Schenken Suzanne O’Dea. From Suffrage to the Senate: An Encyclopedia of American Women in Politics (2 Volumes)

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Eagle Forum

Founded in 1975 by Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum seeks to develop and

dominate the agenda for conservative women. Eagle Forum works at the

local, state, and national levels to oppose equal rights amendments, pay

equity, abortion rights, affirmative action, gay rights, bilingual education,

and government-sponsored child day care. It opposes setting national

standards for education, teaching evolutionary theories, and educating

students about sex and about death. It also opposes the expansion of the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the use of U.S. troops in

United Nations or NATO actions, and statehood for Puerto Rico and the

District of Columbia. Among the issues it supports are antitax campaigns;

lobbies for a strong defense, including a strong ballistic missile defense

system; and an end to discrimination against traditional family values. Ea-

gle Forum supports English as the official language and encourages Con-

gress to refuse to confirm judges that it characterizes as activist.

With more than 80,000 members, Eagle Forum’s strength comes

from its extensive grassroots network, including chapters in all fifty states

and Australia. The national office is in Alton, Illinois, where Schlafly re-

sides, and the group has an office in Washington, D.C. Eagle Forum par-

ticipates in congressional and state legislative hearings, monitors votes,

makes recommendations to state and federal legislators, and provides in-

formation to legislative staffs. Letter-writing campaigns, press releases,

and demonstrations are other strategies used.

See also Abortion; Equal Rights Amendment; Reproductive Rights; Schlafly,

Phyllis Stewart; Stop ERA

References www.eagleforum.org/mics/descript/html.

215

East, Catherine Shipe (1916–1996)

A federal government researcher and feminist, Catherine East’s activism

spanned from the President’s Commission on the Status of Women

(1961–1963), through the founding of the National Organization for

Women and the 1977 National Women’s Conference, and continued with

membership on the board of the National Women’s Conference Commit-

tee. She worked for the U.S. Civil Service Commission from 1939 to 1963,

beginning her career as a junior civil service examiner and advancing to

chief of the career service division, and worked for the Department of La-

bor until 1977. Her position in the Labor Department gave her access to

facts on employment practices and workplace discrimination and other

insights into women’s status.

East served as a technical adviser to the President’s Commission on

the Status of Women and helped research and write its report, American

Women, released in 1963. Following the completion of the commission’s

work, President John F. Kennedy established the Interdepartmental Com-

mittee on the Status of Women and the Citizens’ Advisory Council on the

Status of Women in 1963 and appointed East to serve as executive secre-

tary of both groups.

East was part of an informal Washington, D.C., feminist network

whose members were mostly women who had long careers in the federal

government and who fully realized the limitations placed on them be-

cause of their sex. She knew dozens of women who were concerned about

sex discrimination and who became involved in the feminist movement.

East insisted that women needed an organization comparable to the Na-

tional Association for the Advancement of Colored People and encour-

aged Betty Friedan and other women to create one, but she believed that

her position as a federal employee prevented her from taking a visible

part. As Friedan and others formed the National Organization for

Women, East provided the organizers with the information they needed.

Born in Barboursville, West Virginia, East earned her bachelor’s de-

gree at Marshall University in 1943 and did postgraduate work at George

Washington University from 1942 to 1944.

See also Citizens’ Advisory Council on the Status of Women; Equal Rights

Amendment; Friedan, Betty Naomi Goldstein; National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People, Women in the; National Organization for

Women; President’s Commission on the Status of Women; Sex Discrimination

References Carabillo, Meuli, and Csida, Feminist Chronicles, 1953–1993 (1993);

New York Times, 20 August 1996.

216 East, Catherine Shipe

Eastman, Crystal (1881–1928)

