We are all aware of the many struggles women have faced regarding the fight to balance gender equality.  However, part of the struggle includes historical legislation.  Below is an article, written by J. Lewis (womenshistory.about.com), explaining the efforts of former President John F. Kennedy.  Enjoy…!

President’s Commission on the Status of Women

by Jone Johnson Lewis

December 14, 1961 – October, 1963

While similar institutions with the name “President’s Commission on the Status of Women” have been formed by various universities and other institutions, the key organization by that name was established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy to explore issues relating to women and to make proposals in such areas as employment policy, education, and federal Social Security and tax laws where these discriminated against women or otherwise addressed women’s rights.

Interest in women’s rights and how to most effectively protect such rights was a matter of growing national interest. There were more than 400 pieces of legislation in Congress which addressed women’s status and issues of discrimination and expanding rights. Court decisions at the time addressed reproductive liberty (the use of contraceptives, for instance) and citizenship (whether women served on juries, for example).

Those who supported protective legislation for women workers believed that it made it more feasible for women to work. Women, even if they worked a full-time job, were the primary childrearing and housekeeping parent after a day at work. The supporters of protective legislation also believed that it was in society’s interest to protect women’s health including women’s reproductive health by restricting hours and some conditions of work, requiring additional bathroom facilities, etc.

Those who supported the Equal Rights Amendment (first introduced in Congress soon after women won the right to vote in 1920) believed with the restrictions and special privileges of women workers under protective legislation, employers were motivated to higher fewer women or even avoid hiring women altogether.

Kennedy established the Commission on the Status of Women in order to navigate between these two positions, trying to find compromises that advanced the equality of women’s workplace opportunity without losing the support of organized labor and those feminists who supported protecting women workers from exploitation and protecting women’s ability to serve in traditional roles in the home and family.

Kennedy also saw a need to open the workplace to more women, in order to have the United States become more competitive with Russia, in the space race, in the arms race — in general, to serve the interests of the “Free World” in the Cold War.

The Commission’s Charge and Membership

Executive Order 10980 by which President Kennedy created the President’s Commission on the Status of Women spoke for women’s basic rights, opportunity for women, the national interest in security and defense of a more “efficient and effective utilization of the skills of all persons,” and the value of home life and family.

It charged the commission with “the responsibility for developing recommendations for overcoming discriminations in government and private employment on the basis of sex and for developing recommendations for services which will enable women to continue their role as wives and mothers while making a maximum contribution to the world around them.”

Kennedy appointed Eleanor Roosevelt, former US delegate to the United Nations and widow of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to chair the commission. She had played a key role in establishing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and she’d defended both women’s economic opportunity and women’s traditional role in the family, so she could be expected to have the respect of those on both sides of the protective legislation issue. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the commission from its beginning through her death in 1962.

The twenty members of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women included both male and female Congressional representatives and Senators (Senator Maurine B. Neuberger of Oregon and Representative Jessica M. Weis of New York), several cabinet-level officers (including the Attorney General, the President’s brother Robert F. Kennedy), and other women and men who were respected civic, labor, educational, and religious leaders. There was some ethnic diversity; among the members were Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women and the Young Women’s Christian Association, Viola H. Hymes of the National Council of Jewish Women.

The Legacy of the Commission: Findings, Successors

The final report of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) was published in October 1963. It proposed a number of legislative initiatives, but did not even mention the Equal Rights Amendment.

This report, called the Peterson Report, documented workplace discrimination, and recommended affordable child care, equal employment opportunity for women, and paid maternity leave.

The public notice given to the report led to considerably more national attention to issues of women’s equality, especially in the workplace. Esther Peterson, who headed the Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau, spoke about the findings in public forums including The Today Show. Many newspapers ran a series of four articles from the Associated Press about the commission’s findings of discrimination and its recommendations.

As a result, many states and localities also established Commissions on the Status of Women to propose legislative changes, and many universities and other organizations also created such commissions.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 grew out of the recommendations of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women.

The Commission dissolved after creating its report, but the Citizens Advisory Council on the Status of Women was created to succeed the Commission. This brought together many with a continuing interest in various aspects of women’s rights.

