Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End (41 page)

⁹⁷
Karla Jay,
Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation
(New York: Basic Books, 1999), chapter 9, quote on p. 137. See also Brownmiller,
In Our Time,
pp. 96-100; Davis,
Moving the Mountain,
pp. 264-266.

⁹⁸
Popkin
, “Bread and Roses,” p. 180.

⁹⁹
“A Letter From Mary,” in Jay and Young, eds.,
Out of the Closets,
p. 182. Fora discussion of the sexual tensions and the gay-straight split within Bread and Roses, see Popkin, “Bread and Roses,” pp. 180-184.

¹⁰⁰
Susan Griffin, “Reverberations,” in Karol Hope and Nancy Young, eds.,
Out of the Frying Pan … A Decade of Change, in Women’s Lives
(Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1979), p. 247.

¹⁰¹
Time
(December 14, 1970): 50.

¹⁰²
Sidney Abbott and Barbara Love,
Sappho Was A Right-on Woman: A Liberated View of Lesbianism
(New York: Stein and Day, 1972), pp. 123-125; Brownmiller,
In Our Time,
pp. 148-151.

¹⁰³
Alice S. Rossi, “Equality Between the Sexes: An Immodest Proposal,”
Daedalus,
vol. 93, no. 2 (Spring 1964): 607-652; Popkin, “Bread and Roses,” 77; Kate Millett, “Sexual Politics: A Manifesto for Revolution,” in Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt, eds.,
Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation; Major Writings of the Radical Feminists
(New York: Radical Feminism, 1970), pp. 111-112. Radical feminists, indeed, defined their goal as the abolition of sex roles. See Anne Koedt, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm,” in Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, and Anita Rapone, eds.,
Radical Feminism
(New York: Quadrangle Books, 1973), pp. 198-207.

¹⁰⁴
Pat Mainardi, “The Politics of Housework,” in
Notes from the Second Year
(1970), pp. 28-31, quotes on p. 29; Jane O’Reilly, “The Housewife’s Moment of Truth,”
Ms.
, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1972): 54-55, 57-59.

¹⁰⁵
Anita Shreve,
Women Together, Women Alone: The Legacy of the Consciousness-Raising Movement
(New York: Viking, 1989), p. 139.

¹⁰⁶
Popkin, “Bread and Roses,” p. 77.

¹⁰⁷
Popkin, “Bread and Roses,” pp. 23,-30; Shreve,
Women Together,
pp. 40-43, 51-52.

¹⁰⁸
Popkin, “Bread and Roses,” p. 78.

¹⁰⁹
Interview with Alice Kessler-Harris, New York City, December 13, 1997.

¹¹⁰
“The Feminists: A Political Organization to Annihilate Sex Roles,” in Firestone and Koedt, eds.,
Notes from the Second Year
(New York: Radical Feminism, 1970), p. 117.

¹¹¹
The plummeting birthrate cannot be overstated. The number of births per
1000 women ages 15-44 had fallen by the mid-1970s to nearly half the rate in 1957 at the peak of the baby boom. See Cynthia Taeuber,
Statistical Handbook on Women in America
(Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 1991), p. 20.

¹¹²
Falk-Dickler quoted in Davis,
Moving the Mountain,
p. 281; Friedan,
It Changed My Life,
p. 175.

¹¹³
Author’s interview with Day Piercy, Chicago, July 16, 1981.

¹¹⁴
Davis,
Moving the Mountain,
p. 283; Edward F. Zigler and Jody Goodman, “The Battle for Day Care in America: A View from the Trenches,” in Edward F. Zigler and Edmund W. Gordon, eds.,
Day Care: Scientific and Social Policy Issues
(Boston, MA.: Auburn House Publishing, 1982), pp. 343-345.

¹¹⁵
I attended this meeting in Baltimore and remember meeting Alix Kates Shulman there. The first book published by the Feminist Press was a children’s book designed for young readers,
The Dragon and the Doctor,
by Barbara Danish.