Feminist, socialist, peace activist, lawyer,

and industrial safety pioneer, Crystal East-

man completed the first in-depth socio-

logical study of industrial accidents ever

undertaken. Eastman began her career in-

vestigating working conditions and study-

ing more than 1,000 industrial accidents,

research that she reported in her book

Work Accidents and the Law (1910). Argu-

ing that industrial accidents occurred be-

cause employers neglected to protect

workers’ safety and health, she sought to

convince policymakers that workers’ com-

pensation was a legitimate and reasonable

form of economic protection. Appointed

in 1909 to the New York State Commission

on Employers’ Liability and Causes of In-

dustrial Accidents, Unemployment, and

Lack of Farm Labor, Eastman served as

secretary of the commission, drafted the

state’s first workers’ compensation law, and helped pass the measure. East-

man left the commission in 1911. When World War I began in Europe,

Eastman helped organize and chaired the Woman’s Peace Party of New

York. She was also executive director and a founder of the American

Union Against Militarism (AUAM), a group that sought to keep the

United States out of World War I. AUAM helped avoid war with Mexico

in 1917, when the organization pressured President Woodrow Wilson to

seek an alternative, and he appointed a commission that mediated the dif-

ferences. After the United States entered World War I, Eastman helped or-

ganize the Civil Liberties Bureau of AUAM to protect the rights of consci-

entious objectors. Her commitment to civil liberties in a time of war

created tensions within AUAM and contributed to its demise.

A suffragist, Eastman was campaign manager for Wisconsin’s failed

1912 campaign, and she helped organize the Congressional Union in 1913.

When the National Woman’s Party (NWP) developed out of the Congres-

sional Union in 1920, Eastman strongly supported the equal rights move-

ment championed by NWP, a position that most social reformers of the

era did not share with her. They supported protective labor legislation for

women and feared that it would be lost with the adoption of an equal

rights amendment. Eastman, however, maintained that protective labor

Eastman, Crystal 217

Crystal Eastman,

suffragist, peace

activist, and advocate

for workers’ rights,

receiving a Western

Union telegram

(Library of Congress)

legislation protected male unionists who did not want to compete with

women for jobs. She also argued that the legislation supported capitalist

power by blocking unity between male and female workers.

Born in Marlborough, Massachusetts, Crystal Eastman graduated

from Vassar College in 1903. She earned her master’s degree in sociology

from Columbia University in 1904 and her bachelor of laws degree from

New York University Law School in 1907.

References Cook, ed., Crystal Eastman on Women and Revolution (1978);

Whitman, ed., American Reformers (1985).

Echaveste, Maria (b. 1954)

One of the highest-ranking Latinos in President Bill Clinton’s administra-

tion, Maria Echaveste became assistant to the president and deputy chief

of staff in 1998. In those positions, she manages policy initiatives, devel-

ops legislative and communications strategies for the White House, and

coordinates the selection of senior administration appointments. In 1997,

she served as director of the U.S. Office of Public Liaison, a job she de-

scribed as being “the eyes and ears of the president.” She listened to con-

stituencies’ concerns, communicated them to the president, and helped

him develop support for his programs among the relevant constituencies.

Echaveste began her work in the Clinton administration in 1993 as

head of the Wage and Hours Division of the Labor Department, where she

sought out and investigated sweatshops operating in the United States. A

218 Echaveste, Maria

Deputy White House

Chief of Staff Maria

Echaveste and

speechwriter Michael

Waldman looked on

as President Bill

Clinton reviewed his

State of the Union

address, 1999

(Corbis/AFP)

raid in 1995 on one sweatshop revealed dozens of Thai laborers working

in conditions described as near slavery. She pursued the issue of sweat-

shops and attempted to make major retailers accountable for their suppli-

ers’ employment policies. She also enlisted talk show host Kathie Lee Gif-

ford and her husband in the crusade against sweatshops and for garment

industry reforms.

Born in Harlingen, Texas, Echaveste grew up in California, the

daughter of farmworkers. As a child, she picked strawberries in the fields

of the San Joaquin Valley and Ventura County. She earned her bachelor’s

degree from Stanford University in 1976 and her law degree from the Uni-

versity of California at Berkeley in 1980. She worked in private law prac-

tice until she joined the Clinton administration in 1993.

References Los Angeles Times, 3 March 1996, 27 April 1997.

Economic Equity Act

Introduced by the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues in 1981, the

Economic Equity Act is a package of proposals that seeks to improve

women’s economic status. Revised and reintroduced each session of Con-

gress, the act addresses policies involving insurance, taxes, retirement,

child care, access to credit, education, and related issues. Of the more than

100 bills that have been part of the package, several have been enacted,

many of them as parts of other bills.

Among the measures that Congress has passed are tax credits for

day care programs (1981); the Retirement Equity Act (1984), expanding

pension coverage for employees who leave and subsequently return to

their jobs and requiring pension plans to provide survivor benefits to

spouses of vested employees, even if they have not reached retirement

age; the Child Support Amendments of 1984; child care in public hous-

ing (1988); the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupa-

tions Act (1992); and the Women and Minorities in Science and Mathe-

matics Act (1992).

