went to jail. So if you ever go to the Texas capitol, you'll see my is on twice in her little pictures. She said if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for us in Texas. Unknown Speaker 46:31 Surreal, really great. First woman Governor again to bring you up to date the first woman governor, elected in her own right was Ella Grasso, who served I think, very well in elected in 74. Reelected and 78 in Connecticut stepped down for health reasons as you know, dies a shortly after of cancer. Dixie Lee Ray from Washington was Governor 7781 Martha Lane, Collins, Collins from Kentucky 83 through 87. And now I think the exciting thing if you want to know what's happening out there is 9090 Watch it if any of you are interested in politics, because the exciting thing in this country is how many women are either running or potentially running for governor. I'm not saying I'm not one who says you just go out and support a woman for women's sake, but they're interesting characters. And Richardson, Texas, Dianne Feinstein in California, Evelyn Murphy in Massachusetts, and all of them are very legitimate candidates. I mean, we're not talking I mean, they may or may not win, these are tough states you're talking to and a lot of bucks to get elected. But maybe Marlene Johnson and Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota. And in the future, I think you'll see at least in the next stove for you five, six years Colorado, Louisiana. So interesting time. One final one and this one, in a way actually to last in mid day six women held about 17% and 18% of appointed positions in governors cabinets, because I now want to get to some of the appointed stuff, the largest percentage of these women held positions. Now if you don't get this one, right, in what are the following areas? area? One is the finance budget taxation revenue area. Two is human rights, civil rights, women's rights, and three is Health Social Services. Anyone want to guess? Health and Social Services? You're right. Actually, about 7% of women cabinet officials were in the finance budget taxation. But that's an interesting thing to watch at state levels, because they're getting to be more state treasurer's, who are women, and they may or may not be strong offices, but people think they're strong officers. So if they're smart women, they go out and make something into the office, even though it may not have any power at all. I mean, it's like city council president actually may have no power at all, but you just go out and you try and make something out of the office. And finally, and since 69, the number of women's state legislatures has more than quadrupled. What percentage of state legislatures in this country are women legislators, I should say? Well, it's about 70%. And the reason I raised that, because under the wise President Reagan, we had the new federalism, which besides screwing up the economy in this country, pushed up any number of really substantive types of policy areas to state and local government, which is where I think some of the very creative work is going on in this country today. And so you do increasingly have women at both the state local level, at the local level, you have increasing number of women because they never paid women anything at the local they never paid, I should say council members, much to speak of and most city councils. And so guys used to do it and work their regular job and then work as a council member. But people demand more of their council members across this country these days, whether it's Lincoln, Nebraska, or New York City, and so you don't get paid very much generally. And you now have to work really hard. So women are taking those positions. And at the state legislative level, there are more and more women and unlike the past where they just got elected they are increasingly moving into positions of more authority Okay, those are my some of my statistics. Now, let me talk a little bit about just a little bit more of the makeup and then I'll just conclude women up. So in that you get a sense of appointed people up. I mean, I've elected people, just a couple of statistics of women appointed based on some studies, Study Center at Rutgers, Eagleton Institute, some other places, women, state cabinet level appointees, I'm going to talk about that, because the last time we even had a vaguely decent number of federal employees in the cabinet, or even in government was in the Carter administration. So there's not a lot to pick from. I mean, you know, there are only so many positions that lady dole can hold in this country. I mean, we could have little cutouts of Lady Dole and she can go from position to position to provision, but there are only so many. But, but to give you some idea of at least of the makeup, women say cabinet level appointees like state appointees overall have strong education and professional backgrounds. Most of them actually have majority I should say a women appointees now I'm not talking about elected I'm talking about appointees have postgraduate degrees. Unknown Speaker 51:14 Although women can state cabinet level appointees come into office with less prior government experience than do appointees overall. They are as are more likely than appointees overall to have had other types of political experience. And it's interesting, they tend to have I had political experience at the federal level. Many women appointees were inspired and I make this point again, based on studies show this consistently, many women appointees were inspired and assisted by other women. Nearly one of every 10 Women appointees report that the person most influential and bringing about her appointment was a woman. Among women appointees who received assistance from an organization other than a political party and obtaining their appointments almost over 1/3 receive assistance from women's groups. Among women appointees whose political involvement was inspired by role models almost 50% had 50 had female role models. Women another factor women state cabinet level appointees are more likely. Who's here. Women's Day cabinet level appointees are more likely than state cabinet level appointees overall, to take the dreaded L word position on issues and feminist stance on issues. For example, just to use a couple 80% of women appointees compared with 60% of state employees overall support ratification of vra just uses an eye test and whether they are serving in the administration of Democratic or Republican governors, nine out of every 10 Women appointees compared with three fourths of appointees overall oppose a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion and just a little bit demographically, while a majority of women appointees and appointees overall are married women are less likely to be married and are more likely than all appointees to be single, separated or divorced. 