¹¹⁶
Author’s telephone interview with Cheri Register, August 21, 1993.

¹¹⁷
Ibid.;
letter to Howard Casmey, Commissioner of Education, April 16, 1971, Emma Willard Task Force on Education Packet (Minneapolis, MN: February 23, 1972; December 8, 1971).

¹¹⁸
Ibid.;
Emma Willard Task Force on Education Packet. The packet included a biography of Emma Willard, articles and position papers regarding women’s liberation and girls and sports, consciousness-raising exercises for classroom use, and a 38 page bibliography.

¹¹⁹
The following, for example, can be found in the Emma Willard Task Force Bibliography: Janice Law Trecker, “Women in U.S. History High School Textbooks,”
Social Education
(March 1971), 249-260, 338;
Little Miss Muffet Fights back: A Bibliography of Recommended Non-sexist Books About Girls for Young Readers
(New York: Feminists on Children’s Media, 1974); Marcia Federbush,
Let Them Aspire: A Plea and Proposal for Equality of Opportunity for Males and Females in the Ann Arbor Public Schools
(May 1971); Anne Grant West,
Report on Sex Bias in the Public Schools
(New York: New York City Chapter of NOW, n.d.); Women on Words and Images,
Dick and Jane as Victims: Sex Stereotyping in Children’s Readers
(Princeton, NJ: Women on Words and Images, 1975).

¹²⁰
Connie Dvorkin, “High School Women: The Suburban Scene,” Emma Willard Task Force on Education Packet.

¹²¹
Cynthi Ellen Harrison,
Women’s Movement Media: A Source Guide
(New York: R.R. Bowker Company, 1975), based on 2000 questionnaires sent out in 1973 or 1974, lists several national and local radio sources. The Pacifica Program Service, for example, serving four stations (KPFA in Northern California, KPFK in southern California, KPFT in Houston, and WBAI in New York) and distributing programs to nonprofit or educational radio stations located principally on school, college, and university campuses, listed more than 60 taped programs of interest to feminists. Similarly, Radio Free People and Radio
Free Women of Washington, D.C. listed numerous tapes and interviews available for rebroadcast. What Harrison’s questionnaire did not capture, apparently, was the existence of locally produced feminist “women’s shows” on nonprofit, usually campus-based, radio stations across the country.

¹²²
See, for example, “Human Potential: The Revolution in Feeling,”
Time
96 (November 9, 1970): 54-58.

Chapter 3

¹
“Never Underestimate …”
Newsweek
, July 26, 1971, 29.

²
“Never Underestimate …”
Newsweek
, July 26, 1971, 29-30, quotes on 29; Rona E Feit, “Organizing for Political Power: The National Women’s Political Caucus,” in Bernice Cummings and Victoria Schuck, eds.,
Women Organizing: An Anthology
(Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1979), p. 185; Sheila Tobias,
Faces of Feminism: An Activist’s Reflections on the Women’s Movement
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 246-247; Winifred Wandersee,
On the Move: American Women in the 1970s
(Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988), pp. 22-23.

³
Political scientists Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Palley, in
Women and Public Policies: Reassessing Gender Politics
(Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1996), pp. 5-6, argue similarly that the issues that provoked least controversy were issues of equity that did not—on the surface at least—threaten role changes. One of their primary examples of a reform that fit this requirement was the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. See also Zillah R. Eisenstein,
The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism
(New York: Longman, 1981).

⁴
Boston Globe
quoted in NWPC
Newsletter IV
, vol. II, no. IV (June 1973): 5.

⁵
Dennis A. Deslippe, “
Rights, Not Roses”: Unions and the Rise of Working-Class Feminism
, 1945-80 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), p. 120; Catherine East, “Remarks for Veterans of Feminist American Meeting,” May 26, 1993 (typescript); Hole and Levine,
Rebirth of Feminism
, pp. 82-83, 85; Davis,
Moving the Mountain
, pp. 53-54, 57.