Women from both sides of the protective legislation issue looked for ways in which both sides’ concerns could be addressed legislatively. More women within the labor movement began to look at how protective legislation might work to discriminate against women, and more feminists outside the movement began to take more seriously the concerns of organized labor in protecting women’s and men’s family participation.

Frustration with progress towards the goals and recommendations of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women helped fuel the development of the women’s movement in the 1960s. When the National Organization for Women was founded, key founders had been involved with the President’s Commission on the Status of Women or its successor, the Citizens Advisory Council on the Status of Women.

Citation:

Lewis, J. J. (2016, June 12). President’s commission on the status of women.

Retrieved August 7, 2016, from http://womenshistory.about.com/od/laws/a/status_women.htm

As previously announced, each week, a woman who was a pillar with the fight towards gender equality, will be highlighted on our website each week.

Most of us know the story of Susan B. Anthony.  However, do you know who inspired her?

Courtesy of Biography Online, the Story of Margaret Fuller is amazing:

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) was an American writer, a women’s rights activist, and was associated with the Transcendentalist movement.

Fuller was an influential early feminist whose writings had a profound impact on later women suffrage campaigners, such as Susan B. Anthony.

“She possessed more influence on the thought of American women than any woman previous to her time.”

– Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in History of Woman Suffrage.

Sarah Margaret Fuller was born May 23, 1810 in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. Her father was a lawyer and, for eight years, a representative of Congress, enabling him to move in influential political circles.

Margaret was educated at home and also at the Boston Lyceum for Young Ladies (1821-22). She was a voracious reader and became well-known for being one of the best read people in New England. She became the first women to have access to Harvard library, when researching a book on the Great Lakes region. She also became fluent in the classics and several modern languages. Her thirst for knowledge was such that she felt little in common with other girls her own age. She was less interested in more conventional pursuits expected of women, Fuller was hopeful of continuing her studies and beginning a career in journalism.

However, after the unexpected death of her father from Cholera in 1836, Fuller found herself in a position of having to look after her family. Also, she did not benefit from her father’s estate, with the bulk of the family fortune going to two uncles (her father did not make a will). To supplement her income she took a job as a teacher in Boston and later Providence, Rhode Island.

In 1839, Fuller moved the family to Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Fuller began women’s discussion groups where Fuller would lead talks about the role of women in society.

In 1839, Fuller was offered the job of editing the Transcendentalists’ magazine – The Dial’ by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Transcendentalists were an influential philosophical movement in the Nineteenth Century. They believed in personal transformation and looking beyond religious dogmas. Fuller accepted the position and became a leading figure within the Transcendentalist movement. Although she was sympathetic to the movement, she had some reservations about the label ‘Transcendentalist’ being applied to her. However, she frequently visited leading Transcendentalists, and wrote about her experiences in her book called ‘Summer on the Lakes‘ (1844)

With growing confidence as a writer, Fuller also returned to themes of female emancipation and the role of women in society. In 1845, she published – ‘Women in the Nineteenth Century‘ – It investigated the role of women in society and how they could play a greater role in society. (Fuller had originally intended to call it The Great lawsuit: Men ‘versus’ Men, Woman ‘versus’ Women.)

“We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man…”

“There exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves….”

“…Let us be wise, and not impede the soul. Let her work as she will. Let us have one creative energy, one incessant revelation. Let it take what form it will, and let us not bind it by the past to man or woman, black or white.”

Quotes from ‘Women in the Nineteenth Century‘ (1845)

In 1844, she moved to the New York Tribune, where she became a literary critic and later – the New York Tribune’s first female editor.

It was a meteoric rise for Fuller. She frequently broke gender barriers, taking roles rarely allowed for women. She had a very strong personality – contemporaries say she had great self-confidence and self-belief in her own capacities.

“I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.”

– As reported by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1884) Vol. 1, Pt. 4.

However, she was quick to anger and with a short temper. Her personality could polarise opinion of her. As she herself admits.

“I am ‘too fiery’ … yet I wish to be seen as I am, and would lose all rather than soften away anything.”

