When Women Went Public : Feminist Reforms in the 1970S

When Women Went Public FEMINIST REFORMS IN THE 1970s Cheri Register ion show in downtown Minneapolis. fied job listings. WAMS had sought The problem was not the fashions since January to persuade the com- On September 19, 1970, a but the failure of the show’s sponsor, pany to comply with the State Act group called Women Against Male the Star and Tribune Company, to Against Discrimination and federal Supremacy (WAMS) picketed a fash- “desexegate” its newspapers’ classi- Equal Employment Opportunity guidelines set in 1968.1 Despite pickets at the papers’ headquarters, costumes made of want ads, stickers on newspaper vending boxes, and a meeting with management, the ads still read “Help Wanted–Male” and “Help Wanted–Female.” An account of the protest in the Female Liberation Newsletter includes this “funny incident”: “A little girl wanted to know what we were doing, so we told her and then gave her a sign to carry. Her mother (laughingly) said, ‘Don’t do it! Her fa- ther will kill her! He’s [Star and Tri- bune columnist] Jim Klobuchar!’ ” 2 The author of the account, Phyllis Kahn, was elected two years later to Publication of this article was supported, in part, by the eugenie M. Anderson Women Minneapolis Tribune’s report on Woman Power Day, covering in Public Affairs Fund. national as well as local events, August 27, 1970 62 Minnesota History When Women Went Public the Minnesota House of Representa- theater and eating lunch “unaccom- tives, becoming one of an unprece- panied” in men-only dining rooms, dented six female legislators. She chief among them Dayton’s Men’s serves there still, among 43 women Oak Grill. I kept my eye on the Fo- in a body of 134. In 2006 the “little shay Tower, the city’s tallest build- girl,” Amy Klobuchar, became the ing, and soon a bed-sheet banner first woman elected to the U.S. Sen- unfurled from the observation deck, ate from Minnesota. Neither feat reading “WOMEN UNITE.” A self- would have been likely without the styled radical feminist of 25, I was consciousness-raising, organizing, skeptical of the program that the demonstrating, and lobbying that “nice ladies,” Republican Governor made the 1970s, in the words of Uni- Harold LeVander’s appointees to the versity of Minnesota history profes- Women’s Advisory Committee, had sor Sara M. Evans, the “golden years” designed. Indeed, the workshop on of the women’s movement.3 Changes economic power focused on invest- wrought in that decade opened virtu- ment and banking. Where, I asked, ally all arenas of civic life to women. were women to get money to invest Minnesota became a national if their jobs paid them an average of proving ground for feminist reforms. 57 cents to a man’s dollar? A panelist The first battered women’s shelter in admonished me to be patient: “You Minneapolis’s Foshay Tower, decked the country was established here, as young women are in such a hurry to out for Woman Power Day, 1970 well as the first pay equity program get that fur coat.” Yet our encounter, in public employment. Minnesota’s and others that day, helped establish high rate of volunteerism and the them the right to vote. The National a symbiosis between nice ladies and bipartisan civility of its machine-free Organization for Women (NOW) radicals. As Nina Rothchild now de- government made the passage of citi- urged women to skip work and scribes it, “There was an understand- zen initiatives into law an achievable household tasks that day: “Don’t iron ing that you need people far out, goal. Decades later, it is well worth while the strike is hot!” In response, rocking the boat, and then the nice examining how Minnesota women the Women’s Advisory Committee ladies come in, and they’re solving a affected landmark changes that we to the Minnesota Department of problem. In the meantime, you shift may today take for granted. Human Rights organized “Woman the center towards the direction you Power Day,” featuring leading local want to go.” 5 The nice ladies put on “Don’t iron while women giving speeches and work- their power pantsuits and headed shops on employment, education, for the state capitol. The boat rock- the strike is hot!” politics, youth, and economics. A sign of the times, the brochure Three weeks before the WAMS listed, for example, future judge Cheri Register is a cofounder of the protest, on August 26, 1970, women Diana Murphy, then president of the Emma Willard Task Force on Educa- tion and a pioneer in the field of wom- had massed in downtown Minneapo- League of Women Voters, as “Mrs. en’s studies. A writer with several books 4 lis to mark the fiftieth anniversary Joseph Murphy, Jr.” in print, she teaches creative-nonfiction of the Nineteenth Amendment to I headed downtown full of excite- writing at the Loft Literary Center. the U.S. Constitution, which granted ment. I knew of plans for