See also Children’s Defense Fund

References Bouton, “Marian Wright Edelman” (1987); H. W. Wilson, Current

Biography Yearbook, 1992 (1992); Viorst, “The Woman behind the First Lady”

(1993).

Education Amendments of 1972, Title IX

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits institutions re-

ceiving federal funds from practicing gender discrimination in educa-

tional programs or activities. Enforced by the Office for Civil Rights in the

U.S. Department of Education, it was the first comprehensive federal law

to prohibit sex discrimination against students and employees in these

institutions.

Until the passage of the Education Amendments of 1972, the United

States had no national policy regarding women and girls in education.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in ed-

ucation on the basis of race, color, and national origin but did not in-

clude sex. Although Title VII of the act prohibited discrimination on the

basis of sex, it applied only to employment. The law’s silence permitted

public colleges and universities the option of refusing even to admit

women. For example, Virginia state law prohibited women from being

admitted to the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Virginia,

the most highly rated public institution of higher education in Virginia.

It was only under a court order that the college admitted its first woman

in 1970.

Married women also experienced legal discrimination in education,

regardless of their family’s status. One example occurred in 1966, when Luci

Baines Johnson, daughter of President Lyndon Johnson, applied for read-

mission to Georgetown University after her marriage. The university denied

her application because the school did not accept married women students.

Institutions of higher education that admitted women had no legal

requirements to provide women with educational or program opportuni-

ties comparable to those offered to men. Significant differences existed in

athletic and sports programs available to women and men at most colleges

and universities. For example, men’s football and basketball teams held

center stage on many campuses, but women’s sports programs were ne-

glected, if they existed at all. A Connecticut judge explained in 1971:“Ath-

letic competition builds character in our boys. We do not need that kind

of character in our girls.”

Education Amendments of 1972, Title IX 221

Feminist leaders objected to this form of legal discrimination on the

basis of sex, at least in part because many of them were well-educated,

middle-class women who valued education. Bernice Sandler, who was ac-

tive in the Women’s Equity Action League (WEAL), took a leading role in

exploring ways to end sex discrimination in education. In 1970, Sandler

used President Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order 11375 as the basis for a

class action suit that WEAL filed. The executive order prohibited discrim-

ination, including on the basis of sex, by all federal contractors, including

educational institutions. In its suit, WEAL asked for reviews of all institu-

tions with federal contracts, filed suit against 260 institutions, and later

filed suit against all medical schools in the country. Sandler’s actions

prompted Congresswoman Martha Griffiths (D-MI) to give the first

speech in Congress on gender discrimination in education.

Also in 1970, WEAL advisory board member and Democratic con-

gresswoman Edith Green of Oregon held congressional hearings on sex

discrimination in education, the first devoted to the topic. WEAL assisted

Green with the hearings by recommending individuals to provide testi-

mony and in other ways. After the hearings, Green asked Sandler to join

the committee staff and assemble the written record of the hearings, mak-

ing Sandler the first person ever appointed to the staff of a congressional

committee to work specifically in the area of women’s rights. The result-

ing two volumes, more than 1,000 pages total, concretely established the

facts of sex discrimination in education; after Green had thousands of

copies printed and distributed, they provided evidence for other activists

to use in their advocacy for educational equity. In 1971, members of Con-

gress responded to the hearings by introducing several plans to prohibit

sex discrimination in education, but it took several months to negotiate a

plan for accomplishing the goal.

The Education Amendments of 1972 apply to all schools from pre-

school through graduate and professional schools and prohibit any edu-

cation program receiving federal funds from discriminating on the basis

of sex. Educational institutions are prohibited from having different ad-

missions or other standards for women and men and from discriminating

against married women, pregnant women, and women with children.

Girls and women began gaining access to athletic facilities equal to those

granted to men, became eligible for athletic scholarships, and obtained

equal opportunities to engage in sports. The law requires schools to have

teams for males and teams for females in any given sport, or if there is no

girls’ team in a sport, they must be permitted to try out for boys’ teams.