– As quoted by Joseph Jay Deiss in “Humanity, said Edgar Allan Poe, is divided into Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller” in American Heritage magazine, (August 1972)

In 1846, Fuller was sent to Europe as foreign correspondent for the New York Tribune. She met leading literary figures of the day; she also met the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini. In 1848, she secretly married Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, a former marquis disinherited by his family because of his support for the revolutionary Mazzini. Their relationship was kept secretive for several months, though after the birth of their child – Angelo Eugene Philip Ossoli, they became less so. In 1849, they became involved in Giuseppe Mazzani’s fight for the establishment of a Roman republic. Fuller worked as a nurse, whilst her husband fought.

In 1850, the couple took a boat back to America. But, on July 19, 1850, the returning ship hit a sandbank. The ship was abandoned amidst crashing waves and Fuller was never seen again. She had previously written of feeling bad omens about her fate. Her last manuscript on the Roman republic was lost. After her death, a short biography was published, which proved popular

Fuller was interested in a range of social topics. She believed in social reform from women’s rights to the prison system. In particular, she believed women had a right to a full education. She felt a complete education would enable women to be more independent and enable a wider horizon of possibilities than the social conventions of the Nineteenth Century allowed. She also abhorred slavery and felt the Native Americans had been unfairly treated. She wrote extensively on a range of social issues from homelessness to women’s equality and played a role in promoting progressive ideas, which were later taken up by women rights activists and social campaigners.

She was good friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson admired his vivacious friend, though Fuller criticized the Transcendentalist concern with personal transformation because she felt the necessity for social reform.

Citation:

Margaret Fuller biography. (n.d.). Retrieved July 31, 2016, from

http://www.biographyonline.net/women/margaret-fuller.html

Shattered glass is falling all around us.  Women have just reached another historic moment in American history.  For over 240 years women have fought for equality and representation.  Because of the countless strides and sacrifices of women, we were able to witness a woman announced as a candidate for the highest office of the land.  FEW celebrate this moment in history and pleased to share this moment with future generations!

We salute all the women who have pave the way to this small feat and we thank you for your relentless efforts.  They have finally paid off.

As I hope most of you heard last week, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced that it will be replacing the image of President Andrew Jackson on the $20.00 bill with an image of Harriet Tubman. Tubman is an important figure in United States history for her work supporting the Underground Railroad, which helped slaves escape from captivity. Ms. Tubman was also very active during the Civil War as both a nurse and intelligence gatherer for the Union cause.

As an organization founded to support the cause of women’s equality and embracing diversity, the selection of Harriett Tubman as the face of the $20.00 bill should be celebrated by Federally Employed Women (FEW) and all of us for many reasons. Although this will be the first bank note a woman will appear on within our current circulated currency, this is not the first time a female has appeared on a U.S. dollar bill.

According to Harcourt Fuller, a Professor of History at Georgia State University, Pocahontas, Lucy Pickens, and Martha Washington have historically graced U.S. paper currency, with First Lady Washington last appearing in 1896. Although Harriett Tubman is not the first female to receive this distinction, she will be the first female on U.S. currency in over 100 years.

Over the last two months there have been several critical announcements made by the Obama Administration that support women’s rights and equality. On April 12th, Women’s Equal Pay Day, President Obama designated the newest national monument the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument in Washington D.C. President Obama has been vocal about ending the pay gap to support Women’s rights, and his decision to place a prominent female on U.S. currency is cause for celebration as both a symbolic and physical representation of those efforts.

The selection of Harriett Tubman for the $20 bill is also important as a declaration for diversity within our country. Choosing a woman who represents the history and challenges our country has overcome is more than just symbolic gesture. This demonstrates that the United States values all of its patriotic citizens, regardless of gender or race.

The final thing I want each of us to celebrate about this important announcement is the fact that it was submitted to President Obama by a child named Sofia. Young girls, like Sofia, are the future of our country and our organization. It renews my spirit to see young females so passionate about equal rights and representation. I hope each of you embraces Sofia’s conviction as you work with FEW to advocate for women’s equality.

In the Spirit of Excellence,

Michelle A. Crockett
National President
Federally Employed Women