guerrilla Summer 2008 63 ers found ballast for their outrage in The caller was checking whether the pay differential was explained at a countercultural models of change: man worked full-time. “And does he faculty meeting: Men needed more women’s health clinics, rape crisis make $12,000?” “I hope to hell not,” money because they were heads of centers, feminist theaters, and more. Nelsen blurted and hung up. She told households. Nelsen, meanwhile, was her female colleague, who, like her, the primary breadwinner while her EMPLOYMENT earned $9,000, and they figured he husband looked for a job. “The nickel Vivian Jenkins Nelsen remembers had inflated his salary to get financ- dropped,” she says, and the women that August 26 commemoration ing. Weeks later when one of her filed a complaint in 1971. and wondering whether black suf- students—Syl Jones, now an editorial fragists would be duly celebrated, columnist for the Star Tribune—dis- Yet passage of a but she was too busy at her new job covered that Augsburg’s few faculty law did not guarantee to attend. As director of financial women earned less than their male assistance for the minority educa- counterparts, the phone call made enforcement. tion program at Augsburg College, sense. “We didn’t just leap off into the she was responsible for 52 students. women’s movement,” Nelsen explains. Surprise—disbelief—betrayal was Two other new hires—a man and a “I took it like, well, they’re Lutheran a common sequence of reactions for woman—joined her at the same rank and they don’t know any better. I working women who trusted in the in the same department. was raised in a Lutheran church. I 1963 Equal Pay Act, the 1964 Civil One day when her male col- knew that it had been very shielded Rights Act, and the Equal Employ- league was away, Nelsen answered from people of color and such, so ment Opportunity Commission to a phone call from a car dealership. I cut them a little slack.” Later the protect their interests. Yet passage of THE NARRATORS Eleven women, all active feminists in the 1970s, were interviewed for this article. Each stands for scores more who also have much to tell. retired but on the board of the Min- Linda Berglin, elected to the Min- Carol Lacey, formerly a reporter nesota Women’s Consortium. nesota House of Representatives in for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and 1972 and now serving in the state Dispatch, now teaching at Metropoli- Emily Anne Staples Tuttle, Senate. tan State University. chair of the first Minnesota Women’s Advisory Committee, elected to the Mary Ann Grossmann, former Vivian Jenkins Nelsen, once state Senate in 1976, now serving on editor of the women’s pages of state president of the Women’s nonprofit boards. the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Equity Action League, now the ex- inter-Race Dispatch, now the Pioneer Press ecutive director of the Sharon Rice Vaughan, member book review editor. institute. of Women’s Advocates and pioneer in securing justice for battered Paulette Joyer, former vice Gerri Perreault, cofounder of on edu- women, now an associate professor president of Minnesota Feminists for the emma Willard Task Force at Metropolitan State University. Life, now an attorney working with the cation, now Director of Leadership elderly. Studies at the University of Northern Nancy Register Wangen, active iowa. in the statewide enforcement of Phyllis Kahn, cofounder of the first director equity in education, now retired from Minnesota Women’s Political Caucus, Nina Rothchild, the the Minnesota State Colleges and who has served in the state House of of the Minnesota Commission on Universities. Representatives since 1972. the economic Status of Women, now 64 Minnesota History a law did not guarantee enforcement. receiving federal financial assis- quirement that girls take home eco- Phyllis Kahn, a researcher in genet- tance.” Even Augsburg, a private reli- nomics and boys take industrial arts, ics and cell biology at the University gious college, fell under this rule. include women in history texts and of Minnesota, had filed a complaint Nelsen moved to the University female writers in English courses, about job status and pay with the of Minnesota in 1972. The following and encourage girls’ interest in sci- university’s judiciary committee in year, researcher Shyamala Rajender ence and athletics. By February 1971 1968 that incited acts of retaliation. filed a discrimination complaint we, with three like-minded women, She appealed to the EEOC, only to against the chemistry department. formed the Emma Willard Task have the complaint sit unsettled for a WEAL offered assistance, and a law Force on Education, named for the dozen years.6 firm took the case as a class-action founder of the nation’s first second- Nelsen’s case moved along, how- suit.

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