In 1984, the U.S. Department of Justice sought to enforce the broad

scope of Title IX, but in Grove City College v. Bell the U.S. Supreme Court

ruled that Title IX was program-specific, meaning that only those pro-

222 Education Amendments of 1972, Title IX

grams within institutions that received federal funds had to comply with

Title IX. With the passage of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988,

however, Congress made the institutions, not just directly funded pro-

grams, responsible for compliance with Title IX. The U.S. Supreme Court

expanded Title IX in Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools (1992) by

ruling that sexually harassed students could sue for monetary awards.

Some statistics suggest that Title IX has made a difference in women’s

educational prospects. In 1973, 43 percent of female high school gradu-

ates ages sixteen to twenty-four were enrolled in college; in 1994, 63 per-

cent were. In 1972, women earned 1 percent of dental degrees; in 1994,

women earned 38 percent of them. In 1972, women comprised 15 percent

of college student athletes, compared to 37 percent in 1995. In 1971,

300,000 high school girls (7.5 percent of all high school athletes) partici-

pated in athletics; in 1996, 2.4 million girls (39 percent of all high school

athletes) participated.

In the late 1990s, female athletes at educational institutions, however,

continued to find that their opportunities for scholarships were fewer

than those for male athletes, that their coaches were paid less than male

athletes’ coaches, and that throughout their school’s athletic programs

they were likely to find substantial differences in the women’s athletic pro-

grams and the men’s athletic programs.

See also Affirmative Action; Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII; Education,

Women and; Executive Order 11375; Green, Edith Starrett; Grove City College

v. Bell; Sexual Harassment; Women’s Equity Action League

References Baer, Women in American Law: The Struggle Toward Equality from

the New Deal to the Present (1996); Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 92nd

Congress, 2nd Session...1972 (1973); Hankerson, “Courts Have Extended Sex

Bias Law’s Reach” (1999); Wandersee, American Women in the 1970s: On the

Move (1988); www.ed.gov; www.edc.org.

Education, Women and

Women have sought to create educational opportunities and to open es-

tablished institutions to women since the colonial era. Until the 1820s,

women’s educational opportunities were limited to dame schools that

generally taught domestic arts, literature, and languages but not philoso-

phy, higher math, or the sciences. In 1821, Emma Hart Willard

(1787–1870) founded the first women’s college-level institution in the

United States, Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York. The school

gained a strong reputation for developing schoolteachers, one of the few

occupations open to women at the time. Another crusader for women’s

education, Catharine Beecher (1800–1878), opened the Western Female

Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1832 and devoted her life to promoting

Education, Women and 223

women’s educational opportunity and to training and recruiting teachers

for schools on the American frontier.

Mary Lyon (1797–1849) opened Mount Holyoke Female Seminary

in 1837 and offered a three-year program. The school became Mount

Holyoke College in 1861, when it became a four-year institution. Other

four-year women’s colleges followed over the next decades, beginning

with Vassar College in 1865 and Smith College and Wellesley College in

1875. In addition, most state colleges admitted women. By the 1890s, an

influential group of educated women had developed, working as health

professionals, social reformers, and teachers.

Several federal programs expanded educational opportunities for

women and men in the 1960s, including financial assistance, an increase

in vocational education options, and new community college campuses

and programs. Other barriers remained. The elite private law schools and

medical schools that admitted women often placed quotas on the number

of women they accepted, public and private institutions established dif-

ferent admissions standards for women and men, and some schools did

not accept married women or women with children.

A fundamental change in women’s access to higher education

came with passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

Its prohibitions against gender discrimination at institutions receiving

federal funding gave women equal access to college admissions, en-

larged women’s educational options, and enhanced women’s athletic

programs.

See also Affirmative Action; American Association of University Women;

Education Amendments of 1972, Title IX; Women’s Educational Equity Act

of 1974; Women’s Equity Action League

References Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (1989);

Mead and Kaplan, eds., American Women: The Report of the President’s

Commission on the Status of Women and Other Publications of the Commission

(1965).

Edwards, Elaine Lucille Schwartzenburg (b. 1929)

Democrat Elaine Edwards of Louisiana served in the U.S. Senate from 1

August 1972 to 13 November 1972. When the death of one of Louisiana’s

senators created a vacancy, Governor Edwin Edwards appointed his wife

Elaine Edwards to fill it. She made it clear that she would not run for a full

term when she accepted the appointment.

Elaine Edwards was born in Marksville, Louisiana.