⁶
Susan M. Hartmann, “Allies of the Women’s Movement: Origins and Strategies of Feminist Activists in Male Dominated Organizations in the 1970s: The Case of the International Union of Electrical Workers,” Paper presented at the 1993 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Pough-keepsie, New York, June 1993, and
The Other Feminists: Activists in the Liberal Establishment
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

⁷
In
Rosenfeld v. Southern Pacific Co.
(1968) a district court invalidated a California weight-lifting law for women. The court held that state protective laws didn’t constitute a bfoq and that such laws were superseded by Title VII. This case is often cited as “the catalyst for the eventual demise of state protective laws.” See Karen J. Maschke,
Litigation, Courts and Women Workers
(New
York: Praeger, 1989), p. 45. See also Sally J. Kenney,
For whose protection? Reproductive Hazards and Exclusionary Policies in the United States and Britain
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992).

⁸
Davis,
Moving the Mountain
, pp. 62-64; Hole and Levine,
Rebirth of Feminism
, pp. 36-37;
Weeks v. Southern Tel. & Tel. Co.
(CA-5, 3-4-69) 408 F. 2d, rev. & rem. S.D. Ga 277 ¥. supp. 117.

⁹
Author’s interviews with Olga Madar in Detroit on December 10, 1982, Dorothy Haener in Detroit on January 21, 1983, and Mildred Jeffrey, January 21, 1983.

¹⁰
See Flora Davis,
Moving the Mountain
, chapter 7; “The Senate: Woman Power,”
Newsweek
(April 3, 1972): 28.

¹¹
Catherine East, “Remarks for Veteran Feminists of America Meeting,” May 26, 1993 (typescript in author’s possession); Hole and Levine,
Rebirth of Feminism
, p. 55.

¹²
Arvonne Fraser, “Notes from 50th Anniversary Conference of Women’s Bureau,” 948-1978, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN, Box 2.

¹³
Margurite Rawalt, “The Equal Rights Amendment,” in Irene Tinker, ed.,
Women in Washington: Advocates for Public Policy
(Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1983), pp. 49-78; Davis,
Moving the Mountain
, pp. 121-127; Hole and Levine,
Rebirth of Feminism
, p. 56; Gelb and Palley, Women and Public Policies, pp. 50-51; Catherine East, “Remarks,” p. 4.

¹⁴
See Women in the DFL, “Present but Powerless? A Preliminary Report,” (St. Paul, Minnesota), May 1971. Copy in Arvonne Fraser Papers, Box 2, Minnesota Historical Society. The acknowledgments especially note Koryn Horbal and Arvonne Fraser as key sources of information. This became the founding document of the DFL Feminist Caucus that was a major force in state politics for several decades.

¹⁵
Mary Ann Milsap, “Sex Equity in Education,” in Tinker, ed.,
Women in Washington
, pp. 93-94 (quote on p. 94). See also Ethel Klein,
Gender Politics: From Consciousness to Mass Politics
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 25-26.

¹⁶
According to Rosalyn Baxandall, both Susan Brownmiller and Jan Goodman, early activists in New York Radical Women, were rejected for membership in NOW with letters stating that NOW was a membership organization for professional women [Susan Brownmiller,
In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution
(New York: Dial Press, 1999), p. 3].

¹⁷
Arvonne Fraser, “Insiders and Outsiders,” in Irene Tinker, ed.,
Women in Washington
, p. 123.

¹⁸
Arlene Horowitz, “Education—Female Fact or Fiction,”
NWPC Newsletter
VI, vol. II, no. VI (August 1973): 2-4, quote on 4.

¹⁹
Fraser, “Insiders and Outsiders,” p. 131.

²⁰
Ibid
., p. 131.

²¹
Davis,
Moving the Mountain
, p. 148; see also U.S. Congress, Hearings, Joint
Economic Committee,
Economic Problems of Women
, 93rd Congress, 1st Session, 12 July 1973, pp. 152-153, 202-210. See also Sheila Tobias,
Faces of Feminism: An Activist’s Reflections on the Women’s Movement
(Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 106-108.