67% of female appointees compared with 85% of appointees overall are married. Actually, you can't win either way. I'll tell you running for office. If running for office, if you're single man or woman, they want to know generally, why aren't you married? Okay. But if you but but then if you are married, if you're a man, that's great. Your marriage, you know, settle down. That's wonderful. If your woman then may want to know why are you leaving your children to go serve in office, so um, if you're unmarried, they think you're crazy. And if you're married, they want to know you're going to Albany, you're leaving your kids at home, nobody's going to take care of them. So women can't win either way. But in any case, demographically, slightly fewer women married to maybe or more single separator divorced among appointees who are or were married women are more likely than appointees overall to have no children or fewer children. And women appointees are younger on the average than appointees in general 46% of women compared with 28% of appointees overall are under the age of 14. Some final comments since I had to go back to my topic, it said similarity. So, so I called Karen, I said, Karen, what is this topic? What are the similarities? So we try it we struggled a little bit. So this is in no particular order. Here are some similarities that we decided that that might mark both women in and then I'll give you a couple of differences women in elective office and women in appointive office in no particular order one impatience to wanting to do good, whatever that means. It's a different definition for everybody but wanting to do good. Three, a willingness to risk criticism, risking failing risking it again. Next, to some degree and a difference a need for the limelight not unimportant I give for those I did for those. My first year I now four years out of public office. I mean, it's the mayoral election again this year, you remember it was four years ago that the voters elected me to go the private sector? Well? Well, I was I was, you know, got my first year out of office, people would stop me all the time and say, well, the admin said it was the same question came up all the time. And I kind of had my stock answer, which was that this parts of it, I didn't miss all of it. And I particularly missed the public policy stuff, because that's the interesting stuff. I don't care what you do in the private sector. It's just not as interesting and public policy. And that used to satisfy everybody. But I remember wanting to list carpenter speaking about Texans, they're all funny. Remember list Carpenter, who? And I gave her my sock answer. And she said, Honey, I'd missed the applause. So having told you that there is that's one of the similarities or impatience, wanting to do good willingness to risk criticism, need for the limelight, and it may differ a little bit in terms of elective office and point of office and a point of Office user may say, oh, no, no, no, no. Well, to some degree, you will have to not be in the limelight. But to some degree, there is some line Limelight there as well. Unknown Speaker 56:13 I think most particularly given the inequities out there today are not entirely infected by today's greed factor. Or in other words, unless you're a total crook, and there's no middle off, we women have no monopoly on goodness and justice in the public sector. Unless you're a total crook, you're not going to get rich in government. So that's the understood, action oriented, I think, generally, a person, whatever your philosophical bent, generally a person with some merit, I would even call kind of people in the public side, kind of extraordinary, but I put quotes around it, generally a person of some miracle, but also probably a person who's had luck, good timing, and may occasionally have connections. And as I find any inclusion on that part, no monopoly, we don't really have a monopoly on goodness and justice and truth. Differences. Well, I think there's a little bit I think there are some differences. elected official, basically, is there to do that three minutes on every subject. Now I know I'm not putting it down. I mean, the articulator of policy that uses the bully pulpit sets the policy agenda, hopefully can inspire can lead. And there are all different ways to inspire and lead. I mean, you know, we don't all have to, you know, some of us are vaguely literate, some of us are not. But they're all different ways. The appointed person is more than manager, I'm not talking about green visor, but somebody who, in a sense, is the implementer of the policy constrained to some degree by the appointing authority. But the best appointees are able to manipulate the appointing authority. Or as I used to say, when I was the state legislature, the smart lobbyists are the ones who didn't go home when the legislature was out of session, because they understood that the elected officials may pass the laws, but it was the people that wrote the regulations that really implemented the loss. Well, so those are some of my comments. And I want to discuss the the individuals and the personalities a little bit because while while I, I celebrate and I congratulate kind of the substance, thinking about how we, what policy exists out there today, what ought to exist, how we ought to change policy, that some of the some of the change agents, although they are not just the people in a point of elective office, when I was in the Peace Corps, I remember learning. What is it less than one probably was going to the go into your community and find out who the change maker is the who's the change agent, and the change agent may not be the mayor of the community or may not be the head of the the Chamber of Commerce, I mean, you should have seen the community in Guatemala, they didn't have a chamber of commerce, so where I went, but but but some of the change agents clearly are these women. And so just some final comments, we in this, we are lucky in this country, because we do we do not have you know, we don't necessarily have barriers to political participation that exists in some other places for women. So we have an opportunity, a great opportunity to achieve equal participation from women, for women in our political structure. And I think we need to do that. More women in public life may not immediately turn swords into plowshares. But women do bring a different and diverse set of life experiences to the process. And for democracy, to be truly representative is only just that we be equally represented. There is much much that needs to be done. And there are not enough political voices to speak out. disarmament the environment, children in poverty, new voices need to be heard. I encourage women to reach for the highest levels possible All in their own political lens, a small p whatever. However, we define political aspirations, and simultaneously to continue to be role models for the next generation. Because women do make a difference in public policy. So when women become political equals, in the exercise of power at all levels, we for the first time will have taken full responsibility for our own lives and for the lives of those who share life with us. That in my view is true equality. Okay, thank you very much Unknown Speaker 1:01:03 I want to thank the speakers this afternoon and this morning and I also want to thank again the staff of the Center for Research on Women. Ruth farmer who's just leaving the room to do more work Bernita Dortch Tracy stress or Kim Cooperman about without whom this conference would never have taken place and want to thank all of you who come back year after a year and for your participation and I send you for us to the various plenaries and welcome you to come to the reception which will immediately follow the plenary Thank you very much